[stdgy]

Companies should be commended for their efforts to fight these orders. However, let's not forget that Yahoo also handed over information to the Chinese government that led to the arrest and prolonged imprisonment of multiple people, and then tried to cover up their behavior by pretending they didn't know why the information was being requested.

I suspect that the backlash from those actions may have led the company to appeal the FISC orders, fearing similar potential future liabilities.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/11/yahoo-calls-withh...

[neilk]

I don't think that's how it works. Yahoo went all-in with China and has significant staff and hardware and user records located in Chinese jurisdiction. Once you make that initial mistake you're basically fucked when it comes to resisting the Chinese government, because they'll just throw your people in jail, or confiscate servers.

In America there are appeals processes, so Yahoo could avail themselves of those.

So Yahoo may well have had a consistent "fight for the users" policy, but were constrained differently in different jurisdictions.