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Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

theintercept.com

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Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#141

Post by snaky »

ganzuul wrote: post #103
sunstone wrote: post #61

It seems Google has now strayed far from the "don't be evil" path. First came the illegal agreement not to hire from other tech companies, then the "say nothing to no one" employment agreement all employees have to sign and now this product the help Mr. Xi put the jack boot to every neck in China. I've probably missed a few, please fill in the blanks if you can. To a large extent Google's business, like Enron's befor…

Less colored than your take, but; Each time they cancel a beta, a vast amount of engineering work gets laid to waste. These engineers could be making the world a better place in other industries.

Or worse place. In other industries.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#142

Post by stock_toaster »

patrickaljord wrote: post #108
mlindner wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't store iMessage messages in the cloud. Those are stored on the device and have end to end encryption. That has always been true and will continue to be true.

Last time I checked, if I forget my iCloud password, Apple can send me a new one. This means Apple holds the private key to decrypt whatever I store on iCloud. iMessages on my phones are encrypted though but that's not what OP was talking about.

If iCloud backup is disabled, the device-specific-messages-key is not stored in icloud.

ref: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

> Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures you can recover your Messages if you lose access to iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#143

Post by yourbandsucks »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #136
justicezyx wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Chinese are putting people into concentration camps on the basis of their ethnicity or religion, many are dying and their organs are being harvested A few glossy points are made here that rides on a racial or national stereotype. 1. It was Chinese government put people in concentration camp, not Chinese. In the current political atmosphere, I am very cautious to draw this line as a Chinese myself, for the fear…

#1 is a good point, but in my experience, 'The Governments' approach to Tibetans, Uighurs etc. has the general tacit support of 'The Chinese' and by that I should say 'Han'. Han ethno-nationalism is total and out in the open, it's normative. I suggest most of non-minority China actually supports much of this. As far as #2, it's splitting hairs. People are put in jail because of their ethnicity or faith, and one way o…

And plenty of American overreactions to terror attacks also had broad support. Same for the Russians, the British, the French..

It's definitely interesting that Chinese nationals were almost universally for dragonfly and yet the "progressive" activists didn't care at all, preferring to pivot the topic into nationalist rivalry. Ask them in a vacuum and they'd say they treasure diverse perspectives..

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#144

Post by sonnyblarney »

manfredo wrote: post #137
sonnyblarney wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that there are cultural differences, and that 'good has been done' in the past, surely there is a cultural context. And FYI - any otherwise civilized place that was held back by totalitarian communists, or ruined by war was able to 'bounce back'. All of Europe was in ruin in 1945 - they also grew by 'leaps and bounds' after that time. China just had to wait for Mao to die. More poignantly - none of this…

I think you're missing the point. Ask the question "What is the most effective way of curbing sectarian violence?". Both Chinese and Westerners agree that sectarian violence is bad - that's the same underlying ethical value. But the answer to that question will probably differ. At least in the US we try to curb sectarian violence by promoting tolerance and integration. Historically that had worked pretty well for us,…

No, I'm definitely not missing your point, I'm disagreeing, fyi and your comment is shocking and repulsive.

You are justifying, on cultural grounds, the mass incarceration of a minority because 'they could pose a potential social problem, even though they are not presently' which is abhorrent.

Yes a 'cultural context' of Han ethnocentric racism and open bigotry, perhaps, but of course this isn't really justifying anything.

There is no rationalization for arbitrarily incarcerating massive parts of the population, it basically doesn't make any sense at all.

Especially considering the none of the Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uighurs represent any threat to China's peace in the first place.

Every place on Earth has had some degree of calamity or violence in the past, and China has definitely had it's share of mass murder (giving and receiving), there's no shortage of this in their own history books, if anything they should be even more enlightened about it all.

There are no cultural arguments that can be made here, the situation, particularly because of the deaths and subsequent organ harvesting, is approaching 'holocaust' terms.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#145

Post by ekanes »

iaw wrote: post #80

> Scott Beaumont, Google’s leader in China and a key architect of the Dragonfly project, “did not feel that the security, privacy, and legal teams should be able to question his product decisions,” If I was more eloquent I'd draw some analogy between Scott Beaumont's behavior and China...

Interesting. A friend was just telling me about how inside Apple, the privacy and security teams have special powers. They can shut things down if they put customer data at risk, or allow them conditionally based on needed changes, etc. Very different culturally.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#146

Post by [deleted] »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #144
manfredo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. Ask the question "What is the most effective way of curbing sectarian violence?". Both Chinese and Westerners agree that sectarian violence is bad - that's the same underlying ethical value. But the answer to that question will probably differ. At least in the US we try to curb sectarian violence by promoting tolerance and integration. Historically that had worked pretty well for us,…

No, I'm definitely not missing your point, I'm disagreeing, fyi and your comment is shocking and repulsive. You are justifying, on cultural grounds, the mass incarceration of a minority because 'they could pose a potential social problem, even though they are not presently' which is abhorrent. Yes a 'cultural context' of Han ethnocentric racism and open bigotry, perhaps, but of course this isn't really justifying any…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#147

Post by burtonator »

These ethical dilemmas are really confusing for me.

One one had I don't want to be part of this type of behavior but it's just going to give China the opportunity to fund a Google competitor to do it for them...

I think it's lose/lose for Google.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#148

Post by burtonator »

True story...

I run a web crawling company named Datastreamer where we license data to social media monitoring firms.

We're very white hat... Don't even like to mess around with grey hat areas as we don't want something like the Cambridge Analytica situation coming back to bite us in the ass.

About 1.5 years ago we were contacted by a 3rd party firm which we eventually found out was a cut out for Saudi Arabia.

The deal was at least $350k per year but we never got down to final negotiation. They wanted a LOT of data and also custom support and engineering. It could have easily hit $1M which is a lot of money and would have been a significant percentage of our revenue.

About a month into conversations the questions became a bit disturbing. It was clear to me that they were interested in tracking ethic minorities and trying to track down their physical location.

... you can read between the lines in the RFP.

After finding out what happened to Khashoggi I'm VERY happy about my decision.

They were using this technology to harass him on social media and I'm sure are and were tracking other people.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#149

Post by baroffoos »

purple_ducks wrote: post #127
guelo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It certainly isn't a human right. Freedom of expression is in Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Not debating whether or not it is a right but the UN isn't the world's moral authority. I view them as an un-elected advisory group.

In that case you can't say if someone is or isn't a moral right. Its up to opinion and its easy to see how many people consider it a moral right.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#150

Post by baroffoos »

krackers wrote: post #53
gresrun wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep Packet Inspection [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

Doesn't TLS defeat this?

The government can just block all encrypted connections. Either switch to unencrypted or enjoy no internet.
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