Today, CNN.com ran a news story stating that Yahoo has been accused of misleading Congress about information it shared with Chinese authorities regarding a journalist in that country which led to the journalist's subsequent arrest and 10-year prison sentence. The story brings up interesting questions about privacy rights and media privilege at home and abroad.
Yahoo is a huge, multi-billion dollar, world-wide operation. Are they any less responsible to care for the privacy rights of a single individual in far-away China than your local Bank of America teller is to care for yours? Will they be held responsible for misleading Congress, if that is in fact what they did?
More than that, what next for the Chinese journalist now in prison thanks to Yahoo's Information Highway Express-Lane to the authorities?
Few countries enjoy the many freedoms that we do in the United States; however, our freedoms (such as they are) should never be taken for granted, especially in an age where our own government reacts to potential threat with the swift curtailing and elimination of those freedoms (a la the Patriot Act). The right to privacy is one of those freedoms that we are loathe to give up, yet in many countries citizens can't even hope to have it in the first place.
This will be an interesting story to follow, I believe.
16 October 2007
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