Yahoo! in trouble with Congress
Yahoo! in trouble with Congress
Yahoo misled Congress regarding information the Internet company gave to Chinese authorities about the journalist Shi Tao, Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos said Tuesday.
Yahoo officials have been asked to testify before a House committee in November about a Chinese journalist’s case.
Lantos, a California representative and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asked Yahoo Inc. officials to testify about the company’s role in a case that sent Chinese newspaper writer and editor Shi to prison on a 10-year sentence.Lantos asked Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang and Senior Vice President and General Counsel Michael Callahan to appear November 6.
“Our committee has established that Yahoo provided false information to Congress in early 2006,” Lantos said in a written statement. “We want to clarify how that happened, and to hold the company to account for its actions both before and after its testimony proved untrue. And we want to examine what steps the company has taken since then to protect the privacy rights of its users in China.” - Source and rest of article
A few questions came to mind as I was reading the above article a few minutes ago.
- Why would US law makers expect that Yahoo! or any other company would be able to “protect the privacy rights of users in China”?
- Since when do people in China have any privacy rights?
- Since when do companies operating in foreign lands bring the laws of their parent nations with them to the new land?
Don’t misunderstand I don’t agree at all with China’s policies on anything to do with human rights and privacy, but is the US Congress out of line in thinking that Yahoo! (or anyone else) is somehow responsible to protect a Chinese citizens privacy in China?
