It’s about time someone at Yahoo! answered for this.

An influential US Congressional panel on Tuesday summoned top officials of Yahoo for a hearing after accusing the Internet giant of providing false information over a case in which a journalist was thrown in jail in China for a decade.

Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on foreign affairs, asked the officials to appear at the hearing planned for November 6 to discuss the circumstances under which Chinese journalist Shi Tao was jailed after Yahoo provided user information to Beijing.

Shi Tao, was convicted in 2005 of divulging state secrets after he posted a Chinese government order forbidding media organizations from marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising on the Internet.

Police identified him using information provided by Yahoo. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Of course, it’s a congressional panel, so I don’t really expect anything to come of it, oh, except a slight increase in my taxes to pay for all the senseless panels that are being held lately. Then again, they lied to Congress. Nothing pisses off a Congressman more than finding out they were on the receiving rather than giving end of a lie.

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