| | | The problem is that the Chinese govt doesn't intend to allow uncensored searches and won't regardless of whether Google helps them or not. We don't want the govt to get into telling social media companies what they can and can't do lest we end up like China.
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The incentive behind Project Dragonfly is the current ban of Google’s search engine by the Great Firewall. Given that China has a population of 1.3 billion and the largest number of internet users in the world, it is no wonder Google wants to capitalize on their market.
But Project Dragonfly becomes even more alarming in light of both Google’s actions in 2010 and its original moral compass. Google actually came to China in 2006 with censored search results, intending to be a positive influence by at least informing the Chinese public when their results were filtered to help educate them on government censorship. However, in 2010 Google left China in protest to the Chinese government’s increased censorship and threats of cyber attacks. Enough was enough, and Google vowed to no longer censor its search results, seemingly upholding its unofficial motto, “ Don’t be evil,” by sacrificing revenue for moral integrity.
Google also adopted principles surrounding their technology and human rights after the controversy around the Pentagon AI contract, Project Maven. These principles state that Google will not develop AI technology that, amongst other things, provides surveillance that opposes international norms or infringes on human rights or international law.
It is no surprise then that the mega-company kept Project Dragonfly under wraps, considering it would facilitate the violation of free speech, a human right as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations (UN). Only a few hundred Google employees out of its 88,000 workforce were aware of the project at all. The company was very afraid of internal leaks, often communicating about the project solely on a verbal basis, not even taking written notes to reduce the paper trail further. According to a current Google employee interviewed by The Intercept, “[Leadership] were determined to prevent leaks about Dragonfly from spreading through the company. Their biggest fear was that internal opposition would slow our operations.”
Out of the four sources that have disclosed information to The Intercept about Project Dragonfly, three did so anonymously because of Google’s strict non-disclosure restrictions. The fourth is Yonatan Zunger, a 14-year Google veteran who left the company in 2017. Brought in at the early stages, he pointed out to executives that the Chinese public could be interrogated or even detained if they used Google to find information the government had banned. The Intercept’s sources all cited moral and ethical concerns about the project and its lack of public scrutiny as reasons for coming forward, even if it had to be anonymously.
Normal procedure was not followed with Project Dragonfly either. The initiative bypassed the standard practice every new product or service developed by Google undergoes, which typically involves getting reviewed by legal, privacy and security teams before launch. Executives seemed focused on diluting the privacy review rather than truly investigating the ramifications a censored search app planned with the Chinese government could have.
Google employees, however, are not having it. Over a thousand signed an internal petition in August to end Project Dragonfly. Hundreds more have signed an open letter released on Medium on Nov. 25 that j oins Amnesty International in demanding that Google immediately stops working on Project Dragonfly. “International human rights organizations and investigative reporters have also sounded the alarm,” the letter says, “emphasizing serious human rights concerns and repeatedly calling on Google to cancel the project.”
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