Google's Censored Search Engine for China is Leading Employees to Resign in Protest

Google's deal with China to develop a censored search engine is not being accepted by everyone at Google. The search engine would allow the Chinese government to restrict access information it doesn't want its citizens to have.

_{pixabay, wikimedia}

Negotiations for the project codename ''Dragonfly' started in 2017, ith Google documents revealed by The Intercept in August. Google's employees have objected to this course of action to develop anti-freedom technology for China. But Google higher-ups don't seem to care, as some people have resigned in protest.

The latest to resign is 32-year-old Jack Poulson who worked as a senior research scientist from Google's research and machine intelligence division. Speaking to The Intercept, Poulson said he had an "ethical responsibility to resign in protest of the forfeiture of our public human rights commitments."

According to Poulson, another area of concern he had was with Google hosting customer data in China. China is notorious for targeting dissenters, and this is an objectionable authoritarian regime to get into business with when you want to work to forward freedom and rights on the individual. Poulson made his concerns known to his bosses in his resignation letter:

Due to my conviction that dissent is fundamental to functioning democracies, I am forced to resign in order to avoid contributing to, or profiting from, the erosion of protection for dissidents.

I view our intent to capitulate to censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the Chinese market as a forfeiture of our values and governmental negotiating position across the globe. There is an all-too-real possibility that other nations will attempt to leverage our actions in China in order to demand our compliance with their security demands.

As Google agrees to cater to the demands of authoritarian regimes seeking to impose greater control on its population, other governments might make similar requests and expect Google to comply.

There is an all-too-real possibility that other nations will attempt to leverage our actions in China in order to demand our compliance with their security demands.

Since the exposure of Dragonfly in August, Google has faced a lot of criticism. But so far they refuse to publicly comment on the project, citing policy that they don't speculate about future plans. Last month, 14 groups, which include Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human Rights Watch, wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai urging him to cease involvement in the censorship project:

The Chinese government runs one of the world’s most repressive internet censorship and surveillance regimes. Human rights defenders and journalists are routinely arrested and imprisoned solely for expressing their views online.

We are calling on Google to publicly commit to protect whistle-blowers in the company and to take immediate steps to address the concerns employees have raised about Project Dragonfly. As it stands, Google risks becoming complicit in the Chinese government’s repression of freedom of speech and other human rights in China. Google should heed the concerns raised by human rights groups and its own employees and refrain from offering censroed search services in China.

Dragonfly is not flying well with many. Google has pressure from the outside and inside, as 1,400 Google employees signed a letter last month as well to demand to be informed about what Google is developing, and what they are a part of:

Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment. That the decision to build Dragonfly was made in secret, and progressed with the [artificial intelligence] Principles in place, makes clear that the Principles alone are not enough. We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table, and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we’re building.

Google must be desperate to get access to a larger market for it's ad revenue in order to go crawling back to China. Google already had a search engine there in 2006, but it was ended in 2010 as the COmmunist government was impeding on the free speech of it's citizens. China even tried to hack Google's systems.

With the $20 billion annual growth expected to slow down as Facebook and Amazon chomps into their pice of the ad revenue market, Google needs to keep growing or else lose investors trust. It has already made deals with credit and debit card companies to access user purchasing data, with a million dollar deal with Mastercard.

How far is Google willing to go to make money and appease shareholders in order to keep investors there? They used to have the motto "do no evil", but that core value seems to have been killed for a reason, as they don't care about it anymore.

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References:

• Senior Google Scientist Resigns Over “Forfeiture of Our Values” in China
• Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal
• Top Google Scientist Quits Over Plan for Censored Chinese Search Engine
• Human Rights Coalition Demands Google End Chinese Censorship Project

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