Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Last week in the business section of the LA Times there were 2 articles next to each other that caught my eyes. One was about Yahoo going to pay families of two Chinese journalists that were jailed after Yahoo had given their names to the Chinese government. The journalists had used Yahoo services to share material advocating democratic reform. Yahoo caved in to the Chinese government and as a result Jerry Yang received a tongue lashing from a Congressional hearing the week before this article. Yahoo was called moral pygmies by a Congressman. It is difficult to defend Yahoo but Yahoo is not first U.S. company to kowtow to the Chinese government in an attempt to gain market share in China. I am sure that bribery, kick backs and technology transfer by U.S. companies are frequent happenings in China. What happened to the old saying "When in Rome, do what the Romans do"? Sure, China's legal system are not up to standard, but what is Yahoo suppose to do? Risk going to jail themselves and lose the market? Didn't the Chinese journalists think that their e-mails are not so private?

The article next to it was about privacy in America. Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence said in a speech "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that." Well, that's interesting. If you use Google in America and you can't be sure of your anonymity, then why would a journalist in China believe that he is safe by using Yahoo in China? Kerr also said that "Privacy is a system of laws, rules and customs with an infrastructure of inspector general, oversight committees and privacy boards on which our intelligence community committment is based and measured." Wow, so it is basically up to the government to decide what is private for us. The Bush administration is asking that telecom companies should be granted immunity for assisting the government in its warrantless spying program. Mark Klein, a former AT@T technician, said that the program involved domestic communications, not just foreign, and the numbers were enormous--much higher than the government leads us to believe. If this was true, wouldn't these telecom companies be moral pymies as well?

I have always believe that the west someday will meet the east. A country like China, while still authorative, will gradually be more free. The economy is almost totally capitalistic today. It is a more open society than the one I saw 10 years ago. It still has a long way to go but is coming toward us. Our own society on the other hand, is becoming more restrictive. Due to fear, at least some of it unjustified, we are willing to become a less free country. Whether you believe that warrantless spying, secret detention locations, or the torturing of suspects to get information is justified or not, it is obvious that we are moving in the direction of China. I predict that in 25 years there will be little difference in the freedoms of the two countries.