misdeeds

When you think of Big Tech these days, Yahoo is probably not top of mind. But for Chinese dissident Xu Wanping, the company still looms large—and has for nearly two decades.    In 2005, Xu was arrested for signing online petitions relating to anti-Japanese protests. He didn’t use his real name, but he did use his Yahoo email address. Yahoo China violated its users’ trust—providing information on certain email accounts to Chinese law enforcement, which in turn allowed the government to identify and arrest some users. …

In many ways, the situation Yahoo found itself in 20 years ago is the same one today’s biggest tech giants still deal with when they operate in authoritarian regimes. In July, for instance, a judge in California ruled that a long-running lawsuit against Cisco can move forward and determine the company’s responsibility in building China’s internet surveillance apparatus—work that allegedly led to the arrest, detention, and torture of the plaintiffs and their family members.  At the very least, says William Nee, the…