Yahoo! Does the Dirty Work for the Chinese Gov't

Information supplied by Yahoo ! helped Chinese journalist get 10 years in prison

This is an important story, which brings to the forefront the issues of censorship, ethics, and abiding by local regulations in the age of the internet. Read it, if you are interested in such issues as well as the issues of freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.

The text of the verdict in the case of journalist Shi Tao - sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for “divulging state secrets abroad” - shows that Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. provided China’s state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him, Reporters Without Borders said today.

Shi Tao Aged 37, Shi worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News). He was convicted on 30 April of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal message which the authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Chinese state security insisted during the trial that the message was "Jue Mi" (top secret). Shi admitted sending it out by e-mail but disputed that it was a secret document. He is still being held in a prison in Changsha to which he was sent after his arrest in the northeastern city of Taiyuan on 24 November 20

There are many articles written on the subject. Here are two of them:

1- from the Reporters without Borders site: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884
2- and the BBC, which takes a look at the above's story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4221538.stm