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New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. today announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected a request by Yahoo! Inc. to omit a New York City Pension Funds proposal calling for the company to protect freedom of access to the Internet across the globe.

SEC Attorney-Adviser Derek B. Swanson wrote that the SEC did not agree with a February 7 request from Yahoo! to exclude the City’s proposal from its shareholder 2007 Proxy Statement. The annual meeting will be held June 12 in Sunnyvale, CA.

“Political censorship of the Internet degrades the quality of that service and ultimately threatens the integrity and viability of the industry itself, both in the United States and abroad,” Thompson said. “Shareholders will now have an opportunity to send a direct message to Yahoo! that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights that must be preserved.”

The New York City Employees’ Retirement System, New York City Police Department Pension Fund, New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, Teachers’ Retirement System of New York and New York City Board of Education Retirement System filed the shareholder resolution with Yahoo! in December.

The Pension Funds have 4,504,336 shares in Yahoo valued at $123,689,067.

Additionally, the Pension Funds filed the same resolution with Google of Mountain View, CA.  The Pension Funds have 700,719 shares valued at $338,082,903 in Google. Google has put the Pension Funds’ resolution in its proxy; shareholders will vote on the measure on May 10.

The resolutions call for management at the companies to institute policies, with certain minimum standards, to help protect freedom of access to the Internet. Those standards include:

• Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system;

• The company will not engage in pro-active censorship;

• The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship.  The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures;

• Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that users are trying to access;

• Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties; and,

• The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

The resolutions identify a series of foreign governments -  Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – that block, restrict and monitor information.

“Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights, and free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to ‘receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers’,” the resolutions read. “Technology companies in the United States… that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.”

Besides Thompson, the Pension Fund trustees are:

New York City Fire Department Pension Fund: Mayor Michael Bloomberg; New York City Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta (Chair); New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark; Stephen Cassidy, President, James Slevin, Vice President, Robert Straub, Treasurer, and John Kelly, Brooklyn Representative and Chair, Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York; Peter Gorman, President and Captains’ Rep., Nicholas J. Visconti, Chiefs’ Rep., and Stephen J. Carbone, Lieutenants’ Rep., Uniformed Fire Officers Association; and, Joseph Gagliardi, Marine Engineers Association.

New York City Police Pension Fund: Mayor Michael Bloomberg; New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark; New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly (Chair); Patrick Lynch, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association; Michael Palladino, Detectives Endowment Association; Edward Mullins, Sergeants Benevolent Association; Anthony Garvey, Lieutenants Benevolent Association; and, John Driscoll, Captains Endowment Association.

New York City Employees’ Retirement System: New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark (Chair); New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum; Borough Presidents Scott Stringer (Manhattan), Helen Marshall (Queens), Marty Markowitz (Brooklyn), Adolfo Carrion (Bronx), and James Molinaro (Staten Island); Lillian Roberts, Executive Director, District Council 37, AFSCME; Roger Toussaint, President Transport Workers Union Local 100; and, Gregory Floyd, President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 237.

Teachers’ Retirement System of New York: New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark (Chair); Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, New York City Department of Education; and, Sandra March, Melvyn Aaronson and Mona Romain, all of the United Federation of Teachers.

Board of Education Retirement System: mayoral appointees Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Alan Aviles, Philip Berry, David Chang, Tino Hernandez, Augusta Souza Kappner, Richard Menschel and Marita Regan; Borough President appointees, Martine G. Guerrier (Brooklyn), Vivian Farmery (Manhattan), Michael Flowers (Queens), and Joan Correale (Staten Island); and employee members Thomas J. Malanga of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 891, and  Milagros Rodriguez of District Council 37, Local 372.

You can view the Yahoo! resolution at: www.comptroller.nyc.gov.

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