• Wired, Friday, March 16, 2007 11 AM

A man's Web connection has been breaking down. He reboots. He checks the modem. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. While he's tinkering, his wife answers a phone call. An unfamiliar voice asks, "Are you home?" She answers "yes," and the line goes dead. Minutes later, government agents storm the house. They take the man, his computers and disks away, telling his wife to keep quiet on the way out.

This is China, where the Internet police are no joke. The above actually happened to Wang Xiaoning and his wife Yu Ling in Beijing in 2002. Wang was a writer who published anonymously to Yahoo forums and other chat rooms about taboo subjects in China, mostly politics. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for inciting subversion; Yahoo turned him over.

"Yahoo betrayed my husband, and deprived him of freedom," Yu told Wiredin an interview. "Yahoo must learn its lesson." Following a year of preparation (her English isn't good), Yu flew to Washington D.C. last week with the sole purpose of finding a lawyer and suing the Web giant for aiding in her husband's capture. Legal experts say her chances are slim, but her presence in the United States puts an inescapable human face on the pain caused by...China's repressive regime. Yu's case also represents the price of admission for big technology companies into China, which won't change until we hear more stories like hers.

Read the whole story at Wired »