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By Richard Wolf and Jim Hopkins
WASHINGTON — Top Yahoo executives apologized Tuesday for misleading Congress about the Internet giant's role in a case built by Chinese authorities against a dissident journalist jailed for 10 years.
As Shi Tao's mother sat behind him at a congressional hearing, Yahoo's general counsel Michael Callahan acknowledged giving incomplete testimony to Congress last year about the Chinese probe into Shi's dissemination of "state secrets." Yahoo China provided information about Shi's online activities at the behest of the Chinese govern-ment.
Last year, Callahan testified that Yahoo didn't know the facts of the case when it gave the information. But the House Foreign Affairs Committee staff found that Yahoo employees did know the nature of the case, even if Callahan did not.
The apology was a major concession for the 12-year-old company, which CEO Jerry Yang noted was "founded on openness, the exchange of information and user trust." Yang's family emigrated from Taiwan when he was a boy.
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., committee chairman and a Nazi work camp survivor, was unsympathetic. He called Yahoo "spineless," saying because of its actions Shi "has been tossed into a Chinese prison."
Shi was imprisoned in 2004 for disclosing state secrets, a charge often used against political dissidents.
Yang's testimony comes as Yahoo, Google, Cisco and others race to get a toehold in China, one of the world's fastest-growing economies. In expanding there, they are colliding with the govern-ment's restrictive policies on Internet access.
The companies have said it is better for them to do business in China, even under restrictions they dislike, because their presence could lead to greater freedoms. Lantos and others in Congress are seeking legislation that would limit the companies' activities there.
Underscoring the stakes for Yahoo, which has been struggling against rival Google, its shares fell 4.6% Tuesday on nearly twice its average daily sales volume.
John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society at Harvard Law School said the case represents "a big hit" to Yahoo. "There's no avoiding the ethical consequences of doing business as a technology company in regimes like China, where human rights are not held so dear as they are in the United States," he said.
[ 本帖最後由 乜哥 於 2007-11-10 14:45 編輯 ] | 
發表於 2007-11-10 14:43:04