Yahoo! Cited in Court Decision as Providing Evidence in Shi Tao State Secrets Trial

October 4, 2005

On April 27, 2005, a Chinese court sentenced newspaper editor Shi Tao to 10 years imprisonment for disclosing state secrets for e-mailing notes of an editorial meeting to an organization in New York City. On September 6 Reporters Without Borders noted that the court's decision cited "customer information provided by the Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited" to verify that the e-mail originated from Shi Tao's place of work. Specifically, the decision cited the following:

On April 27, 2005, a Chinese court sentenced newspaper editor Shi Tao to 10 years imprisonment for disclosing state secrets for e-mailing notes of an editorial meeting to an organization in New York City. On September 6 Reporters Without Borders noted that the court's decision cited "customer information provided by the Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited" to verify that the e-mail originated from Shi Tao's place of work. Specifically, the decision cited the following:

Materials proving customer information provided by the Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited, verifying that the corresponding customer information for IP address: 218.76.8.201, time: April 20, 2004 11:32.17 p.m. is the following: customer telephone number: 0731-4376362, Hunan "Contemporary Business News" Publishing House. Address: Second Floor, Building 88, Jian Xiang New Village, Kaifu District, Changsha Municipality.

The Washington Post quoted Yahoo's co-founder, Jerry Yang, as responding to a question at a forum in Hangzhou on September 10 regarding Yahoo's involvement in the case by saying: "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law. We don't know what they want that information for, we're not told what they look for. If they give us the proper documentation and court orders, we give them things that satisfy both our privacy policy and the local rules." He also reportedly told the forum that the demand for the information was a "legal order," and said that he "would not put our company or its employees at risk in any way shape of [sic] form." Journalist groups and scholars have noted that the nature of the "legal order" to Yahoo! remains unclear, as well as the method by which Yahoo! determines the legality of such orders.