Yahoo Cleared in Chinese Dissident Case

Yahoo Inc.'s Hong Kong subsidiary did not violate the territory's Personal Data Ordinance when it turned over e-mail records that allegedly led to the arrest and detention of journalist Shi Tao in China, the Hong Kong government arm charged with protecting personal data said Wednesday.

Hong Kong's Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD), Roderick B. Woo, said his office found insufficient evidence that Yahoo China, then owned by Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., a subsidiary of Yahoo Inc., passed information regarding Shi's e-mail activities to law enforcement officials in China.

Last April, Hong Kong Legislator Albert Ho filed a complaint with authorities on behalf of Shi and a friend who traveled to the city. They argued that Yahoo Hong Kong had no reason to comply with a Chinese request for information, and requested that the PCPD investigate the matter.

Shi, formerly an editorial department head at the Contemporary Business News in China's Hunan Province, was convicted last year of divulging state secrets by Beijing in part due to an e-mail Yahoo handed over to Chinese authorities which contained a government warning for commissars to be on guard for dissident activity ahead of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He received a 10-year jail sentence.

A censure of Yahoo by the privacy commission would have greatly helped a civil case against the company, but was not necessary for such a suit in Hong Kong. The commission could also have fined Yahoo or warned it to change its business practices if it had been found in the wrong.

Yahoo has argued that it was only following Chinese law when it provided evidence that helped land Shi in jail, but the incident, along with other freedom of expression issues related to U.S. companies, sparked a wave of indignation among U.S. lawmakers. In a meeting last year, representatives from Yahoo, Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. were all lectured by U.S. lawmakers for failing to uphold free expression in China.

Yahoo's China operations are now run by Alibaba.com Corp., which took control of the company in an August 2005 deal with Yahoo.

(Dan Nystedt contributed to this report.)