UK MPs slam "immoral" Microsoft, Google, Yahoo stance

THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS committee in the UK House of Commons has laid into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for collaborating with Chinese authorities to censor and police the Internet.

The committee pointed to Microsoft's portal which blocks the use of the word "freedom", Yahoo for fingering journo Shi Tao, who was then arrested and thrown into a Chinese clink, and to Google for introducing a "self censoring" version of its website in the country.

It noted that China is exporting its own technology for monitoring the web to "other repressive governments", like Zimbabwe.

The commitee said such collaboration was "morally unacceptable". It wants the UK government to encourage China to relax its censorship and get it to stop putting pressure on foreign firms to restrict the political content of their pages.

"We further recommend that the Government represent to the Chinese authorities the damage whch is done to economic growth by continued restriction of the free flow of information," the report said. It criticises China roundly for a number of other human rights abuses. µ