Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media

Yahoo's management and board are trying to look like local heroes in their rejection of Microsoft's acquisition offer. Empty, face saving gestures, IMHO designed to distract from their despicable actions in China.

The recent death of Tom Lantos, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, removed one of Yahoo's fiercest critics. Here is a reminder from an SF Chronicle news story November 7, 2007.

“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, said at the end of the three-hour hearing.
. . .
The hearing began with Yang, who immigrated from Taiwan at age 10, entering the hearing room and bowing and apologizing to the mother of journalist Shi Tao and the wife of Internet writer Wang Xiaoning. They received 10-year sentences after being identified with the help of information from Yahoo.

The act wasn’t enough for Lantos. He called on Yang and Yahoo chief counsel Michael Callahan to turn and face the dissidents’ families, seated in the front row, and plead for forgiveness.

“I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars thanks to Yahoo’s actions,” Lantos said. Shi’s mother, Gao Qin Shen, had tears in her eyes as the two executives complied.

All that police snitching was done to build shareholder value. Take a look at this extract from Jerry Yang's letter to shareholders explaining why MSFT's bid undervalues Yahoo.

We have the added value of our substantial, unconsolidated investments in Japan and China. We have substantial positions in Yahoo! Japan, the leader in its market, and Alibaba, which is strongly positioned in China, a market with enormous growth potential.

More here...

Yahoo! heroes instead of zeroes in stand against MSFT but not against Chinese repression

Would you work for a large Silicon Valley company whose top management was recently called "moral "pygmies" by a top California lawmaker because of its role in snitching on Chinese political dissidents?

Would you work for a Silicon Valley company that has been called a "police informant" by Reporters Without Borders because it handed over information to Chinese authorities that led to ten year prison sentences for two people--for the crime of distributing a censor's order not to write about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Protests?

You wouldn't especially since you now have a choice. We currently have very robust jobs market in SIlicon Valley where competition is fierce. A good salary is one thing but it is not enough, people care about where they work.

Yahoo has engaged in despicable acts in China and defended its actions as being right. But I bet it didn't calculate the costs of losing the respect of its own staff.

If you work for Yahoo I can guarantee that you are not holding your head high as you walk down the street. Yahoo is already experiencing a tremendous talent outflow and it is only going to increase because it did not do the right thing in China.

Take a look at my recent post on ZDNet:

Just in case you missed it, last week Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and its chief lawyer Michael Callahan were called to Washington DC to explain to lawmakers why Yahoo! helped the Chinese government arrest and then sentence for ten years two political dissidents.

Extracts from Zachary Coile's excellent news story for the San Francisco Chronicle:

"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, said at the end of the three-hour hearing.

. . .

The hearing began with Yang, who immigrated from Taiwan at age 10, entering the hearing room and bowing and apologizing to the mother of journalist Shi Tao and the wife of Internet writer Wang Xiaoning. They received 10-year sentences after being identified with the help of information from Yahoo.

The act wasn't enough for Lantos. He called on Yang and Yahoo chief counsel Michael Callahan to turn and face the dissidents' families, seated in the front row, and plead for forgiveness. "I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars thanks to Yahoo's actions," Lantos said. Shi's mother, Gao Qin Shen, had tears in her eyes as the two executives complied.

[Where is the YouTube clip?]

Launder Chinese data

Yahoo could have easily laundered its data of any identifiable information. I've suggested this solution: Yahoo could use a third-party located in an offshore financial center, since these have strong data privacy laws, to strip its data of any personably identifiable markers and then return aggregate behavioral data--which is much more useful data anyway. If the Chinese government orders it to reveal its data, Yahoo can comply without breaking any laws or harming its users.

Risky behavior

Yahoo and its amoral behavior in regards to its actions in China is going to be hugely expensive to the company and its shareholders, imho. Because those actions risk its key asset - its people.

Why would you stay at Yahoo when there is tremendous competition for your skills in Silicon Valley right now? You could walk across the street to any company, sit down at a desk and you've got a new job.

The Yahoo effect on limiting population growth

There are also other factors to consider as a Yahoo employee, your ability to create children, or even find a partner to practice with.

