Vice President Mike Pence Says Google Should Halt Dragonfly App Development (reuters.com)

On Thursday, the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence weighed in on Dragonfly, a project run by Google to build a censored search engine app for China. He said Dragonfly app would make it easier to track someone's internet searches. From a report: Pence said in a speech that business leaders are now thinking twice before entering the Chinese market "if it means turning over their intellectual property or abetting Beijing's oppression." He added, "More must follow suit. For example, Google should immediately end development of the 'Dragonfly' app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers."

Comments

I've no problems with this

[jd]

As long as that involves a direct order banning illegal bulk collection of data and weakening of any encryption.

This seems more like a political ploy

[rsilvergun]

rather than any principled stance. I base that on what little I can find on his voting record.

Still, the GOP has been pretty pro-surveillance (not that the Dems have been helping in that regard, even Bernie's voted on the wrong side at times). Still, he's back in line. Maybe Pence is. Does anyone have any recent discussion on Pence's stance on stuff like warrantless wiretapping?

Uh huh ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"More must follow suit. For example, Google should immediately end development of the 'Dragonfly' app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers."

Uh huh, sure ... all while being required to help with US domestic spying.

This isn't a stand of principle, this is saying it's OK to be evil for us, but not for someone else.

Re: That's a joke, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, let's get serious.

The USA has some problems, sure, as do every country. But China is its own level of insane. Censoring half the Web, locking away anyone who believe anything beside communist propaganda, no access to foreign media, blocking vpn websites, torturing falun gong and other religious group, it's absolute bullshit. Also messing with the stability of the region with the south China Sea claims and fucking up Hong Kong and Taiwan to try and turn them into commie States. And that's not even Co sideline the trade war and the new Chinese spy chips discovered in foreign servers.

Fuck China. I love Chinese culture but there is no culture left in China, now only brainwashing and lies.

Orange Alert!

[PopeRatzo]

I wonder how Pence feels about technology that would allow a political leader to push instant messages onto every single cellular device, allowing citizens no ability to opt out.

But since he supported giving electro-shock to homosexuals to "cure" them, I think we have a pretty good idea.

Re:So let me get this straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring the politics, do you approve of google working on dragonfly?

And meanwhile, Saudi Arabia...

[turp182]

Saudi Arabia scores considerably lower when it comes to freedom than China (by aggregate score):
https://freedomhouse.org/repor...

I mean, women were just allowed to drive in 2018:
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/24...

But they are a favored trade partner focusing on two way oil for weapons deals.

So we arm nations that oppress their citizens more than China. In 2017, Trump signed a $110 billion military sale agreement with Saudi Arabia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What's this about internet censorship? Oh, Saudi Arabia used Secure Computing, a US corporation, to manage country wide internet monitoring and filtering, not just search.

But oil (and our incessant fear of Iran)...

True but for all those problems

[rsilvergun]

they still have Most Favored Nation Status from the US...

I don't think it's that the US is any better than China, it's just that we're wealthier and so our ruling class doesn't have to bother with that sort of thing to keep the working class in line. Go back 50 years and read up on what we did to Unions though. It's the same stuff China's doing. We didn't stop doing that stuff because we became better people, we shipped the factories where that stuff happens overseas.... That didn't really solve the problem of oppression, it just moved it out of sight, out of mind.

At the end of the day we're all just people, and we're all a week's worth of food away from savagery. The best solution is always to make it so that nobody's getting to that point.

Re:True but for all those problems

[butchersong]

We are not all just people. We're people of different races and those races build societies that reflect their own prejudices. Europeans (even Scandinavians) have an larger preference for individuality. Chinese and Japanese have the opposite preference for conformity. There are strengths and weaknesses to both societies but trying to equate the US treatment of their citizens to the Chinese treatment of their citizens in terms of respect for individual sovereignty... you're not even in the same ballpark -even comparing the US today to modern China or the US 50 years ago to modern China.

Re: That's a joke, right?

[pr0t0]

I highly recommend Kishore Mahbubani's Long Now Foundation Talk on China. I am not the expert of eastern geo-politics that he is, so I have no idea if his thinking is correct or not, but it's very interesting.

He states that China's move to democracy is almost inevitable, but it will take a long time. He said that Chinese officials saw what happened with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, going briefly into democracy before Russia emerged with totalitarianism and Putin. They don't want to go down that road. But it's clear that there are many democratic reforms happening in China right now. It's not the China I grew up learning about in the 70's and 80's, and the people of that country are benefiting from those reforms.

All of that said, they are still a very long way away from what most of us would deem as acceptable when it comes to human rights. I think in 50 years though, China will look very different from both inside and outside their borders.

Re: That's a joke, right?

[lgw]

You forgot Tibet, and the ongoing destruction of Tibetan Buddhism.

Fuck China. I love Chinese culture but there is no culture left in China, now only brainwashing and lies.

That was Mao's direct intention: destroy all traditional Chinese culture, along with the traditions. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. He created China's "Lost Generation", by encouraging students to kill all their teachers, then shipping all the educated youth off to farms, breaking all methods by which culture is transmitted across civilizations.

Turns out "no culture" is a bad thing, as anything beyond sociopathy must be learned, and China got a generation of short-sighted greed, pettiness, and poor impulse control (the Baby Boomers have nothing on those guys). Pretty much the opposite of how communes are supposed to work, ironically enough.

Meanwhile, all over the Chinese countryside you'll find crumbling buildings that were once wonderful temples and the like, but no one cares to maintain since Mao (or at least no one with the resources).