Stated Secrets
by digby
They were just cooperating with the government:
Yahoo aided the Chinese government in the arrest of a journalist, then its general counsel deliberately or negligently mislead the U.S. Congress about the company's role during 2006 testimony, a senior lawmaker charged Tuesday.
Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, also lectured Yahoo and General Counsel Michael Callahan for failing to notify the committee when the company discovered his February 2006 testimony about Yahoo's role in the arrest of journalist Shi Tao. And he questioned why a company with Yahoo's resources has not come to the aid of Shi's family.
Yahoo has had no direct contact with Shi's family, but it has been working to get him released from a 10-year prison sentence, Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang told the committee.
But Lantos, one of several lawmakers who criticized Yahoo at Tuesday's hearing, suggested that wasn't good enough. "Why is it such a complicated issue to help a family whose breadwinner is in prison because of Yahoo's cooperation?" he said.
Yahoo "could do better" to help the family, Yang answered.
"You couldn't do less," Lantos shot back.
Callahan, in February 2006, testified that he did not know the nature of the investigation when Chinese authorities demanded Yahoo China turn over the IP (Internet Protocol) address for a person who turned out to be Shi. Callahan later learned that several employees of Yahoo China knew at the time that the demand for the information was part of an investigation involving "state secrets."
That's awful isn't it? Thank goodness we don't live in a country that asks corporations to do things like that and thank goodness corporations have enough respect for and knowledge of the rule of law that they would never allow themselves to be used by the US governmen tlike that.
Oh wait:
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 15 -- Lawyers for the Bush administration encountered a federal appeals court Wednesday that appeared deeply skeptical of a blanket claim that the government's surveillance efforts cannot be challenged in court because the litigation might reveal state secrets.
"The bottom line here is the government declares something is a state secret, that's the end of it. No cases. . . . The king can do no wrong," said Judge Harry Pregerson, one of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit who grilled administration lawyers at length over whether a pair of lawsuits against the government should go forward.
That's what the FISA telcom immunity is all about. The Telcoms broke the law at the behest of the administration and are now being sued. They believe the government should protect them against lawsuits by their customers should they ever find out they helped the government spy on them without a warrant. The government has tried valiantly to use this "state secrets" excuse to do that, but as you can see the courts are not necessarily impressed by their assertion. Seeing as it's pretty much the same thing that a King --- or a communist dictator --- would do, it's not surprising that some courts in the United States of America might just find it a little bit well ... unseemly to see their president behaving as if he is just that.
It's almost numbing to see how much this administration assumed tyrannical powers because some religious fanatics turned some airplanes into missiles and killed 3,000 people. It was a very bad day, but I cannot believe that most Americans thought they had been turned from citizens into subjects when it happened.
Christy at FDL has the latest from the whistleblower who blew the lid off this story here, and asks some pointed questions about what these high priced corporate lawyers knew and what the government promised them. I've been wondering the same thing.
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