There are a lot of single people at Yahoo and likely to remain so. Software engineers in particular, are already challenged in continuing their genetic lines, it certainly won't be any easier now.

You walk into a party and inevitably that question comes up. Yes, you could fudge and say that you work for Google, [however, the do-no-evil giant is lucky it hasn't been caught (yet) in a similar snitching situation] and anyway, lying is not a good way to start any meaningful relationship.

Yahoo seems oblivious to a fundamental fact about Silicon Valley's workforce today: People do care about the moral behavior of companies and they discriminate against them by choosing not to work for them.

- - -

Please see:

Yahoo moves for dismissal of dissidents' case
By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Yahoo wants a federal court to dismiss Chinese dissident Shi Tao's complaint against the company for allegedly facilitating his arrest by Chinese authorities. Yahoo Monday filed a 51-page motion to dismiss, claiming that Shi's problem...

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Chinese Dissident's Wife to Sue Yahoo

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

The wife of Chinese dissident has come to the US to sue Yahoo for turning over her husband's emails to Chinese authorities. He was sentenced in 2003 to 10 years in prison for publishing "subversive" articles on the Internet,...

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Dissidents within YHOO and GOOG will make ethical companies

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

BusinessWeek recently published a news story on Reporters without Borders and its protest against Internet censorship in many countries: BusinessWeek: Nations that Censor the Net Some 17,000 attendees of the protest voted for the nation they believed is most...

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Yahoo and Google and China - it's time to Do Some Good

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

One of the most powerful images of the 20th Century is "Tank Man" the man that walked out in front of a column of tanks -- a day after the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989....

Technorati Tags: Yahoo China

Further signs that China will continue censoring the Internet in China: President Hu Jintao was reported as saying that "unhealthy" content should be purged from the net and replaced with Communist doctrine, the BBC reports.

The comment came at the Communist Party Politburo, which pledged to impose firmer propaganda controls on the net. In January Hu said officials must nurture a healthy online culture.

"Development and administration of internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, and adhere to correct propaganda guidance," the Politburo meeting resolved, reported China Central Television (CCTV).

The latest rumblings come during a crackdown trend, in which directives ordered the "purifying" of TV and demands that stations reserve prime-time slots for "ethically inspiring TV dramas." The BBC says the steps are all part of a clean-up before the Party's 17th Congress, at which ""major leadership changes" are expected, the South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.

Yahoo has come under considerable criticism from shareholders and politicians for turning over data on its users to foreign governments. In China, the information has been used to imprison a journalist for ten years.

To help it figure out appropriate behavior, Yahoo today announced a $1m gift to Georgetown University to establish a Yahoo! International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet Fellowship Fund.

"This commitment is another step in our efforts to be actively engaged on issues that arise at the intersection of human rights and the Internet," said Jerry Yang, Yahoo! co-founder.

The fund will support the education and research activities of an annual Yahoo! Fellow in Residence and two Junior Yahoo! Fellows who will study the link between international values and Internet and communication technologies.

Yahoo! is currently participating in a multi-stakeholder dialogue that includes industry representatives, human rights groups, leading academics, and socially responsible investors.  This diverse group has made a formal and public commitment to creating a set of global principles and operating procedures on freedom of expression and privacy to guide company behavior when faced with laws, regulations and policies that interfere with human rights.

Why doesn't Yahoo know that it is not right to collect data on its users in countries where political speech can be treated as a crime? Why does it take "eight years" of research at Georgetown University to figure it out? It'll be 2015:

Georgetown’s first Yahoo! Fellow in Residence and Junior Yahoo! Fellows are expected to begin their research on campus during the fall 2007 semester. They will study how international values impact the development and use of new communication technologies such as how the operation and regulation of the global internet affects personal privacy, freedom of expression, education, socio-cultural change and cross-national contacts among civil society groups. The fund, which will support annual Yahoo! Fellows housed at the School of Foreign Service’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) over the next eight years, builds upon the School’s mission to foster academic-practitioner collaborations around key foreign policy issues.

...

