According to Bloomberg and the New York Times, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang “apologized to the mother of an imprisoned Chinese dissident during testimony at a heated Congressional hearing probing the company’s role in jailing the man.”

Hang on, now. For a year, Yang has been contemptuously dismissing his company’s actions with a tedious repetition of “respect” for the “laws” of the countries in which it operates. In other words, not only did Yahoo do nothing wrong, it did everything right. Then, when the worm began to turn, he and his shill Michael Callahan unconvincingly began to keen about how they didn’t have all the facts when they testified before Congress last year. And now, there’s something to apologize for?

Due to Yang’s lust for money, in 2005 Chinese journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison for using his Yahoo mail to send notes outside the country. The Chinese authorities stuck their hand out and Yang couldn’t kiss it fast enough. No legal need to comply with this request, much less a moral or even practical desire to maintain independence. No, Yang and his underlings forked over as fast as possible, in order to pleasure the authorities they believed would help them make yet more money.

Prior to that, in 2002 Wang Xiaoning was arrested for using a Yahoo account to advocate for open elections and other political freedoms in China. In both cases, Yahoo or its subsidiary handed over information it was not legally required to give. And even if it had been required, it could have chosen instead to forgo blood money. It did not.

U.S. Representative Tom Lantos, (D) California, a Holocaust survivor and the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, before which Yang testified today, was disgusted.

“A company of Yahoo’s resources should have taken every conceivable step to prevent the automatic compliance with a request from the Chinese police apparatus. To this day, Yahoo has failed to change any of its practices in order to prevent such collaboration.”

“While Mr. Callahan may not have known the relevant facts, other Yahoo employees, in fact, did know the nature of the Chinese investigation against Shi Tao prior to our committee hearing. (Yahoo’s actions were) spineless and irresponsible.”

“”I do not believe that America’s best and brightest companies should be playing integral roles in China’s notorious and brutal political repression apparatus.”

“Much of this testimony reveals that while technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies.”

“Yahoo shares fell 4.6 percent, or $1.43, to $29.93 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading,” according to Bloomberg. Let’s hope the bottom falls out and the price of exchanging lives for yet more money is as high for these Corporate Collaborators as it was for Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning.

Watch video of the Committee’s meeting here. (If you can. It’s a “.smi” file, whatever that is. Doesn’t work for me.)

Update: Clark sent me a link to The World’s coverage. He also wrote a guest post about it on the Technology Review Blog.