Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China

[steven36]

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.

 

 

The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, codenamed 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 “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.

The Dragonfly memo reveals that a prototype of the censored search engine was being developed as an app for both Android and iOS devices, and would force users to sign in so they could use the service. The memo confirms, as The Intercept first reported last week, that users’ searches would be associated with their personal phone number. The memo adds that Chinese users’ movements would also be stored, along with the IP address of their device and links they clicked on. It accuses developers working on the project of creating “spying tools” for the Chinese government to monitor its citizens.

 

People’s search histories, location information, and other private data would be sent out of China to a database in Taiwan, the memo states. But the data would also be provided to employees of a Chinese company who would be granted “unilateral access” to the system.

 

To launch the censored search engine, Google set up a “joint venture” partnership with an unnamed Chinese company. The search engine will “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases, according to documents seen by The Intercept. Blacklisted search terms on a prototype of the search engine include “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize” in Mandarin, said sources familiar with the project.

 

According to the memo, aside from being able to access users’ search data, the Chinese partner company could add to the censorship blacklists: It would be able to “selectively edit search result pages … unilaterally, and with few controls seemingly in place.”

 

That a Chinese company would maintain a copy of users’ search data means that, by extension, the data would be accessible to Chinese authorities, who have broad powers to obtain information that is held or processed on the country’s mainland. A central concern human rights groups have expressed about Dragonfly is that it could place users at risk of Chinese government surveillance — and any person in China searching for blacklisted words or phrases could find themselves interrogated or detained. Chinese authorities are well-known for routinely targeting critics, activists, and journalists.

 

“It’s alarming to hear that such information will be stored and, potentially, easily shared with the Chinese authorities,” said Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher with the human rights group Amnesty International. “It will completely put users’ privacy and safety at risk. Google needs to immediately explain if the app will involve such arrangements. It’s time to give the public full transparency of the project.”

On August 16, two weeks after The Intercept revealed the Dragonfly plan, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the company’s employees that the China plan was in its “early stages” and “exploratory.” However, employees working on the censored search engine were instructed in late July, days before the project was publicly exposed, that they should prepare to get it into a “launch-ready state” to roll out within weeks, pending approval from officials in Beijing.

 

The memo raises new questions about Pichai’s claim that the project was not well-developed. Information stored on the company’s internal networks about Dragonfly “paints a very different picture,” it says. “The statement from our high-level leadership that Dragonfly is just an experiment seems wrong.”

 

The memo identifies at least 215 employees who appear to have been tasked with working full-time on Dragonfly, a number it says is “larger than many Google projects.” It says that source code associated with the project dates back to May 2017, and “many infrastructure parts predate” that. Moreover, screenshots of the app “show a project in a pretty advanced state,” the memo declares.

 

Most of the details about the project “have been secret from the start,” the memo says, adding that “after the existence of Dragonfly leaked, engineers working on the project were also quick to hide all of their code.”

 

The author of the memo said in the document that they were opposed to the China censorship. However, they added, “more than the project itself, I hate the culture of secrecy that has been built around it.”

 

The memo was first posted September 5 on an internal messaging list set up for Google employees to raise ethical concerns. But the memo was soon scrubbed from the list and individuals who had opened or saved the document were contacted by Google’s human resources department to discuss the matter. The employees were instructed not to share the memo.

 

Google reportedly maintains an aggressive security and investigation team known as “stopleaks,” which is dedicated to preventing unauthorized disclosures. The team is also said to monitor internal discussions.

 

Internal security efforts at Google have ramped up this year as employees have raised ethical concerns around a range of new company projects. Following the revelation by Gizmodo and The Intercept that Google had quietly begun work on a contract with the military last year, known as Project Maven, to develop automated image recognition systems for drone warfare, the communications team moved swiftly to monitor employee activity.

 

The “stopleaks” team, which coordinates with the internal Google communications department, even began monitoring an internal image board used to post messages based on internet memes, according to one former Google employee, for signs of employee sentiment around the Project Maven contract.

 

Google’s internal security team consists of a number of former military and law enforcement officials. For example, LinkedIn lists as Google’s head of global investigations Joseph Vincent, whose resume includes work as a high-ranking agent at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Homeland Security Investigations unit. The head of security at Google is Chris Rackow, who has described himself as a former member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s hostage rescue team and as a former U.S. Navy SEAL.

 

For some Google employees, the culture of secrecy at the company clashes directly with the its public image around fostering transparency, creating an intolerable work environment.

 

“Leadership misled engineers working on [Dragonfly] about the nature of their work, depriving them of moral agency,” said a Google employee who read the memo.

 

Google did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

 

Source

[steven36]

Here is interesting  find  i found about how  All these big tech companies use to help China censor the there internet in 2006 under the old laws. And this is not  Goggle's 1st merry go round with this.