GOOG fighting pension funds' anti-censorship proposal

New York pension funds are calling on Google and Yahoo to resist censorship and to stop hosting customer data in certain host countries. Rebecca MacKinnon points to the proposal in Google's notice of annual meeting and proxy statement for their...

Hong Kong Lawmaker Continues Attack on Yahoo over Journalist Jailing in China

Hong Kong's privacy commissioner said there wasn't enough evidence to show that Yahoo's Hong Kong office revealed private information to Chinese authorities that jailed Chinese reporter Shi Tao for ten years.  Hong Kong lawmaker Albert Ho criticized the report and said Chinese...

Chinese Dissident's Wife to Sue Yahoo

The wife of Chinese dissident has come to the US to sue Yahoo for turning over her husband's emails to Chinese authorities. He was sentenced in 2003 to 10 years in prison for publishing "subversive" articles on the Internet,...

US Tech Firms Lame Excuse on China Business

U.S. Tech Companies Urge Washington to Confront China on Internet Censorship WASHINGTON (AP) -- American technology giants urged the U.S. government Tuesday to do more to confront China and other countries about Internet censorship. Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and...

New York pension funds are calling on Google and Yahoo to resist censorship and to stop hosting customer data in certain host countries. Rebecca MacKinnon points to the proposal in Google's notice of annual meeting and proxy statement for their 2007 sharedholder meeting, May 10 at the Googleplex.

The funds are making a similar proposal for Yahoo's meeting in June. (YHOO hasn't filed its 14A for that meeting yet.)

Google's board of directors is recommending that shareholders vote against this resolution at Google's May 10th shareholder meeting. They give no explanation why.

Here's the text of the proposal:

Whereas, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights, and free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”, and

Whereas, the rapid provision of full and uncensored information through the Internet has become a major industry in the United States, and one of its major exports, and

Whereas, political censorship of the Internet degrades the quality of that service and ultimately threatens the integrity and viability of the industry itself, both in the United States and abroad, and

Whereas, some authoritarian foreign governments such as the Governments of Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens attempt to obtain, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States such as Google, that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States have failed to develop adequate standards by which they can conduct business with authoritarian governments while protecting human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression,

Therefore, be it resolved, that shareholders request that management institute policies to help protect freedom of access to the Internet which would include the following minimum standards:

1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.

2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.

3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures.

4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.

5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.

6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

Hong Kong's privacy commissioner said there wasn't enough evidence to show that Yahoo's Hong Kong office revealed private information to Chinese authorities that jailed Chinese reporter Shi Tao for ten years.  Hong Kong lawmaker Albert Ho criticized the report and said Chinese court documents specifically cited Yahoo's Hong King office.

From AP story:

On Wednesday, Ho criticized the privacy commissioner's report, saying Yahoo! Hong Kong is still responsible because it controls the company's China office.

``I have reason to believe the decision (to give information on Shi) was made in Hong Kong,'' Ho said.

He said Yahoo! shouldn't have surrendered the information to Chinese authorities unquestioningly.

``As an international company, Yahoo should know there are international standards it should follow, including those involving human rights and privacy. There's no reason for it not to investigate whether (the information Shi released) was a state secret,'' Ho said.

Human Rights Watch said earlier Yahoo also supplied information to Chinese authorities that led to the arrests of another journalist and two other Chinese dissidents besides Shi.

Link to MercuryNews.com | 03/14/2007 | Official: Yahoo didn't violate Hong Kong privacy laws in case of jailed Chinese journalist

Yahoo and any other US based Internet companies should not collect identifiable data on users in countries which jail dissidents for actions protected in the US.

It is the ethical and right thing to do.

Please see SVW:

Chinese Dissident's Wife to Sue Yahoo

The wife of Chinese dissident has come to the US to sue Yahoo for turning over her husband's emails to Chinese authorities. He was sentenced in 2003 to 10 years in prison for publishing "subversive" articles on the Internet.

A View from Within on US Companies and China

[This is from the comments section on my entry "Dissidents within YHOO and GOOG will make ethical companies." I'm publishing it as an entry to give it wider distribution. -Tom Foremski]  By David Scott Lewis This is a tricky issue, Tom...

