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Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

theintercept.com

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Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#241

Post by mynewtb »

pacala wrote: post #173
shazow wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there is clear evidence that FastMail employees are able and willing to read through your personal emails, and they've become actively user-hostile in their support: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1021570521987731458 Make of it what you will, but I worked at Google for a time and I came out more convinced that my data is safer there. This was 2012 so maybe things have changed since then, but we need better…

Employee A reading email X does not scale. Google reading everyone's email with ever-better AI systems does scale, and is a much bigger threat to freedom, political or economical.

A person reading your mail is a much more immediate, direct danger than your mails being slurped into the big data silo that can slowly and widely ruin society.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#242

Post by skybrian »

mahranch wrote: post #198
bad_user wrote: post #133

There might be many tech companies in China, no doubt, including big names, and companies should comply with local regulations if they want to do business, however the fact that Google pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship attempts, is one big reason for why I respected Google, in spite of my reservations for them. So let me tell you what I think as an EU citizen that's actively concerned…

> pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship attempts They didn't pull their search engine out of China because of censorship requests, they pulled their search engine because the government kept trying to hack them and steal their source code, which they eventually did. So Google up and left. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303493904575167... They like to cite censorship a…

I don't know one way or the other, but this proves too much. You're talking about this like Google is the Borg and everyone always has the same opinions. It's certainly possible some of the people in the room at the time actually were motivated by free speech issues.

I agree about not trusting corporate PR, but the conclusion is that we don't know the company's motivations and it's probably a mistake to treat it as a consistent entity. Executives come and go. Sometimes they win arguments and sometimes they lose them. Sometimes they change their minds over the years.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#244

Post by betterunix2 »

manigandham wrote: post #67

Why do the 1.4 billion people living there put up with it in the first place? Why they have just made Jinping a lifetime president? Why are they fine with their own Chinese tech companies doing this already? It would help to understand the geopolitical causes of this environment instead of the constant faux outrage over Google doing what any business does, which is provide services in accordance to the laws where the…

"Why do the 1.4 billion people living there put up with it in the first place? Why they have just made Jinping a lifetime president? Why are they fine with their own Chinese tech companies doing this already?"

China is not a democracy, that's why. This should not be a shocking revelation. It is also easy to forget that there was a civil war in China after the Japanese withdrawal, and the American-backed Republic of China lost (they retreated to Taiwan; this is why such a small island is such a big deal to China). That was when the choice was made, and the Chinese people have not had a choice since then.

"It would help to understand the geopolitical causes of this environment"

Have you been living under a rock? China has one of the best-documented systems of censorship and propaganda, operated at the largest scale in human history. The Internet has greatly aided both of those efforts -- the great firewall for censorship, the 50-cent army for propaganda.

This has been explored ad nauseum, and there has been plenty of news about how the Chinese have refined and developed their various methods.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#245

Post by h4b4n3r0 »

I wonder if this will be met with the same intensity of internal backlash as their participation in that DoD object detection competition (AKA project Maven). I mean, helping the authoritarian Chinese government censor the web seems worse than helping the US government recognize whether there are people and cars on the ground.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#246

Post by betterunix2 »

mozey wrote: post #78
manigandham wrote: post #67

Why do the 1.4 billion people living there put up with it in the first place? Why they have just made Jinping a lifetime president? Why are they fine with their own Chinese tech companies doing this already? It would help to understand the geopolitical causes of this environment instead of the constant faux outrage over Google doing what any business does, which is provide services in accordance to the laws where the…

What is the difference between censorship and management of spam, fake news, sock puppet accounts etc?

Simple: when you "manage" real news as if it were fake news, you are engaging in censorship.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#247

Post by lorenzorhoades »

justinzollars wrote: post #178
Mindwipe wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the fact that only a small amount of staff appear to have access to this project and one of them has leaked it for moral reasons suggests rather the opposite tbh.

These employees are heroes. If you are reading this: Thank you for standing up for Human Rights.

Why is software that can be used by the military to more effectively label drone targets a violation of human rights? Bias: I am in the Air Force.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#249

Post by ocdtrekkie »

shazow wrote: post #164
bad_user wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, I did have a problem, I moved off GSuite to FastMail, I moved off Android, I'm a DuckDuckGo user, I went back to Firefox even before the Quantum release. But I had a lot of respect for Google for pulling out of China on censorship considerations and in fairness (unlike others) they seemed fairly responsible with how they treated the data they collect. Their security at least has been top notch, plus I've see…

Except there is clear evidence that FastMail employees are able and willing to read through your personal emails, and they've become actively user-hostile in their support: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1021570521987731458 Make of it what you will, but I worked at Google for a time and I came out more convinced that my data is safer there. This was 2012 so maybe things have changed since then, but we need better…

It seems likely there is significant auditing at FastMail for access. For example, at one time when I asked them to check on why an email wasn't displaying correctly in their client, they asked me to create a folder with a specific name, and put it in that folder[1]. This suggests they have a process to request access to content that logs what is requested, and only displays the content requested.

If you were, as in the tweet, to offer up specific subject lines, they would probably run a search that would only show the employee those subject lines, which you disclosed to them when you offered that information up to them. Not that they were logging into your account and scrolling through your inbox.

I don't consider employees of my mail service accessing my mail on my direct request to help me is a hostile act. I do consider automated reading of my email to profile me[2] on a mass scale to be a hostile act. I probably would not have my email at FastMail if I believed anyone working at FastMail had a vendetta against me, I suppose, but I know for a fact that quite a few Googlers dislike me. :P

[1] I will say I feel like the appropriate way to handle this, which I offered, was to forward them the email in question, since my account was not relevant to the issue.

[2] Note that while Gmail "doesn't use your email for advertising", it does build a Purchases database populated with data from your email in the Account Activity panel, which has literally no justification for existing if they aren't basing ads off of that. So there's a layer of obfuscation there: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#250

Post by 394549 »

afroboy wrote: post #89
quirkot wrote: post #68

Small reminder that companies must submit all source code for review if they do business in China

That seems not believable at all i'd like to see source for that, i find hard to believe Apple, Oracle and such companies that are very protective for their code to submitted to one of most copy past countries in the world.

> That seems not believable at all i'd like to see source for that, i find hard to believe Apple, Oracle and such companies that are very protective for their code to submitted to one of most copy past countries in the world.

The actual implementation is important here. Does the Chinese government require the companies send them a tarball or just the opportunity to inspect it on the companies terms?

If it's the latter, I can see all kind of companies complying. It's not unheard of to allow code inspection and auditing by setting up a secure PC with the code with all the USB ports epoxied shut and no network connection. The inspector using it can read and take notes, but the notes have to be reviewed and cleared by the company before they can be taken away.

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