 

 

Quote

 

On February 15, 2006, four U.S.-based companies, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco, were brought before a U.S. congressional hearing to explain their operations in China. The following day, Representative Chris Smith introduced the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006, which if passed would, among other things, make it illegal for any United States business to locate "user-identifiable" data in China and other "internet restricting countries," and would require companies to be transparent about what political and religious material governments are requiring them to censor. In July the European Parliament passed a resolution welcoming the Global Online Freedom Act and urging the European Union Council of Ministers to "agree a joint statement confirming their commitment to the protection of internet users' rights and the promotion of free expression on the internet world-wide."

 

Academics and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are also working with companies to draft a voluntary code of conduct for Internet and telecommunications companies that would commit companies to business practices consistent with upholding and protecting the right to freedom of political and religious expression consistent with international human rights law and norms.

In this report, we have documented the different ways in which companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Skype are assisting and reinforcing the Chinese government's system of arbitrary, opaque and unaccountable political censorship.] This report documents the way in which these companies actively, openly, and deliberately (by their own admission) collaborate with the Chinese government's system of Internet censorship:

 

Yahoo!: Yahoo! has handed over user information on four Chinese government critics to the Chinese authorities, resulting in their trial and conviction. Yahoo!'s Chinese search engine is heavily censored. Based on examination of Yahoo!'s services and of feedback gathered from Chinese Internet users, Human Rights Watch has found that Yahoo! censors its Chinese-language search engine to a very similar degree as domestic Chinese Internet companies (such as China's largest domestic search engine, Baidu), and much more heavily than MSN and Google. Perhaps responding to criticism about a lack of transparency, in late July 2006 Yahoo! China added a notice at the bottom of its search engine informing users that some results may not appear "in accordance with relevant laws and regulations". (See Appendix VIII for letter sent by Human Rights Watch to Yahoo! and Yahoo!'s response regarding company practices in China.)

 

Microsoft: In June 2005-a month after MSN China rolled out its Chinese portal-Microsoft came under criticism from the press and bloggers around the world for censoring words such as "democracy" and "freedom" in the titles of its Chinese blogs, at the request of the Chinese government. Microsoft has made efforts in recent months to revise its practices and minimize censorship of Chinese bloggers, although the extent to which censorship has been lessened across the board remains unclear. MSN has a Chinese search engine, currently in "beta" test mode, which appears to de-list webpages and censor some Chinese keywords. MSN Chinese "beta" search in some cases informs users that censorship occurred, but not in others. MSN's Chinese search engine, while still in development, does provide the user with more information on politically sensitive subjects than either Yahoo! or Baidu. (See Appendix IX for letter sent by Human Rights Watch to Microsoft and Microsoft's response regarding company practices in China.)

 

Google: In January 2006 Google rolled out its censored search engine, Google.cn. Google.cn does provide notice to users when search results have been censored but provides no further details. The company announced that it would not provide email or blog-hosting services in China, at least for now, in order to avoid being pressured to cooperate with Chinese police in handing over user data as in the case of Yahoo!, and to avoid having to directly censor user-created content as in the case of MSN Spaces. Google justified its censored search engine by arguing that users could rely on Google.com for uncensored searches; however, Chinese Internet users have reported widespread blockage of Google.com by Chinese ISPs. Human Rights Watch testing shows that the censored Google.cn, while denying access to the full range of information available on the World Wide Web, still enables the Chinese user to access substantially more information on sensitive political and religious subjects than its Chinese competitors. (See Appendix X for letter sent by Human Rights Watch to Google regarding company practices in China.)

 

Skype: Skype, which provides a way for Internet users around the world to communicate directly by voice, video and text chat, now has a Chinese-language version developed and marketed in China by the Chinese company TOM Online. Skype executives have publicly acknowledged that the TOM-Skype software censors sensitive words in text chats, and have justified this as in keeping with local "best practices" and Chinese law. However Skype does not inform Chinese users of the specific details of its censorship policies, and does not inform them that their software contains censorship capabilities. (See Appendix XI for letter sent by Human Rights Watch to Skype and Skype's response regarding company practices in China.)

 

Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google have not publicized the list of sites or keywords being censored, and have not clarified which Chinese laws are being violated by the terms and web addresses censored by their Chinese search engines or services (and also blog-hosting services in the case of Microsoft). Thus it is impossible to evaluate the veracity of the claim each company makes that it is simply following Chinese law. Skype has not clarified what laws TOM-Skype would be violating by not censoring users' conversations.

 

The above companies are complicit in the Chinese government's censorship of political and religious information and/or the monitoring of peaceful speech in various ways-and, it is important to note, to widely varying degrees. They have all accepted at least some Chinese government demands without mounting any meaningful challenge to them. These are by no means the only multinational companies that currently facilitate Chinese government censorship and surveillance. But they are the most prominent examples, whose contribution to China's censorship regime to date is most well documented and publicly visible.