Dissidents within YHOO and GOOG will make ethical companies

BusinessWeek recently published a news story on Reporters without Borders and its protest against Internet censorship in many countries: BusinessWeek: Nations that Censor the Net Some 17,000 attendees of the protest voted for the nation they believed is most...

Yahoo and Google and China - it's time to Do Some Good

One of the most powerful images of the 20th Century is "Tank Man" the man that walked out in front of a column of tanks -- a day after the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989....

Using off-shore companies to launder Internet data?

In thinking about Google handing over identifiable information about users of its Orkut service to Brazilian authorities, and disclosures by Yahoo in China, couldn't such things be avoided fairly easily? For example, Enron set... [Edit]

U.S. Tech Companies Urge Washington to Confront China on Internet Censorship

WASHINGTON (AP) -- American technology giants urged the U.S. government Tuesday to do more to confront China and other countries about Internet censorship.

Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. also defended themselves against accusations that they have helped governments such as China's crush dissent in return for access to booming Internet markets.

Andrew McLaughlin, senior counsel for Google, told a State Department-sponsored conference on Internet freedom that his company is trying to use its presence in countries that are restrictive to provide communication options, such as e-mail and blogs, for people who may not have other ways to talk to each other freely. 

Give me a break. What a flimsy excuse for GOOG's China business.

What's so noble about providing email and blogs in China? There are plenty of providers of such services.

And communicating freely in China is not to be encouraged because these US companies will turn you over to the Chinese authorities in a Silicon Valley nanosecond, if asked.

They want the US government to take on China on Internet censorship. Usually tech companies want to keep the government out of anything to do with anything. It's easier to pass the buck than act in an ethical manner.

Do No Evil? How about Do Some Good. I know that some of the the employees of YHOO, GOOG and MSFT feel that way, and maybe the rest too. How about the management?

The Chinese government wants to get their hands on military technology being developed in Silicon Valley and apparently the Valley is full of spies to help with those aims.

Tom Abate and John Cote write in today's Chronicle that federal prosecutors indicted one Xiangdong Sheldon Meng for stealing night vision training software from defense contractor Quantum3D for sale to Malaysia, Thailand and China.

"The alleged economic espionage and theft and export of trade secrets such as these -- visual simulation training software that has military application, no less -- has real consequences that could jeopardize our country's military advantages in the world," he said in the statement.

He added in an interview: "We own the night. And there are people who want to take it from us."

Meanwhile US citizen Fei Ye and permanent resident Ming Zhong pled guilty in federal court to stealing civilian chip technology from Transmeta and Sun. They intended to use the designs to start a chipmaking firm with financial backing from the Chinese city of Hang- zhou and the provincial government of Zhejiang. These are the first convictions under the Economic Espionage Act.

The 36-count criminal indictment against Meng alleges that he stole night-vision training software and other simulation tools from Quantum3D, a San Jose defense contractor for whom he worked between 2000 and 2003. The indictment alleges violations of several federal statutes, including the Economic Espionage Act and the Arms Export Control Act -- charges that could lead to hefty fines and lengthy jail terms.

Prosecutions under the Economic Espionage Act are rare, said author and consultant Steven Fink because federal prosecutors are afraid to antagonize foreign governments. The result, he says, has been open season on Valley trade secrets:

"It's about time," Fink said. "It's been 10 years. And what happened to all the other cases that slipped through their fingers? There is virtually no deterrent against people and foreign governments that want to steal our trade secrets."

It's that time of the year again when Google opens its doors to the media and offers wine and food and relaxed, off the record conversations with its top people.

I love this event because it is so family-like...it is a place full of familiar faces and I can't imagine the holiday season without it.  And I can report that I had some excellent conversations about some topics that are very dear to me: China and the behavior of Yahoo in regards to the jailing of a Chinese journalist; plus the monetisation of Google News. Unfortunately, I cannot report on what Google executives told me.

. . .

I was impressed with Elliot Schrage, chief of GOOG's PR/communications teams. The appointment of  Mr Schrage, about a year ago, was fascinating to me because his background is so different from what would be a typical hire by a large Silicon Valley company.  Here is someone that had been representing companies such as Nike, dealing with serious ethical and moral issues around child labor, and also dealing with foreign governments.

