Internet giant Yahoo Inc. may find itself in some trouble as the US Congress asked it to provide an explanation regarding the conduct of its attorney. Congress is looking into allegations that Yahoo’s attorney committed perjury by providing false statements while providing testimony last year.
The Yahoo official Congress is looking at is Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s general counsel and senior vice president. According to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Callahan had testified that Yahoo had no idea why the Chinese government had asked it to provide personal information about a democracy advocate, Shi Tao. After the request, the Chinese government sentenced Shi Tao to 10 years in prison.
Congress is taking the matter quite seriously, going by the utterings of Tom Lantos, the committee chairman. He said the committee is looking to make the company bear responsibility for its actions. The House committee has also set a hearing for November 6. It has asked Callahan as well as Jerry Yang, the CEO of Yahoo, to come for the hearing.
The hearing would try and determine how the company managed to provided false information to the House and would also look into measures Yahoo had taken so far to ensure the privacy and rights of Yahoo in China were protected.
Congress said though Callahan had said he had no idea why the Chinese government had asked for Shi Tao’s personal data, the House Foreign Affairs Committee had come across a memo that originated from within the Chinese government and contained information on what they intended to do with Tao.
The committee said based on the information Yahoo provided, the Chinese government, managed to locate Shi Tao and sentence him. Tao’s ‘crime’ was he had put up information about government crackdowns in China on a website overseas. He did this using an alias.
The evidence to support this accusation came out into the open during July this year. The San Francisco Dui Hua Foundation said they had evidence the Chinese police had contacted Yahoo and asked for Shi’s personal information, a fact Yahoo had been carefully hiding.
The Chinese police had earlier written to officials at Yahoo and asked them to provide evidence of Shi handing over state secrets to outsiders. According to the House committee, the term ‘handing over state secrets’ was something the government officials used regularly to take care of people indulging in political dissent.
Reacting to the House summons, officials at Yahoo said the committee had been ‘grossly unfair’. It issued a statement to the effect that Yahoo officials had been truthful as far as the testimony was concerned. In its statement the company said the problem was actually an altogether real disagreement between the two entities regarding the data given.
Companies and businesses operating in China face a huge dilemma regarding how best to successfully balance free expression in an environment that is restrictive when it comes to matters like information access, Yahoo further added.
Yahoo is also currently fighting another battle on another front: getting a lawsuit related to the Shi Tao case filed against it dismissed. The suit charges Yahoo with providing personal information about people to the Chinese government, an act that is a breach of American and international regulations.
There are other Internet bigwigs that have been censured for their actions relating to China. Google too has faced criticism for coming up with a site in China that provides access to censored information through its search facility. Yahoo’s brush with the House is, however, way bigger than anything else involving the Internet giants and pertaining to China.
