Editorial: Matter of trust

Monday, Oct. 22, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

Yahoo's top executives have been asked to testify before a House committee to answer lawmakers' concerns that Yahoo officials may have misled Congress during 2006 testimony about the company's role in the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist.

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said new information suggests that Yahoo officials "provided false information" last year when they said that Yahoo released personal information about pro-democracy newspaper writer and editor Shi Tao to Chinese police but knew nothing "about the nature of the investigation."

The information led Chinese authorities to Shi, who had used a pseudonym to post information on the overseas Web site Democracy Forum. He was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to a 10-year prison term in 2005.

Contrary to what Yahoo officials told Congress last year, information released by a California-based human rights group in July says that Chinese police had sent Yahoo a letter that sought evidence against Shi for "providing state secrets to foreign entities." The charge, CNN reports, is one often lodged against political dissidents in China.

In a statement Tuesday, Lantos said that at the Nov. 6 hearing lawmakers will ask Yahoo officials why they provided "false information to Congress" in 2006 and also will hold Yahoo accountable for its actions. The committee also wants to know what the company has done since then to protect the privacy rights of its customers in China.

Yahoo officials told CNN that they did not lie to Congress and that the company is working with human rights groups and other companies "to develop a global code of conduct" for doing business in other countries, including China.

One benefit of American-based companies doing business in nations run by oppressive regimes is that we can bring to those countries some of our core beliefs, including respect for universal freedoms that hopefully can be nurtured there.

But if Yahoo and other American Internet companies end up being complicit in undermining the fundamental rights of its customers in China, then they shouldn't be doing business there.