Clearly, his appointment showed that Google was looking into a future where it would need to navigate a landscape of similar ethical and moral challenges, and it would need experience in foreign government diplomacy.

I was glad to hear that the China issue is well recognized within Google and that the company is trying to understand how best  it can behave in an ethical way.

I would say that Google has a fabulous  opportunity to create a significant competitive advantage for itself because of the China issue. It can boost its ability to recruit the best and the brightest people. And people are the company, they create the value and the innovation.

Yahoo faces a significant disadvantage in its ability to compete against Google in attracting top talent because of management's disgraceful behavior in China. Who would want to work for a company that Reporters without Borders called a "police informant" for the Chinese government? If Yahoo fails to create an ethical position on this issue, the brain drain out of the company will accelerate.

. . .

I also met the very impressive Susan Wojcicki, VP of product management. She is in charge of monetising Google's products. I asked her to monetise Google News because that action would assign some value to a product that is currently free, but not produced for free.

By trying to monetise Google News GOOG would then be able to share revenues with the news producers--who are all hurting tremendously. San Jose Mercury, for example, this morning announced yet another round of layoffs. Google has the scale to help create badly needed revenue streams for news organizations.

Google News has a very large audience and some of that audience clicks through to the original site. However, driving traffic to a news site doesn't help much because news sites are terrible at monetising their online operations. Many news sites run Google Adsense ads and those pay very little per click, nowhere enough to support the costs of producing news.

How will news organizations survive when their advertising base is rushing into search engine marketing? The simple truth is that selling products or services next to a search engine box is far more effective than next to a news story.

Yet news is what gets people to return to the Internet. We desperately need a value recovery mechanism that rewards high quality news production. We don't have it yet but a company like Google has the brain power and the scale to create one, IMHO.

. . .

There were many familiar faces on the media side and also on the Google side. It was a pleasure running into my former boss at the Financial Times, Richard Waters.

David Krane, one of GOOG's senior comms guy has had another delivery from the crane, a second child. I'm impressed that David took a bunch of time off to bond with his child and that he recognized how such events impact women so much more than is sometimes recognized.

It was also good to connect again with Brian O'Shaughnessy, now heading comms for the entire product group at Google, recently recruited from running the show at Verisign.

Also good to see, John Furrier, co-founder of fast growing media company PodTech, who was wandering around packing various recording devices... Steve Gillmor, famed blogger, told me that he no longer has his Gillmor Gang podcast, but is working on a secret project...His brother, Dan Gillmor was there, I haven't seen him in a while, Dan said he has another book project.

. . .

Related info: 

Despicable behavior by Yahoo management - Shi Tao gets ten years

From the London-based The Independent: CHINA Published state secrets Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison after "illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities." His crime was to have emailed details...

Posted in Silicon Valley Watcher on October 30, 2006 03:06 AM

Yahoo and Google and China - it's time to Do Some Good

One of the most powerful images of the 20th Century is "Tank Man" the man that walked out in front of a column of tanks -- a day after the bloody suppression of...

Posted in Silicon Valley Watcher on November 6, 2006 04:05 AM

Congress's dilemma: When Yahoo in China's not Yahoo | csmonitor.com

A House panel will look into tech firms that cooperate with China to restrict access and reveal identities.
www.csmonitor.com/2006/0214/p01s04-usfp.html - 44k - Dec 4, 2006 -

Silicon Valley Watcher

It has taken about ten months, but Google has finally hired a PR boss, Elliot Schrage--as the new VP of global communications and public affairs. ...
www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/11/google_hires_sq.php - 55k -

[This is from the comments section on my entry "Dissidents within YHOO and GOOG will make ethical companies." I'm publishing it as an entry to give it wider distribution. -Tom Foremski] 

By David Scott Lewis

This is a tricky issue, Tom -- as are many issues pertaining to China. As a Silicon Valley expat living in China and working in their R&D/IT sectors, I often wonder what response firms like Google and Yahoo (and Microsoft, for that matter) should have.

