Yahoo! apologizes ahead of Congressional grilling

The Financial Times and Dow Jones report that Yahoo! is now apologizing for not telling the full truth to Congress at the February 2006 hearing where Yahoo! was taken to task for its role in the conviction of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. However Yahoo! insists that they did not intentionally misinform Congress: Rather, senior Yahoo! executives who can't read Chinese were badly briefed by local employees who do read Chinese.

Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and senior VP and general counsel Michael Callahan have been ordered back to Capitol Hill next week to explain themselves.  In advance of what is sure to be a rough day for Yahoo! on the Hill, Callahan is talking to journalists about Yahoo!'s perspective on the whole situation.

Callahan says that in February 2006 he was not aware that the Chinese-language police order requesting Shi Tao's account information had specified that it was a "state secrets" case. In his February 2006 testimony Callahan told Congress that Yahoo! had "no information" about the nature of the case. In July the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights organization, released a full English translation of the original police order citing "illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities" as the "crime" being investigated. This revelation triggered congressman Tom Lantos to order a congressional investigation of the situation, followed by his conclusion that "Yahoo provided false information to Congress in early 2006."  While Yahoo! says that they hadn't intentionally provided false information in February 2006, executives in Sunnyvale did discover in October last year that the Yahoo! Beijing office actually did have more information about Shi Tao's case than Callahan had earlier claimed. But Yahoo! executives did not broadcast this realization or seek to correct their testimony. As Dow Jones reports:

Yahoo said that Callahan found out about this fact in October 2006, but that he forgot to inform the committee.

"I neglected to directly alert the Committee of this new information and that oversight led to a misunderstanding that I deeply regret and have apologized to the Committee for creating," said Callahan in the statement.

It said that a Hong Kong-based lawyer for the company made the decision at the time not to pass the specific information about the Chinese government's request to executives at Yahoo's Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters.

A spokeswoman refused to name the lawyer, but said he was still with the company.

Oops!

Last month I speculated that something like this might have happened. Based on my own observations over the years about the relationship between the local China offices of multinational companies and their headquarters back in the U.S., it's not uncommon for crucial pieces of information to get lost between local employees and headquarters - thanks to language barriers and different cultural perspectives on what is or isn't important, among other reasons.  It's a wise move on Yahoo!'s part to stop being defensive and admit to being human.

I'd also like to share something that somebody recently pointed out to me. If we had been reading the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner's report on the Shi Tao case a little more carefully when it came out in March, we would have paid more attention to this paragraph on pages 17-18:

"6.11    Yahoo! China was not made aware of the exact nature or details of the investigation by SSB [State Security Bureau], but the Order from SSB stated that it was in respect of a criminal investigation into "illegal disclosure of state secrets overseas."
(Click here for the full PDF report.)

Thus, information about the inaccuracy of Callahan's congressional testimony has actually been out in public, in English, since March. It's just that pretty much everybody - except Yahoo! executives and the Hong Kong privacy commissioner's office of course - seems to have overlooked it. Myself included.   Oops!

Comments

[Yunan Yuan]

"Rather, senior Yahoo! executives who can't read Chinese were badly briefed by local employees who do read Chinese." How can we achieve effective communication across long physical distance and cultural barrier? You would think multinational companies should've made more collaborate effort to tackle this problem, a long time ago...but apparently not.

[Mike H.]

I'm left wondering, and maybe I missed this if it already came up, what the Yahoo! team would have done differently if they had known the nature of the investigation going in.

Hasn't Yahoo!'s stance consistently been "if the government asks, we have to tell because that's how we'll continue to be able to do business in China"?

I don't use anything Yahoo! produces. I killed my flickr & del.icio.us accounts because my sense of Yahoo!'s stance has been that the company is unrepentant in any way that will make a difference for the people it is effectively informing on. That's a bummer -- I liked those services -- but it was more of a bummer to think that my $20 annual flickr fee was enriching a company that does what Yahoo! has been doing, then defends its right to abet oppression on First Amendment grounds.

So I've been watching as all this unfolds, and the deciding factor to me will be Yahoo!'s own policies. The fact that so much is being made of what the company knew implies to me that it would have acted differently given different knowledge. That doesn't square with my understanding up to this point.

Clue me in?

[Not2happy]

Eh? I find this completely dubious. From the above we know that Yahoo! knew that the Chinese were investigating a leaking of state secrets case, but not the exact details. However, when Yahoo! handed over Shi Tao's details they surely would have been able to see the content of the emails and therefore would have known that what Shi Tao sent to pro-democracy groups wasn't really the equivalent of releasing the minutiae of China's latest nuclear weapon technology. Let's retain a sense of proportionality here, something which Shi Tao's 10 year sentence does not!!!!! Come on Rebecca, call yourself a journalist?! It's surely no coincidence that this info has been highlighted now, a week before the hearing. It's a PR trick designed to take the sting out of next week's barrage of criticism. Yahoo! went into China knowing the lay of the land. After all, surely you remember those cries of 'it's better for Chinese freedom of speech that we're there than not'. For Yahoo! to turn round now and say it didn't have suspicions that some poor person was about to be subjected to some severe, over-the-mark judicial penalty when it received a request from the Chinese authorities for information on a member of the public is completely disingenuous.

[William Keeler]

Yahoo is also giving out the names and addresses of others who use message boards in violation of public privacy. Re: Gerald W Haddock vs John Doe's 1-25, 153rd District Court, Tarrant County, Texas. I suggest that their release of private information regarding this case also be included in the Congresional investigation of Yahoo for the China incident. Our privacy laws must be respected and freedom of speech must prevail. I've made this request to a Senator from Texas but have received no response. I expect Yahoo will release my name and address regarding this meassage.