Yahoo accused of lying to Congress

A Yahoo Inc. executive has been accused of giving false testimony to Congress last year regarding the company’s role in the arrest of a Chinese journalist, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. A House committee wants Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan to clarify at a Nov. 6 hearing the testimony Callahan gave Congress in February 2006. “Our committee has established that Yahoo provided false information to Congress in early 2006,” Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “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.” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., while not naming Callahan directly, said in a statement that a Yahoo executive, “in sworn testimony … testified that the company knew nothing ‘about the nature of the investigation’ into Shi Tao, a pro-democracy activist who is now serving 10 years on trumped-up charges. “We have now learned there is much more to the story than Yahoo let on, and a Chinese government document that Yahoo had in their possession at the time of the hearing left little doubt of the government’s intentions.”

Shi was arrested at his home after posting material about a government crackdown on media and democracy activists on an overseas Web site. Police in Beijing found him, Lantos’ committee said, after Chinese authorities asked Yahoo to provide information about his e-mail account, including his IP address, log-on history and the contents of his e-mail over several weeks. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2005.