Among expats, we just kind of accept things the way they are. Kind of like rules we don't like, but those are the rules, so we have to play by them.

Semel's remark about Nazi Germany, however, is scary. If he really said, it should be grounds for his termination. But we can't put today's China on the same footing as Nazi Germany.

Yes, Beijing often feels like "Berlin, 1936", but the rest of China generally isn't this way, certainly not in SH. And most Chinese don't really care about this stuff: They're happy that their living conditions are improving each year (I'm speaking of urban Chinese). See my http://doiop.com/wang article which was one of the most widely read AO columns last year.

Personally, I'd like to see Google, Yahoo and Microsoft take the moral and ethical high ground (of course, I'd like to see the White House and new Congress do this, too). But then what about IBM? And Motorola? Where does it stop?

Do ALL American firms play hardball with China? Maybe. It would be fun to watch. (I'd be looking for a job, but it would still be fun to watch!)

Most of us expats get frustrated, but we learn to adapt to the rules. Also, there's a sense that the restraints and constraints might be "temporary," i.e., lasting for no more than a few years. Hard to say. Neo-Fascism/ultra-Nationalism is easy to whip up here (hence, the "Berlin, 1936" analogy). So it's a tightrope that American firms have to walk.

But, back to Semel, if he really said what ValleyWag said he said, then he should be terminated. Even giving this a second thought borders on hideous evil.

My advice as someone living in China: Develop scenarios for how to play the China card. Take into account that China may well indeed become a hostile enemy of the United States. (Not likely, but possible.)

Don't be reactive to what happens in China, be proactive. And figure out if the China market is really worth all the effort. For some, it is. For most, it may not be. As a development center, sure (but that's my bias; that's what we offer).

Keep core IP in the States. Be prepared for completely asinine responses from various levels of government and potential China-based competitors. (Our notions of Western logic do not prevail here. China never went through an "Enlightenment" period.) China is the Wild West where anything (and everything) does happen.

David Scott Lewis can be contacted : goldentriangle+svw (at) gmail.com

BusinessWeek recently published a news story on Reporters without Borders and its protest against Internet censorship in many countries:

BusinessWeek: Nations that Censor the Net

Some 17,000 attendees of the protest voted for the nation they believed is most in need of greater Internet freedom, and China came in second, with 4,100 votes. Myanmar, under the militaristic regime of the Junta party, was believed by 4,500 participants to present its citizens with the greatest threat to freedom of press on the Internet. The remaining nations, in descending order of votes received, were Belarus, Iran, Tunisia, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, North Korea, Syria, and Uzbekistan. . .

. . . China is described by Reporters Without Borders as a pioneer of Internet censorship, dedicating more resources than any other country to restrict online freedoms.

There should have been a companion piece on US and other companies that enable censorship and oppression of dissidents. Such as Yahoo for example.

What will happen is that Yahoo' s and Google's own dissidents will help to lead those  companies onto an ethical and moral pathway.

 Recently, Terry Semel, Yahoo's CEO was booed at an internal gathering. Semel reacted by telling the Boo-ers to go work somewhere else!

Semel is the one that will be working somewhere else. Wall Street should look for a change of leadership if leadership is not exercised by the executive suite of Yahoo. And the times will demand a leadership that is in tune with our times, and invokes an ethical and moral YHOO  leadership (GOOG too).

Here is ValleyWag on Mr Semel and Nazi Germany and tell me if I'm wrong:

One attendee asked Mr. Semel if Yahoo would have cooperated with Nazi Germany the same way it has with China. His response: "Yahoo has a basic obligation not to have a point of view on basic content, and to present content ... and aggregate things and to allow people to make their own choices. I don't know how I would have felt then."

One of the most powerful images of the 20th Century is "Tank Man" the man that walked out in front of a column of tanks -- a day after the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

He walked into the middle of a pedestrian crossing, with two shopping bags in his hands, and stood down a tank column--stopped them dead in their tracks.

The tanks tried to move around him but he blocked them again and again. He clambered on top of the lead tank and spoke with the crew.

PBS Frontline produced an excellent feature on Tank man earlier this year, I urge you to watch it. Nobody knows what happened to him, some say he was whisked away into the crowd.