 

In response to criticism, these companies all insist that despite the constraints under which they operate they are still helping to increase the Chinese people's access to the Internet, access to more information, and greater means for self-expression. Companies certainly can make a positive contribution to freedom of expression in China, and that is something Human Rights Watch supports and encourages. But we believe that companies are only doing so if they are improving or maintaining high ethical standards that, at the very least, are consistent with international law and norms. The burden of proof as to whether they are making a positive impact in comparison to their domestic competitors should be on the companies themselves, rather than leaving the public to guess or discover the companies' ethical standards on their ownin some cases by going to jail.

 

These companies also argue that they have no choice but to comply with Chinese law and regulations in order to access the Chinese market. Human Rights Watch does not believe that the choice for companies is to either continue current practices or to leave China. Rather, we believe companies can and should make ethical choices about what specific products and services they will provide to the Chinese peopleand the manner in which they are providedwithout playing a pro-active role in censorship or collaborating in repression. While some companies have said that they have adopted more rigorous processes and procedures to determine when to censor or abide by government demands, none of the companies discussed in this report have said they will refuse such demands, or appear to have actively resisted them. For this reason, we believe that legislation backed up by a substantive voluntary corporate code of conduct would help companies to uphold meaningful standards of conduct and make it more difficult for the Chinese government to retaliate against individual companies, since all of these companies would be bound by the same rules.

 

Any such regulation should be accompanied by meaningful efforts on the part of companies, business associations, government trade representatives, and international trade bodies to lobby against laws, regulations, and government pressuresin China and elsewherethat force companies to act as censors. By forcing companies into this role, the Chinese government creates an opaque and uneven playing field in which companies compete not on business merits but on their level of cooperation with a censorship regime that trammels internationally protected rights.

 

We believe that legislation accompanied by constructive lobbying for regulatory change is in the long-term commercial interest of the companies. By offering diminished services, companies are not actually competing on the overall superiority of their products; instead they are adopting the lowest common denominator set by the Chinese government. Unless companies agree to draw the ethical line or have it drawn for them, it will be very difficult for them to escape the current "race to the bottom," as companies cave in to Chinese government pressure to increase their censorship levels and compliance with government demands for user information, to match the level of whichever company is censoring and compromising user data the most.

 

Ultimately, none of the companies discussed in this report have a long-term technical advantage over their Chinese competitors. In the long run, user loyalty will depend on their level of trust. In researching Chinese user reaction to the different choices made by multinational Internet companies, we have found that trustworthiness and transparency are indeed important to Chinese users, as they are to users elsewhere. Furthermore, the way in which an Internet company treats its users in one country can impact that company's global image. Users can reasonably be expected to ask: if a company contributes to the jailing of government critics in China, isn't it also likely to do so elsewhere?

 

As the Chinese Internet and wireless communications sectors continue to grow, more and more international companies will continue to face pressure from the Chinese government to supply equipment used for censorship and surveillance, hand over user information, and actively censor user content. It is also important to note that many governments around the world are watching the way in which companies are adapting their business practices to Chinese government demands. If Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others actively collaborate with political censorship in China, it will be difficult for them to turn down similar requests made by other governments seeking to control their citizens. Human Rights Watch believes that Internet companies can and should draw a much clearer line between ethical and unethical business practices, and should revise their business practices in China and in all countries where unaccountable governments censor the Internet in an arbitrary, non-transparent, and unaccountable manner. If they cannot do so, concerned citizens around the world should use their power as consumers, investors, and voters to demand a commitment by Internet and technology companies to respect and uphold the fundamental, universal human rights of their customers and users.

 

Source

 

 

Google  got mad  and  stopped censoring because they got hacked  and got themselves  kicked out .

 

Quote

 

Google stops censoring in China

 

Google has stopped censoring results in China, acting on a decision it made in January.

 

On Monday, Google stopped censoring Google Search, Google News and Google Images on Google.cn, according to a blog post from Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

“Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong,” he wrote.

 

As expected, the Chinese government didn’t entertain allowing Google to continue operating an uncensored Google.cn. The Hong Kong work-around is “entirely legal,” he said.

“We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services,” Drummond wrote.

Google has set up a Web page where people can monitor the status of its services in China.

 

It’s highly unlikely that the Chinese government will look the other way and allow access to Google.cn, said Joseph Fewsmith, a Boston University professor or international relations and political science.

 

“I’m surprised Google thought there was room to negotiate on that [censorship] point,” Fewsmith said.

 

Google continues research and development work in China and maintains a sales team in the country. “All these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and ... none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them,” Drummond wrote.

 

On Jan. 12, Google shocked the world when it announced that it would stop censoring results in its China search engine, Google.cn, because the company had been the victim of hacking attacks originating in China.

