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Yahoo is getting into even deeper trouble over the jailed Chinese pro-democracy journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to ten years in prison after Yahoo data helped identify and convict him.
The case of Shi Tao has raised enormous concern among press freedom activists and political campaigners, who say Shi Tao could not have been convicted without the information that Yahoo passed to the authorities.
This is just one example of massive corporations being desperate to break the lucrative Chinese market - it is generally regarded as the second biggest internet market in the world or, if you ask the Chinese, the first biggest.
Yahoo's response so far has been simply that is has to abide by the laws of the countries in which it operates, but now executive vice president Michael Callahan has apologised to a government foreign affairs house committee after admitting that he "provided incorrect information" to a previous meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Callahan had told them he didn't know why the authorities wanted the information, but has since admitted that the correspondence did refer to state secrets.
"I neglected to directly alert the committee of this new information and that oversight led to a misunderstanding that I deeply regret and have apologised to the Committee for creating," said Callahan in a statement, adding the problem had come form a bad translation.
Another hearing next week will examine why Yahoo officials did not admit what had happened, and meanwhile Yahoo is being sued by the World Organisation of Human Rights on behalf of Shi Tao's wife and the wife of another pro-democracy campaigner Wang Xiaoning.
Source: Wall Street Journal
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