But maybe Yahoo can help the Chinese government find him, he might be using Yahoo mail - you never know: TankMan1301@yahoo.china.com

Yahoo's executive management doesn't need to step out in front of a column of tanks to protest injustice in China, or anywhere else in the world, their rights are protected here. So why help the Chinese government track down and jail Chinese blogger Shi Tao for trying to exercise very mild political dissent? A ten year jail sentence.

Yahoo can do the right thing, right now. It can launder the personal data it collects - especially if it is being collected in countries where there is a high likelihood that the personal data could cause serious harm to a Yahoo user if government agencies or their proxies, were to have access to that data.

Yahoo: Launder your data of all personal details through third parties if you have to-- it's as simple as that. And that goes for Google too. Forget about "Do no Evil" how about "Do some good."

There's not much cachet in working for a "police informant" as Reporters without Borders dubbed Yahoo's actions in China.

 A lot of people have personally expressed to me their disgust at Yahoo's involvement in acting as what Reporters Without Borders has called a "police informant" in the case of blogger Shi Tao.

David Smith, a reporter for The Guardian in the UK, writes about China:

The communist state stands accused of censoring search engines and persecuting bloggers such as Shi Tao, who was jailed for 10 years after using his Yahoo! account to email a US-based website about the government's attempt to control media coverage of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

I tried to give China the right to reply by approaching Hu Qiheng, chairwoman of the Internet Society of China, for a full and frank interview in this Sunday's Observer.

Can we discuss openness? 'I don't want to talk about that,' she said. 'It's outside our remit.'

And with that she turned heel and fled into the crowd.

Later, I'm told, she said in a workshop discussion that all governments need ethical starting points from which to regulate the net. Asked why the UN's declaration of human rights, including the right to freedom of speech, would not do, she simply smiled and nodded and said she'd prefer to hear everybody else's views.

Link to Great Wall of Silence from Guardian Unlimited: Technology

I'm not going to let this issue drop. SVW is going to be watching Silicon Valley and other US companies, and their involvement in China very closely. Watch this space.

"Things are getting bad... and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there." That's Microsoft policy counsel Fred Tipson at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens, the BBC reports.

We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it's unacceptable to do business there. We try to define those levels and the trends are not good there at the moment. It's a moving target.

Earlier, Tipson had joined Cisco's Art Reilly in defending corporate engagement in China, saying that companies have to abide by local rules. He also offered the usual platitudes about providing access being the path to economic growth and thus individual freedoms.

"The economic value in the internet is driving growth and development in educational opportunities [in China]. Openness is often too segmented too narrowly into a discussion around freedom of speech."

Mr Tipson said it was "critical not to portray the internet as a threat to governments. The internet is transforming the political culture of China. There is no question about it."

From the London-based The Independent:

CHINA

Published state secrets

Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison after "illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities."

His crime was to have emailed details of the Chinese government's plans to handle news coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2004. Yahoo! provided crucial information in the case, linking the message and email account with Shi 's computer. Reporters Without Borders accused Yahoo! of acting as a "police informant."

This kind of behavior will not fly. Yahoo management made a serious error in judgement and so has that of Google, which also hands over such information to Chinese and other government authorities. Both companies could "launder" their data before they receive it, and thus have nothing to turn over.

Both companies always assure us that any data collected is not identifiable and that they are only interested in aggregated behavioral data. It's time to prove it.

The revolt will come from within Yahoo's and Google's own ranks. How does it feel to work for a "police informant" for the Chinese government?

The revolt from the rank and file is already happening. Watch this space for more details.

And how long before users of Yahoo or Google services switch to more ethical service providers? On the Internet, other services are just a click away...

Social causes are becoming extremely important in recruiting and retaining people. As competition for key staff rises, the determining factor will not be money or stock options, it will be ethics.

What use is money and stock options if you work for a company that does not act in a socially responsible way? Yahoo and Google can have their cake and eat it. They can comply with police authorities in other countries and make sure that they do not enable repression, oppression, or supression of political dissent.

They have the technology and the means to collect user data without identifiable data. It's as simple as that.