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Amnesty slams IT giants for Chinese 'hypocrisy'

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Amnesty,
China

Declan McCullagh CNET News

Published: 20 Jul 2006 17:40 BST

Amnesty International upped its already-harsh criticism of Internet companies on Wednesday by accusing Google, Microsoft and Yahoo of violating their own principles in China.

In a report titled "Undermining Freedom of Expression in China", the human-rights group says that the three Internet companies often talk about offering people new ways to access information. But in practice the companies have bowed to censorship demands from China's ruling Communist Party, the report says.

"This puts a lot of things together," said Jason Disterhoft, an Amnesty International spokesman, on the report. "It makes the hypocrisy explicit."

Yahoo, for instance, said in a February 2006 press release: "We are committed to providing individuals with easy access to information and opportunities to openly communicate and exchange views and opinions." But its Yahoo.cn operation has co-operated with Chinese authorities and filters its Chinese search results.

The Amnesty International report (click for PDF) includes no new information about the companies' co-operation with the Chinese Government, which has been the subject of criticism from civil liberties groups and members of Congress.

In an email to ZDNet UK's sister site, CNET News.com, Google responded to the report, saying it "respects the fact that people and organisations, including Amnesty, oppose our decision to launch a search service in China. Google believes that Google.cn will provide significant benefits to Chinese Internet users and that our engagement in China meaningfully expands access to information."

Earlier this year Google launched a filtered Google.cn search engine that does not display certain Web sites disliked by Chinese officials. (Google does inform users of the delistings.)

Yahoo, however, was singled out for particular criticism in the report. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders revealed in September 2005 that information provided by Yahoo was used to convict Shi Tao, a 37-year-old journalist, of leaking "state secrets". Then, in February, the group reported that Yahoo also turned over information that led to the arrest of Li Zhi, a 35-year-old former civil servant from the south-western province of Dazhou. He was convicted and sentenced to an eight-year prison sentence in 2003.

In response to the new report, Yahoo said in a statement that it has been working with human-rights organisations and government officials to craft better industry policies in nations such as China.

"We continue to employ rigorous procedural protections under applicable laws in response to government requests for information, maintaining our commitment to user privacy and compliance with the law," the statement said. "And we will actively engage in ongoing policy dialogue with governments with respect to the nature of the Internet and the free flow of information."

On Wednesday Microsoft said it would be unable to comment.

Amnesty International hopes the timing of its report will provide additional momentum to a bill that a US House of Representatives subcommittee approved last month. Titled the Global Online Freedom Act, it would slap restrictions on companies that do business with "Internet-restricting countries" and create a new federal bureaucracy to deal with the issue.

"The US Government has to get serious," said Mila Rosenthal, director of Amnesty International's business and human-rights programme. "We haven't seen a lot of action in that department."