Report: Yahoo helped jail another Chinese 'net dissident, Li Zhi
Human rights group Reporters Without Borders is reporting that Yahoo! provided Chinese authorities with personally identifying data on yet another of its customers in China. Li Zhi, a 35-year-old resident of Sichuan province, used what he believed to be an anonymous Yahoo account to express his opinions on message boards and chatrooms, and was accused of communicating online with overseas dissidents. The data Yahoo gave authorities led to his imprisonment for eight years, says RSF -- that would be the second such case involving Yahoo in less than a year (Link to previous Boing Boing posts about Shi Tao, the Chinese journalist jailed for ten years with Yahoo's help).A hearing on the ethical responsibilities of Internet firms is scheduled to take place before the House Committee on International Relations on February 15 -- and Yahoo has been invited to attend.
Snip from RSF's statement:
[RSF called] on Yahoo! to supply a list of all cyberdissidents it has provided data on, beginning with 81 people in China whose release the worldwide press freedom organization is currently campaigning for. It said it had discovered that Yahoo! customer and cyberdissident Li Zhi had been given his eight-year prison sentence in December 2003 based on electronic records provided by Yahoo. “How many more cases are we going to find?” it asked.
“We were sure the case of Shi Tao, who was jailed for 10 years last April on the basis of Yahoo-supplied data, was not the only one. Now we know Yahoo works regularly and efficiently with the Chinese police.
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Posted on BoingBoing by: Xeni Jardin ^ TOP
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