 

Through the attacks, hackers stole Google intellectual property and broke into the Gmail accounts of China human rights activists, the company said. At the time, Google said it would seek talks with the Chinese government over ways it could operate Google.cn legally without censoring, although experts said the chances of that happening were at best slim.

 

If no middle ground was reached, Google said it would be willing to close Google.cn and shutter its offices and operations in China, a drastic move considering China is one of the biggest and fastest-growing Internet and telecommunications markets in the world.

 

Google has declined repeated requests in recent weeks to discuss its China impasse, and it is not clear how much present and future revenue the company would forgo by exiting China’s search market. Analysys International expects China’s search market to reach 10 billion yuan (US$1.46 billion) this year.

 

The impact on Google would be larger if it also stops providing online services like Gmail and Picasa, which it monetizes via online advertising, and its Android mobile operating system, which it licenses to mobile carriers, handset makers and PC vendors.

 

However, in five to 10 years and in later decades, Google’s decision may yield great benefits, because it has likely endeared the search company to many young Chinese Internet users, said Ben Sargent, an analyst with Common Sense Advisory, a market research company.

 

“Google will sit on the sidelines for a while, and meanwhile they’ve made a big impression on the young Chinese,” he said.

 

While the reasons behind Google’s decision are varied and complex, and include concerns about espionage, piracy and cyberattacks, Google is stressing the free speech and social justice angle, which likely resonates with the young, who are more likely to be free thinkers and Internet-savvy than previous generations, he said.

 

“Google has never gotten the traction in China that it has in most of the other markets. It’s not the dominant player and doesn’t own the market in China,” Sargent said.

 

“So, in the long term, if it wants to change the penetration rate and become a dominant player in China, it needs to win the hearts and minds of the next generation,” he added.

By adopting a long-term strategy, Google is ironically acting similarly to the way the Chinese approach matters.

 

“As a culture, China is much more long-term thinking than most other cultures. No other government takes such long-term views as the Chinese government,” Sargent said. “So Google is trying to out-Chinese the Chinese in terms of making a really long-term play for young people’s hearts and minds in China.”

 

“This is one of the most interesting business cases that I can remember in the last 10 years,” he added.

 

All along, Chinese government officials have said Google must comply with local laws if it wants to continue doing business in the country. They have also said China’s government has never been involved in any cyberattacks against Google or anyone else.

 

After their initial, combative announcement on Jan. 12, Google officials, particularly CEO Erich Schmidt, have sounded more conciliatory regarding the matter.

 

“We wish to remain in China. We like the Chinese people, we like our Chinese employees, we like the business opportunities there,” Schmidt said during the company’s earnings conference call on Jan. 21. “We’d like to do that on somewhat different terms than we have, but we remain quite committed to being there.”

 

He also seemed to ease up on Google’s original certainty that the hacking originated in China, describing the attacks as “probably emanating from China with the origin details unknown” and adding that the matter was “still under investigation.”

 

After Jan. 12 and until now, Google continued to censor Google.cn, blocking results about topics the Chinese government finds politically sensitive, like the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

 

During the impasse, Google’s other operations in China have been largely unaffected, such as its Android mobile business. Despite the row between Google and the government, the country’s IT Ministry said the Android operating system wouldn’t be affected if it conforms to Chinese regulations. A variety of Chinese carriers and hardware makers, including China Unicom and Lenovo, moved forward with plans to market Android-based phones and laptops.

 

However, there has been uncertainty regarding Google mobile applications and services, including its search engine, in Android devices in China. Google postponed their availability after its Jan. 12 announcement.

 

Google is a distant second in China’s search engine usage behind leader Baidu. Last year, Google fielded almost 19 percent of China residents’ queries to Baidu’s 76 percent, according to iResearch. Compared with 2008, Google’s share dropped 1.8 percentage points, while Baidu increased its share by 2.8 points.

 

Still, Google fared much better than Yahoo China, which is controlled by China’s Alibaba Group and had a 0.3 percent share, and Microsoft, whose Bing search engine had a 0.4 percent share of queries, according to iResearch.

 

Baidu finished 2009 with total revenue of 4.45 billion yuan and net income of almost 1.5 billion yuan, up about 40 percent in each case.

 

According to its government’s official figures, China had 384 million Internet users at the end of 2009, making it the country with the largest Internet population.

 

In addition to requiring censoring of search results, the Chinese government also blocks access to social media sites like Google’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, monitors individuals’ e-mail accounts and patrols Web sites for politically sensitive or pornographic content. China makes no apology for the way it regulates Internet content and activities, saying its policies are geared toward preventing social ills, such as subversion and unrest.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/urnidgns852573c400693880852576ee00788e12/google-stops-censoring-in-china-idUS22924429020100323