Google, Yahoo Criticized Over Foreign Censorship

In a report on Internet censorship, Reporters Without Borders scolds the tech giants—including Microsoft—for cooperating with repressive governments

By Douglas MacMillan

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Big Internet companies that do business abroad often find themselves in a quandary. While at home they champion privacy and free speech rights, overseas they often have to play by rules that don't reflect those same freedoms.

Paris-based humanitarian group Reporters Without Borders underscored that tension in its annual report on the state of Internet censorship and repression around the world, released Mar. 12. The group pointed a finger at China, which it says engages in the most sophisticated online censorship in the world, and Egypt, which it says routinely jails activist bloggers. Reporters Without Borders also called out numerous other regimes it says engage in unfair treatment of Web users.

But Reporters Without Borders also had a message for the U.S.-based technology companies growing their businesses in these countries: Stop cooperating with these "enemies" of the Internet. "They are aware of what's going on," says Clothilde Le Coz, who heads the Internet freedom desk for Reporters Without Borders, referring to Internet giants Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Microsoft (MSFT). But in many parts of the world, Le Coz says, these companies are "not going far enough" to protect their users from what her group considers repressive governments.

In well-publicized cases over the past few years, each of these three companies has cooperated with Chinese officials to censor or prosecute Internet users. In 2005, Microsoft deleted the blog of political activist Michael Anti. The same year, journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison after China Yahoo! provided his information to authorities (China Yahoo! is operated by Alibaba.com (1688.BE), minority-owned by Yahoo). Google China prevents Web pages from appearing on its search results if they are on the government's blacklist.

"These companies are about communication and information," says Colin Maclay, managing director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The challenge is that those two things represent power, and they represent a threat" to governments used to wielding the power, he says.

Tech Giants Help Launch Standards Body

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are working together to better handle legal and ethical problems raised while operating in countries that have different views of Internet freedom. Last October, they launched the Global Network Initiative (GNI), along with Harvard's Berkman Center, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and other nonprofit groups. GNI drafted guidelines for what procedures to take in the event of requests to take down content or provide user information. As a result, the companies "have something to turn to on what process to take and how to mitigate that risk," says Cynthia Wong, staff attorney for Washington-based CDT.