Ex-Google Employee Warns of 'Disturbing' China Plans (bbc.com)

A former Google employee has warned of the firm's "disturbing" plans in China, in a letter to US lawmakers. BBC: Jack Poulson, who had been a senior researcher at the company until resigning in August, wrote that he was fearful of Google's ambitions. His letter alleges Google's work on a Chinese product -- codenamed Dragonfly -- would aid Beijing's efforts to censor and monitor its citizens online. Google has said its work in China to date has been "exploratory." Ben Gomes, Google's head of search, told the BBC earlier this week: "Right now all we've done is some exploration, but since we don't have any plans to launch something there's nothing much I can say about it."

A report by news site The Intercept last week alleged Google had demanded employees delete an internal memo that discussed the plans. Google has not commented on the staff row, but said: "We've been investing for many years to help Chinese users, from developing Android, through mobile apps such as Google Translate and Files Go, and our developer tools." It added: "We are not close to launching a search product in China." Mr Poulson's letter details several aspects of Google's work that had been reported in the press but never officially confirmed by the company. It was submitted to the Senate Commerce Committee, which held a hearing on Wednesday in Washington DC. Google's chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, faced questions from Senator Ted Cruz about the company's intentions to launch a new search engine in China. He confirmed the existence of the project.

Comments

Re:Be Evil

[Actually, I do RTFA]

It's not advertised in America, but what makes you think they're not already doing it in America?

SO MUCH WINNING! (like Charley Sheen)

[Thud457]

I dunno, seating Judge "Chad rapey McDateRape" sounds bigly historical to me.

The Left is being Played

[Anonymous Coward]

Google strokes the Left with platitudes about diversity, equality, and hate speech with one hand and with the other are building an information infrastructure that amounts to a totalitarian control application.

When like minded individuals are elected in the US, they will have a ready platform available to squelch speech and control the distribution of news, all in an unofficial manner and evade constitutional issues.

Re:The Left is being Played

[cunina]

That's not a contradiction at all, since these days the Left is totalitarian in nature.

Re:The Left is being Played

[sarren1901]

Totalitarian or authoritarian is neither left or right. Both Fascist and Communist can be and typically are totalitarian.

Re:The Left is being Played

[elrous0]

Google strokes the Left with platitudes about diversity, equality, and hate speech with one hand

But they are fighting hate speech...as it's defined in China.

One day the definition could change here too. That's why you might want to think twice before setting the precedent that banning "hate speech" is a good thing.
 

Re:The Left is being Played

[DNS-and-BIND]

Who was even talking about Fox News? Where'd that come from? You just invent a strawman so you could knock it down?

You've got to admit, the liberal left are few and far between these days. People like Johnathan Haidt or Jordan Peterson are banished into the dark web. The authoritarian left is ascendant. One need only look at our universities to see what they desire for the rest of society. Dismantling fundamental rights like being informed of the charges against you or the ability to confront your accuser. The right didn't do any of that shit.

By their deeds ye shall know them. it's the so-called "tolerant" leftists that engage in censorship, whether it's overt censorship through the deletion of content and banning of users/customers, or whether it's causing indirect self-censorship through threats of harm to the reputations or bodies of anyone they disagree with.

It isn't right wingers who want to limit what people can express thanks to "political correctness". It isn't right wingers who want to block content they dislike. It isn't right wingers who want to ban users who they disagree with. It's leftists who engage in such behavior.

The political right promotes free and open discussion of all ideas. The political left tries to shut down all expression that doesn't conform to their very narrow world view and narrative.

Re:The Left is being Played

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, but the authoritarian left is ascendant because the authoritarian right is in control.

This is the problem with pushing people to extremes and ditching centrism (i.e. Tony Blair style centre right, or Obama era centre left) - if one wing goes extreme, the other will go extreme to counter it.

However:

"It isn't right wingers who want to limit what people can express thanks to "political correctness". It isn't right wingers who want to block content they dislike."

This is patently untrue, we've seen plenty of cases over the last few years of the right doing exactly this, even to the extent of someone driving cars into protesters to try and silence them. If you don't recognise that both left AND right have tended to extremes and you're just calling out one or the other then you're part of the problem - you've gone to the extremes yourself but falsely believe your extreme is somehow right, and you lie to yourself and tell yourself that your extreme isn't doing things that it most definitely is.

Meanwhile us sane minded centrists who want to pull both of you back to rationality are patiently waiting for shit to hit the fan so that both of you are forced to wake up. Time is on our side because humanity for thousands of years has consistently tended towards ever greater liberalism, with jumps back to authoritarianism on the right and left as we're seeing now being mere blips in history. Hopefully this one won't end violently like others have.

Re:Repeated bad behavior....

[CanHasDIY]

I would argue that acting unethically is rarely a mistake - Google execs know exactly what they're doing.

Re: Be Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

But you will find nothing Google doesn't like on Google.

No, it's not a myth.

[Anonymous Coward]

What Ms. Stout, JD at Cornell doesn't understand is that the argument she refers to came from not just the economists she alludes to but also the finance people on Wall Street that used that argument to justify their actions when they raided pensions, buried the acquisitions in debt, paid the investors the bounty, and then crashed the company. That's how Mitt Romney made his millions at Bain Capital - sleazy motherfuckers.

So, spare the outlying cite and let's stick to what everyone else knows to be the excuse, shall we?

Corporations use the maximizing shareholder wealth excuse to do what they want.

Poison water. Poison children. Emit shit into the atmosphere. Kill people.

I mean, if I were a serial killer, my dream would be to own a consumer products company and I could kill with impunity until the FTC or something eventually caught up to me after a few million deaths and then - what? My corporation takes the hit because it's a person and I walk away scott free.

Or if I'm a banker, I'd get a 8 figure bonus on top of it.

Re:Do any of these people

[BlueStrat]

It's called a Confidential Information and Invention Assignment (CIIA) Agreement. And yes him talking about this is a violation of it.

In this case the point is moot.

Google won't press this issue against him in court.

They'd open themselves to pre-trial discovery.

The very last thing Google wants is more investigation, publicity, and press around this topic.

Strat