Yahoo - Data Abuse?

Personal statement on Yahoo!’s data abuse
Yahoo! has been critized for a long time for encouraging the censorship of China. It was back in 2004 when Yahoo! Hong Kong decided to release the personal informations about Shi Tao, a journalist and poet who used his private Yahoo! account to send an anti-communistic article to an American non-governmental organisation. This article was about the fifteenth anniversary of the   carnage from the „Tiananmen-place“. The email was written anonymous. He got arrested in 2004 and was sentenced to 10 years prison in 2005, just because Yahoo! Hong Kong worked together with the Chinese government and gave his details by choice to the national security of China. Yahoo! Hong Kong brought forward the argument that they just performed as the local terms and conditions are demanding. The accusation against Shi Tao was that he betrayed a state secret to a foreign country. Therefore must be known that Chinese government agencies are declaring a lot of things to state secrets eventhough there’s no direct coherence to the safety of the state.
Using and giving out personal details without letting the person concerned know is something I can’t understand. Especially in this case I don’t get why Yahoo! Hong Kong acted like that. For me it’s absolutely inapprehensible how one can support the Chinese government and it’s regulations. Nowadays everyone should have the right to think and say whatever they want – that’s what freedom of opinion is for. The argument from Yahoo! that they were acting like this just because of the national terms and conditions seems really lame to me. Such a big and international company should know it better – especially that they weren’t asked directly from the government to do so and give out informations of every person that Yahoo! thinks could be a betrayer to the local conditions. Yahoo! is a big institution and if they really would like not to support such an obvious crime, they have the possibility to do so as... [continues]

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