YAHOO! I'm being tortured!

There was an article in today's Washington Times about a bill that is stalled in Congress. I remember being really angry when it hit the news a year or two ago that Yahoo had given people's online usage data to the Chinese government, and the Chinese government had used the data to lock up and torture people for disagreeing with them. I don't get angry at the news, but that one set me off.

You don't help evil accomplish its ends. Cowardice and greed are inexcusable, especially when it might costs a man his life. If I was a Yahoo employee, this is something I would resign over.

So I haven't done this for several years, but I wrote a letter to my senators. Here's what I sent to Senators Hatch and Bennett (don't worry, I changed the name on Bob Bennett's letter).

---------------------------------

Dear Senator Hatch:

I firmly believe that by nature men have the desire to be noble, brave, and on the side of everything that is right. I also know that life repeatedly requires us to make sacrifices, both great and small, to remain true to noble principles. When those sacrifices are required, men are tested and we see who will choose short-term personal gain and who will choose loyalty to their loftier ideals.

Internet companies such as Google and Yahoo have repeatedly had to face tough decisions that test their ideals. The Chinese government has come to them several times asking for specific internet usage data in connection with dissident individuals such as Shi Tao and Wang Xioaning. The threat behind the Chinese request is that non-compliance could lead to the companies not being allowed to do business in China, which leaves these companies forced to choose between their own profits and pleasing their shareholders or staying true to our closely held ideals of privacy and freedom.

When I was a teenager I was strongly affected by a scene in Herman Wouk's novel Winds of War. The scene involves Americans trying to get out of Europe in the early stages of World War II. They are stopped by German soldiers who want to separate the travelers into Jews and non-Jews and put them on separate trains. The Americans, who are all strangers to each other, stubbornly refuse to be separated and refuse to identify whether any in their group are Jewish, saying if you take any of us to the Jewish train, you have to take all of us. The German soldiers apply pressure and threats in several ways, pressuring specific individuals to get them to speak out, but in the end all the Americans stand together and the Germans have to allow them all to get on the non-Jewish train. The reader knows specific characters are Jewish and if any one of the Americans just pointed the finger and said "She's Jewish" it would have meant a cattle car to the concentration camps.

I remember thinking how tough that choice would be. If I was facing a soldier with a rifle and considering the possibility that I might not make it back to my family in the U.S. would I have the courage to protect a stranger? And the situation did not just require individual nobility. It required group nobility. If any single member of the group had given the reins over to their cowardly or self-serving side, it would have sent someone to the gas chambers. I loved that the scene ended with the entire group acting nobly and courageously. On the other hand, I was ashamed to hear that sixty years later we have abandoned those principles and American corporations are now cooperating with a regime's efforts to oppress its own population. The evidence Yahoo provided to the Chinese government has already led to the incarceration, and probably torture of political prisoners, and may possibly lead to their deaths.

There is a bill in the House of Representatives now to bar internet firms from helping repressive regimes track down cyber-dissidents. It is the Global Online Freedom Act, sponsored by Rep. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey. There was a recent article about the bill in the Washington Times. The article is online at http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/jul/16/quick-vote-on-internet-freedom-sought/

There is no corresponding bill in the Senate yet. I urge you to get involved in whatever efforts are being made in the Senate to draft and pursue corresponding legislation.

I agree with all the voices clamoring that China is our next big threat. The espionage they carry out on our soil and their growing financial and military advances all point toward danger in our future. It is in our best interest for these political dissidents to thrive in the world's last great bastion of communism. Every voice that is silenced now in China may mean thousands of American lives lost in a future conflict. On the other hand, supporting this legislation will cost us nothing in the way of tax dollars or human life. Please do whatever is in your power to lend your influence to seeing a bill through the Senate.