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Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans To Closely Track Search Users in China: The Intercept (theintercept.com)
Google bosses have forced employees to delete a confidential memo circulating inside the company that revealed explosive details about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China, The Intercept has learned. From the report: The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, code-named Dragonfly, would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location -- and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have "unilateral access" to the data.
The memo was shared earlier this month among a group of Google employees who have been organizing internal protests over the censored search system, which has been designed to remove content that China's authoritarian Communist Party regime views as sensitive, such as information about democracy, human rights and peaceful protest.
According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained âoepixel trackersâ that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.
The memo was shared earlier this month among a group of Google employees who have been organizing internal protests over the censored search system, which has been designed to remove content that China's authoritarian Communist Party regime views as sensitive, such as information about democracy, human rights and peaceful protest.
According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained âoepixel trackersâ that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.
Man, google is really stepping in it hard as of late. http://www.foxnews.com/tech/20... They are turning into a company, that is easy to hate. They are becoming a close minded and censorship happy group, who think they know best, trying to shape the would. This will backfire and fail, if not from government regulation then by people. This also applies to You tube. The more you tighten your grip the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
The correct title should be; Google's Attempt to suppress memo fails with massive Streisand effect.
> Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained "pixel trackers" that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.
How's it feel to have the shoe on the other foot?
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
There really is nothing more to add.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Google Closely Tracks Employees Reading Memo Which Demands Deletion of Memo Revealing Plans To Closely Track Search Users in China
Do no evil. Those days are behind us, captain.
GMail renders pixel trackers useless.
Too pure to help shape the DoD drone program so that AI might have "don't be evil" coded into its framework, but not too pure to help the PRC identify, track and persecute people out of favor with the regime.
This isn't hypocrisy on the level of "pastor caught in bed with the church secretary one time." This is hypocrisy along the lines of "pastor caught running a child sex trafficking network."
So they're evil now?
Does anyone remember the story earlier this morning: Schmidt predicting a second internet run by China. Obviously the time to get in on the action is now, and now is a bit too late. Google is just playing catch-up.
Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained pixel trackers that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.
I thought most mail applications blocked pixel trackers. And Gmail tends to download images from emails and re-host them, which makes pixel trackers useless. Or maybe Google disables the feature for their own trackers? What email program do Google employees use?
(P.S. to Slashdot editors - the summary has unicode quotation marks that don't work in Slashdot.)
I'm certain that you have it wrong.
You see, if Google doesn't do this, someone will. So you have it wrong.
You see, if Google does this, then Google can help shape future open communication and equality. So you have it wrong.
You see, then Google gets to decide bits and pieces to influence. Google only has The Good in mind. So you have it wrong.
You see, Google is good. They understand this, and that they - and only they - are responsible for ensuring freedom for the Chinese. If they fail, all will be lost. So you have it wrong.
You see, Google cares. You must understand this about them, and that they are in the unique position to help. Only by censoring data access, censoring freedom, and reporting user actions, can they enforce freedom.
So you have it wrong.
Don't be evil, be SUPER EVIL
Totalitarians of a feather flock together.
All of the stuff about google has finally made me think things over. I know that google(youtube also) search results are bias when in the political ideology area. It is especially apparent in youtube search results for things like #WalkAway. But I have just navigated through the old links getting top placement to find the newer stuff.
;)
Anyway I digress, I have checked out other search providers and have decided to start using DuckDuckGo more.
I am a creature of habit so we will see how things work out.
Just my 2 cents
The company has gone from do no evil, to join the evil.
If they continue down this path, they will become worthless.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Unless it's China.
...to paraphrase the presidential candidate for whom Google's Eric Schmidt apparently worked, as evidenced by the photo of Schmidt on election night in the Javitz center wearing a "STAFF" badge, probably convinced there was no reason to hide too much because she was going to win for sure: https://freebeacon.com/politic...
That said I still trust Google for code searches, for now.
Attempted suppression is evidence Google knows full well what it's doing is wrong and yet they persist because they are scum.
Fuck you Google, you are fascists.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Yeah. Because they DO NOT AT ALL try to closely track everyone else in some way.
All evil and greed all the time
Good post Chang, your social credit score has been updated and your family will be now allowed one gallon of Clean Water (tm) per day.
or they can just follow other search engine like Baidu/Bing/Yahoo that operates in China. Or is that too hard for Google to do?
