Reporters Without Borders denounced the “irresponsible” policies of major US Internet firms Yahoo ! and Google which bow directly and indirectly to Chinese government demands for censorship.

Yahoo ! has been censoring its Chinese-language search-engine for several years and Google seems ready to do the same. In their efforts to conquer the Chinese market, the two firms are “making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression”.

“The US government is supposed to be at the cutting-edge of the fight for online freedom, especially since the Global Internet Freedom Act –that aims to combat online censorship imposed by repressive regimes such as China, Burma, Syria, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. –was voted,” Reporters Without Borders noted in letters to two top US officials. “Yet it places no restrictions on private-sector activity even when firms work with some of the world’s most repressive regimes. We condemn this hypocrisy and demand that companies such as Yahoo ! and Google drop their irresponsible policies and pledge to respect freedom of information, including abroad.”

The organisation is calling for a code of conduct to be imposed that would also concern other companies, such as Cisco Systems that has sold several thousand routers to enable the regime to build an online spying system and the firm’s engineers have helped set it to spot “subversive” key-words in messages. The system also enables police to know who has looked at banned sites or sent “dangerous” e-mails.

From RSF, via Noticiasdot.