Complicity for a Price

The amount of data that can be garnered from individuals’ internet activities, via large internet players like Google and Yahoo, is technologically amazing.

Here in America, we may feel somewhat insulated from the state’s prying eyes when they desire to see into individuals’ private internet activities, but that insulated feeling is probably unjustified.  In China, users of the internet, in all likelihood, do not feel this insulation, as Chinese individuals are subjected to the state’s prying eyes in their homes, while eating noodles on the street, while performing their jobs, in all aspects of their daily lives from birth to death.

Just what part do Google and Yahoo play in the repression of the Chinese and in the protection of individuals’ privacy?

Privacy International gives Google the worst possible privacy protection rating, and Yahoo is currently being sued by journalist Shi Tao, who has been jailed by the Chinese with the complicity of data received from Yahoo concerning Tao’s private internet activities.

While Google has successfully fought the state in U.S. courts, over the state’s desire to delve into data Google compiles while individuals surf the net, in China Google is more apt to rollover to accept the state’s belly rub if Chinese authorities desire to peer where they have no business peering, as Yahoo did in the case of Shi Tao.

What justification does Yahoo give for supplying the Chinese government with data utilized to imprison Tao?

However, Yahoo! added that companies operating in China must comply with Chinese law or risk having their employees face civil or criminal penalties.

Ah, the “law,” the beast that devours freedom.  So, because Chinese law decrees that internet companies like Yahoo and Google must crawl in bed and play nicey nice in order to do business, i.e. inform on individuals’ private internet activities at the behest of the state, will these companies do the same in the United States when the state finally gets around to imposing the same type of information sharing laws as a requirement to do business?

Yahoo can condemn the Chinese government all they want regarding the repression of Chinese freedom of speech on the internet, but when it comes to making a buck, whether in China or the U.S., what will the price of complicity be?

Yahoo Weighs in on Free Speech in China

Posted by on 06/11 at 05:41 AM

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