Before Congressional Hearings, Yahoo! issues vague ethical "guidelines"

In advance of Wednesday’s hearings where it will be asked to explain its lack of moral compass in China, Yahoo! has released a statement titled “Yahoo!: Our Beliefs as a Global Internet Company.” Read the whole thing. But here is an excerpt of the preamble:

Private industry alone cannot effectively influence foreign government policies on issues like the free exchange of ideas, maximum access to information, and human rights reform, and we believe continued government-to-government dialogue is vital to achieve progress on these complex political issues.

Sure, government dialogue is good. Google has also called on the U.S. government to treat barriers to free speech like barriers to trade. However, the only successful U.S. government efforts to change Chinese policy and regulations that I have observed have been ones - such as the WTO access deal and the intellectual property agreements - in which U.S. companies have been heavily involved with lobbying the Chinese bureaucracy for years on end in order to convince officials that policy change is in their interest. The history of U.S.-China market access talks at least from the early 1990’s onwards has shown that without active business community participation and support both publicly and behind the scenes, government-to-government dialogue doesn’t get terribly far. So if Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others sit back and say: this is the government’s business and don’t make concerted efforts to assist and lobby in China, we can conclude they’re not very serious.

Yahoo! is making the following efforts to address their glaring lack of concern for the welfare of the Chinese user:

• Collective Action: We will work with industry, government, academia and NGO's to explore policies to guide industry practices in countries where content is treated more restrictively than in the United States and to promote the principles of freedom of speech and expression.
• Compliance Practices: We will continue to employ rigorous procedural protections under applicable laws in response to government requests for information, maintaining our commitment to user privacy and compliance with the law.
• Information Restrictions: Where a government requests we restrict search results, we will do so if required by applicable law and only in a way that impacts the results as narrowly as possible. If we are required to restrict search results, we will strive to achieve maximum transparency to the user.
• Government Engagement: We will actively engage in ongoing policy dialogue with governments with respect to the nature of the Internet and the free flow of information.

So. Let’s see. The second bullet point would be the one pertaining to hand-over of dissident information to the police. Yahoo! will probably claim that since its Chinese partner Alibaba now runs its Chinese e-mail service, there is nothing it can do… However such an argument would be a cop-out. Yahoo.com.cn is still a Yahoo-branded product. What happens to user data is being done under an American company’s name and that company is certainly morally responsible. User trust in their brand will be damaged no less than if Yahoo.com.cn were 100% run by American Yahoo! employees.  Yahoo! really has two choices with its e-mail service: move it out of Chinese jurisdiction and thus most likely management, or make it MUCH more clear and obvious to the user (beyond the dense terms of service and user agreement that nobody reads) that their personal data is no more secure on Yahoo! than it is on any of the Chinese e-mail service providers.

The third bullet point would pertain to Yahoo!’s search engine. As of today that search engine has zero transparency about the fact that it is censored. Let’s see what changes actually get implemented and how.

As for the first and fourth, I welcome these but will reserve judgment until we see what actual concrete actions are taken. Will “government engagement” include the Chinese government or just the U.S. government?  It should include both.

Prof. Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center where I am now a research fellow, recently spoke to the San Jose Mercury News about what principles these companies ought to be adopting in China. An excerpt:

Zittrain said he's just starting work on a paper setting out specific principles, and sees three broad themes:

• Transparency. Companies operating in repressive countries should always disclose what they're doing, including what products they are selling to government agencies involved in censorship and what restrictions they are imposing on users. Google, for example, has pledged to always alert users when search results omit censored material.

• Non-collaboration. Companies should not actively participate in acts of repression. Yahoo, for example, could move its e-mail servers out of China so the company would not have to respond when authorities attempt to read users' messages.

• Gentle resistance. Companies should interpret restrictive rules as liberally as possible, thereby challenging attempts to scare them into self-censorship.

I asked Prof. Zittrain for some more details – assuming he’d given the reporter more than ended up being printed. And sure enough. He wrote:

I think that the practice of telling people when information has been censored can, in this environment, go some distance to ameliorating the censorship.  I'm reminded of the Sullivan Principles, whereby some economic engagement with South Africa was countenanced during Apartheid, so long as it hewed to certain principles designed to benefit those harmed by the practice and to eventually eliminate it.  The Sullivan Principles were enforced through the moral suasion of Reverend Sullivan himself.  He ultimately decided they weren't working, and sought to end engagement with South Africa, but in the meantime the Principles had gone from mere idea to individual adoption to industry standard to, in the United States and elsewhere, law of the land.  I believe there are actions that governments of non-authoritarian societies can take to help companies charter their deal with China.  Rules, for example, that would forbid the rendition of private data if it could be used for political harassment.  Google and others would then have to say "Sorry, our hands are tied," when asked to actively facilitate repression of particular kinds.

More specifically, I would like to see the search engines be even more transparent about their censorship. They should publicize the full list of URLs and keywords that they are required to block (minus porn perhaps), plus the specific laws, regulations, and orders that have led to each item being put on the list. They should inform users not only that there are things missing – without saying what – but describe what is missing and who exactly caused it to be deleted on what authority. That would be a real contribution toward strengthening rule of law in China and weakening the rule of arbitrary bureaucratic fiat: a goal which China’s top leaders themselves have embraced.

Furthermore, a number of people such as Roland Soong of ESWN have been pointing out rightly that while there is much ado about U.S. companies’ behavior, the Chinese companies who practice even more stringent censorship are going unremarked upon.

One very interesting idea that I’ve been hearing making the rounds is that maybe some kind of new requirements could be imposed on internet companies listing on U.S. exchanges (which now includes a bunch of Chinese companies): that in order to be listed, you can’t engage in creating information barriers or expose user’s data to situations in which human rights violations could be possible. That is a very intriguing idea indeed.

Comments

"One very interesting idea that I’ve been hearing making the rounds is that maybe some kind of new requirements could be imposed on internet companies listing on U.S. exchanges (which now includes a bunch of Chinese companies): that in order to be listed, you can’t engage in creating information barriers or expose user’s data to situations in which human rights violations could be possible. That is a very intriguing idea indeed."

I wonder if so-called ethical investment firms/funds like those who won't buy cigarette companies could also be enlisted.

[blablabla]

"move it out of Chinese jurisdiction and thus most likely management, or make it MUCH more clear and obvious to the user (beyond the dense terms of service and user agreement that nobody reads) that their personal data is no more secure on Yahoo!"

The author doesn't understand how web is operated, and quite ignorant.

Any domain with .cn as the end, such as Yahoo.com.cn, has to be operated within China, this is the universal rule. Moving server out of the country, then a block of the url will work.

You make the search more transparent? Who is going to pay for the effort? And at the risk being kicked out of the business every minitue?

Quite an idiot.

[Jing Zhao]

Last year I went Yahoo!'s shareholders meeting and raised this issue. The CEO spent quite minutes to answer me. This year they sent the meeting notice to me after the meeting!
Furthermore, some of my Chinese alumni running Internet companies in China told me that they expected foreign companies raise this issue to the Chinese government because the Chinese government really listens to foreigners (especially American guys).