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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.
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.
- Jack Poulson says "I was compelled to resign my position on August 31, 2018, in the wake of a pattern of unethical and unaccountable decision making from company leadership."
Note he used the word "pattern", so in his opinion Google is making mistake after mistake.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's but a dry run for when we do this in America.
Googleâ(TM)s illegal âoewi-spyâ program of collecting user data over home wi-fi hubs using its Street View cars has led to investigations and fines for violations of the law in countries around the world. Investigators were outraged when they reviewed the downloaded data and found Google had collected massive amounts of personal emails and data revealing everything from peopleâ(TM)s medical histories to their sexual preference to marital infidelity. (Googleâ(TM)s defense that that it was all okay because they never looked at the illegally collected data is eerily similar to the NSAâ(TM)s).
When challenged on its illegal data collection, the company lied and stonewalled investigators around the world, with the Federal Communications Commission finding the company guilty of âoewillfullyâ ignoring subpoenas to delay investigations into the scandal, fining the company in a 25-page condemnation in April 2012 that concluded âoeGoogleâ(TM)s failure to cooperate with the Bureau was in many or all cases deliberate.â
Both Google and Facebook were charged with violating privacy laws in launching their social media networks and both had to agree to 20-year consent decrees to monitor their privacy policies. But a year after entering its consent decree, the Federal Trade Commission found Google had secretly placed âoecookiesâ to track the online activities of people using the Safari web browser, despite having publicly âoetold these users they would automatically be opted out of such tracking.â Google had deliberately found a vulnerability in Safariâ(TM)s âoedefault cookie-blocking settingâ in order to collect the information for its advertising data collection purposes, while publicly misrepresenting to users that it was not doing so. The company paid a $22.5 million fine for this illegal data collection operation.
FROM:
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3530296
"do mo evil"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
ever sign NDA's? Either during the hiring process, or while terminating their employment?
As a public company, Google is required to build as much value for its shareholders as possible
No they aren't. This is a myth.
Corporations are not required to maximize profits or shareholder value
Sundar Pichai is destroying Google. He has been busy shutting down a number of projects and then creating new ones elsewhere.
In particular, he is turning over a LOT of AI R&D that America actually paid for, over to China.
This current project is simply an extension of the rest of what he has done.
China is going to gut Google like it did GE and IBM.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Googleâ(TM)s illegal âoewi-spyâ
You lost me at "âoewi-spyâ"
google's platform is it's own, and they're free to do with it what they will. You as a consumer are free to stop using their services as well.
If you don't like Americans doing business with China because the Chinese oppress their people then vote people in that will do sanctions like we do to Venezuela and Iran. As it stands the folks running our country and it's media are overwhelmingly pro corporate. Me? I'm already voting for the likes of Bernie Sanders and similar candidates when I can get them. I voted for several Bernie like candidates in my primary (red state, so they lost, but still voted).
The key is always pro worker candidates. None of this is about hate speech, social justice, oppressing white men or anything of the sort. It's always, always about money. About figuring out what distracts voters from economic issues long enough to rob them blind. And the Mega corps are all about identity politics. Don't fall for it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Not sure about that. Recently rolling out revocable and expiring emails seems like exactly the right thing to do if you're wanting to sell out ethically questionable services and not sure your employees will comply with an order to destroy evidence.