The US House Foreign Affairs Committee has summoned top Yahoo officials after the committee established “probable proof” that the company provided false information to Congress in 2006 about its role in the arrest of a Chinese journalist.

Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on foreign affairs, said that “Our committee has established that Yahoo provided false information to Congress in early 2006. We want to clarify how that happened, and to hold the company to account for its actions both before and after its testimony proved untrue. And we want to examine what steps the company has taken since then to protect the privacy rights of its users in China.”

Lantos specifically asked for Michael Callahan, senior vice president and general counsel for Yahoo, who testified before Congress in 2006, and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang to appear at the Congressional hearing Nov 6 and explain why the company gave “false information.”

During the previous testimony, Callahan claimed that Yahoo “knew nothing” about the nature of the investigations into Shi Tao’s case when in fact the company provided information such as e-mail details and an IP address to Chinese authorities, which led to Tao’s arrest.

However, Yahoo’s “I know nothing” line was later challenged by Dui Hua, a human rights group.

Dui Hua managed to publish a translated version of the document that the Chinese government sent to Yahoo, which reveals the fact that Yahoo knew the charges against Shi Tao at the time it rendered assistance in capturing him.

Shi Tao, accused of providing sensitive information about the government crackdown operation against the media on an overseas Web site, Democracy Forum, was arrested in 2004 and received a jail sentence of ten years.

Yahoo has yet to come out and make its position clear about this latest accusation.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 11:58 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.
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