(2005-09-08) Yahoo Helps Chinese Arrest

Yahoo provided information last year that helped authorities in China convict a Chinese journalist for leaking state secrets to a foreign Web site, court documents show. The journalist, Shi Tao, was sentenced to 10 years in prison this June for sending to a Chinese-language Web site based in New York an anonymous posting that authorities said contained state secrets. His posting summarized a communication from Communist Party authorities to media outlets around the country... According to the court documents, Yahoo provided records that showed that Mr. Shi used a computer at his workplace, Contemporary Business News in Changsha, late in the evening of April 20, 2004, to gain access to his Yahoo e-mail account. Authorities say the offending e-mail message was sent to the New York Web site from that e-mail account around that time, according to people involved in Mr. Shi's defense... Chinese journalists say the information that Mr. Shi, a 37-year-old journalist and democracy advocate, provided to the New York Web site, called Democracy Forum, was already widely circulated. It involved routine instructions on how officials must safeguard social stability during the 15th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, democracy movement.

But hey, maybe he has a beautiful future as the puffiness in someone's lips.

Feb'2006 update: Amnesty International is on the case.

Feb10'2006 update: oops they did it again, to Li Zhi.

Jeremy Zawodny is getting blog comments about this, but not responding.

Jul'2007 update: Yahoo even knew the nature of the investigation. The document requested identifying information on an email account used to send prohibited political information to a democracy group, saying the information was necessary to investigate a person suspected of "illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities." However, Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan told Congress in 2006 that the company "had no information about the nature of the investigation" before it handed over account information to the police.

• Nov'2007 update: Michael Callahan discovered he was wrong, and Yahoo did know what it was doing.