I am seeing more and more statements from leftists threatening to murder or jail and torture people they disagree with. History repeats itself.
Google's mission statement:
Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Limiting their search results in order to please the Chinese government doesn't help make the world's information become "universally accessible and useful".
Neither does suppressing a memo, which states that Google is helping the Chinese government find dissidents who want to spread information that the Chinese government doesn't want known.
They've already dumped the "Don't be evil" motto. I wonder if they'll also change their mission statement.
Well, you know the Golden Rule: He who has the gold (for example, China) makes the rules.
Google is still small potatoes compared to Goldman Sachs, Monsato, Amazon, Wal-Mart... I'll stop here.
I don't see much point in getting worried over companies being evil if we're not going to do anything to stop them from being evil. At the end of the day we elect the same charismatic people who accept corporate money left and right.
What I'd really like to see is more movements like this that use the "No corporate PAC money" as a litmus test. You can't serve two masters. But they haven't gotten a lot of traction and I don't know of any Republican equivalent.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Who in the internet world doesn't know Google is all about tracking users??? Really? If your fine with Google looking over everything you do, that's fine. If your not, then you probably should not use anything with Google name on it.
... because I don't live in China.
That sovereign country can make all the rules it wants.
Google is in the business of make money.
They can tailor their product to comply with local laws and regulations to do so.
Where's the beef?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
dude, everyone does that. it's just what uneducated fucks of any stripe do instead of talking.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
So... what are some of these people and groups you speak of?
The motto was "don't be evil".
Evil originally meant, primarily, Microsoft. Don't be Microsoft.
We are now living 1984; thanks to all the elitist assholes at IEEE I told about this two decades ago.
They sold us for pocket change; Facebook is only the public face of it.
When Trump declares martial law, you'll know why they sold all that ammo during Obama's term.
"He's gonna take our Guns!!" No, Putins going to get you to fight his war.
No Russian troops need to be involved; it's not like Trump's minions are going to be discerning on who they shoot; every kill is an American, just like the civil war; Russia wins whoever loses.
We're so fucked.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
dude, everyone does that. it's just what uneducated fucks of any stripe do instead of talking.
When college professors chime in wanting to do violence towards anyone not left-wing enough, we cant blame ignorance anymore.
Search data is a munition in China. Google is just providing the guns and bullets. They aren't pulling the trigger, so that means it is fine. Right?
Does Google know that religion has been outlawed in China and that Uighur families are being split apart there? Their parents, about 1 million, have been sent to internment camps.
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
The orphanages are the most recent manifestation of Beijingâ(TM)s efforts to systematically distance young Muslims in Xinjiang from their families and culture. Uighurs fear such efforts are erasing their ethnic identity, one child at a time.
That was two years ago. How the hell does this not make the mainstream news, or even third tier tech news sites? Why do we have to go to far right-wing sources to know what's going on in the DNC?
The answers are obvious I know, but it still catches me offguard what rich, lying, hiding, colluding, sacks of shit are out there. People aren't mad Trump won. People are mad because people like this guy wants everyone to be miserable because his corrupt evil plan didn't work.
This comment seems fine, until you consider it comes from a faggot liar who literally claims "plastics" are "non-toxic" by definition like some kind of industry retard. Your carcass will be full of the stuff when I cut you open, fish.
Nonsense, plastic is healthy and delicious. Are you dumb?
Helping communist China do what communist nations do.
For better branding in a Communist nation that will always only trust its own Communist services?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Sounds like Google is serious about working with the Chinese government. On the other hand. they put the kibosh on a project to adapt their AI to U.S. military needs. As a U.S. citizen, this looks bad. Really, really, really bad.
On the other hand, it's been pointed out that Google could very well be collaborating with the U.S. government on various projects, but doing it quietly through shell companies, or maybe within the company but with better secrecy controls than they are applying to this poorly thought-out Chinese experiment. Who are they kidding? They really think that China is going to give them more than an infinitesimal slice of the Chinese search market? I don't see an endgame that goes well for Google here.
Seems to work pretty well.
This comment seems fine, until you consider it comes from
Ad hominem would like to have a word with you, ma'am.