Ex-Google Employee Warns of ‘Disturbing’ China Plans

September 26th, 2018

Via: BBC:

A former Google employee has warned of the firm’s “disturbing” plans in China, in a letter to US lawmakers.

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.

The letter alleges Google is working on:

A prototype interface designed to allow a Chinese joint venture company to search for a given user’s search queries based on their phone number

An extensive censorship blacklist developed in accordance with Chinese government demands. Among others, it contained the English term “human rights”, the Mandarin terms for ‘student protest’ and ‘Nobel prize’, and very large numbers of phrases involving ‘Xi Jinping’ and other members of the CCP

Explicit code to ensure only Chinese government-approved air quality data would be returned in response to Chinese users’ search

Mr Poulson said the sum of these efforts amounted to a “catastrophic failure” of Google’s internal policies on privacy – as well as going against assurances made to the US trade regulator regarding data protection measures in its products.

“Dragonfly is part of a broad pattern of unaccountable decision making across the tech industry,” Mr Poulson wrote.

Mr Poulson’s letter follows a joint statement signed by hundreds of current Google employees against Dragonfly sent last month.

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