Yahoo "deceived Congress" after helping to convict Chinese dissident
YAHOO! STANDS accused of being "negligent" and "deceptive" after it failed to fully cough up to a US congressional panel over colluding with Chinese authorities to get a journalist jailed.
Yahoo's general counsel, Michael Callahan, wrote to the House of Representatives committee on foreign affairs, saying a " misunderstanding" meant that Yahoo failed to supply all the relevant information to the US Congress.
But the congressional panel's chairman, Tom Lantos, found this too much to stomach. "Yahoo claims that this is just one big misunderstanding. Let me be clear - this was no misunderstanding. This was inexcusably negligent behaviour at best, and deliberately deceptive behaviour at worst," Lantos said.
"Either Yahoo has little regard for providing full and complete information to a fully constituted committee of the Congress, or it has little regard for the issue of protecting human rights," he added.
Chinese journalist Shi Tao remains behind bars on a ten-year stretch after Yahoo! passed his details on to Chinese propaganda cops. Yahoo! has been wriggling to get off the hook, saying that is has to comply with local laws to business in China and now, apparently, refusing to come clean to Congress.
More here. ยต
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Yahoo! can spin it any way they want. The facts remain that someone is in jail in a Human-Rights-deficient country (and that ain't no pleasure cruise) AND Yahoo! lied about the whole thing to the face of the entire world.

I am not about to believe that there was any "misunderstanding". People at that level do not "misunderstand", they have hours of meetings and employ scores of specialists to be sure that they understand very well.

Besides, it's rather simple : if there really was a "misunderstanding", then the CEO needs to resign immediately because he is incapable of understanding what is happening to the company.
That is not the kind of leadership a publicly listed company needs.
So, Yahoo! is being slapped for following the laws of a country they are doing business in. Are global corporations supposed to selectively break laws based on what the US Congress deems righteous?

I wonder, would Congress praise Yahoo! if they refused to hand over the identity of a suspected terrorist to FBI/CIA/whoever without warrant as per the Patriot Act?
When it comes to ethics, Yahoo! does not seem to be too picky. China, again - the US web giant finds nothing wrong profiting from the international shark fin trade. Have a look:

http://www.1440wallstreet.com/index.php/comments/shark_fin_soup/

Wolfgang Leander, Cochabamba / Bolivia