Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#171

Post by lern_too_spel » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

jmeng0122 wrote: post #92

gowld wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just censorship. It never was. Dragonfly also includes actively assisting the Chinese Communist Party in identifying and persecuting people who look for information about freedom or for information about crimes committed by the Party/government

any article or press to support your claims?

Searches would be linked to identifiable information for logged in users: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-l...

The Chinese government would be able to access that data through Google's joint venture partner in China who actually controls the data.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#172

Post by joyeuse6701 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #132

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

Agreed. And let’s not forgot that China used to have an open internet. It was not until the xinjiang riots around 2009 that google and others got blocked.

Not true, I was in China prior to 2009 and a VPN was required.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#173

Post by threezero » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

zhenjier wrote: post #163

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. So what? That does not make censorship morally acceptable. This would be the same as saying that using slave labor is ok, if you do it in a country that already accepts slavery anyway, and you are treating you slaves better. > And by surfacing better information for queries, it ca…

As a Chinese, educated in US(otherwise you may say I'm brain washed heh). Your comment disgusts me. Western value is not global value, what you see wrong is not absolutely wrong elsewhere. Even if the West is the current domination power in the world it doesn't give it the right to push its value onto other civilizations. So let me ask you this, how arrogant and ignorant is it for you to tell us what is right and wro…

Wait, are you saying that organ harvesting and Muslim re-education camps are just different cultural values, and no one should judge China for it?

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#174

Post by AlexandrB » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

Much of Google’s revenue comes from the ability to track individual users. A Chinese Google Search would not be any more censored than Baidu, but it may be a much richer source of information for Chinese law enforcement agencies.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#175

Post by dirtyid » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

inferiorhuman wrote: post #166

khc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could. Do you know that's the case? China allows a lot of foreign investments and to think that the only reason is to further their censorship is silly.

They could. Do you know that's the case? China allows a lot of foreign investments and to think that the only reason is to further their censorship is silly. And to think that Google would never submit to Chinese censorship in earnest is naive. Yahoo![1], Google, Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Skype, and Nortel all willingly partook in aiding the censorship apparatus. Yahoo! even went so far as to out journalists and politic…

The question is not whether they would do the same - but whether they would the practice to other regions. Did Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Skype, and Nortel?

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#176

Post by cwkoss » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

I think this sort of attitude is how most of the evils in the world are justified by those perpetrating and excusing them.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#177

Post by Wowfunhappy » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #146

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

Agreed. Some of the criticism of the censorship also shows a underlying lack of understanding how search engines works. The Chinese firewall blocks the websites, not the search engines. What was Google supposed to to? Show links to dead sites that don't load in the browser?

> What was Google supposed to to? Show links to dead sites that don't load in the browser?

All other operational problems aside: Yes, I think that would be great! Let users know what their government is censoring.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#178

Post by pteredactyl » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

I don't follow. If Google helps entities that censor, they censor, or at least are complicit in some way.

Further, there's the whole 'national security' angle. Whether real or imagined, some people don't like the idea of US entities helping foreign entities gain a competitive advantage.

Not sure how pointing to a feigned moral superiority of 'those who stick their noses up' helps your argument either.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#179

Post by themacguffinman » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

ezoe wrote: post #98

peteretep wrote: post #41

To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.

Both US and EU exercise censorship in the name of: + copyrights + trademarks + patents(really bogus patents) + religion(these days, US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game) + national security + ex-political party symbol(swastika, but they can't tell the difference between nazi symbol and Buddism symbol which is widely used in Japanese…

A lot of this isn't even true, especially in the US where Google is based.

Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are not censorship, they are actually designed to encourage the exposure of information (copyrighted/trademarked/patented information is free to view, that's the foundation of the concept) by promising restrictions on third party usage of the information, which is a concern for creators who avoid sharing their knowledge for fear of theft.

The US doesn't actually have any religious censorship laws (if you know of any, please link them) that cares about offence taken by religious believers. If private creators are modifying their own creations to sell better to a US audience, that has nothing to do with US censorship.

The US grants irrevocable protections to the press in publishing even sensitive and national security critical information. The US press voluntarily consults the government on the national security impact of publishing sensitive material, but the government has no legal avenue to actually prevent the press from publishing it. Demonstrations of this are pretty famous, like the Pentagon Papers. There are also whistleblower protections.

The US has no censorship laws on political symbols like the swastika, IIRC that's specifically a German thing.

Fictional child pornography such as the commercial Japanese manga/anime/games you mentioned is explicitly allowed under US law; US law specifically carves out an exception for fictional works, and the US Supreme Court has cemented this with precedent. Note: these exceptions have definitely been weakened in recent decades by the "PROTECT Act of 2003".

Feel free to correct me on details, but a lot of censorship you list here just isn't happening in the West, and definitely isn't happening in the US where Google is physically and culturally based. The level and breadth of censorship simply isn't comparable to China's.

Furthermore, "moral based on your culture" absolutely matters. To portray censorship as okay because it's based on differing morals based on differing cultures is ridiculous. Would you approve of US-committed atrocities if it was based on US culture?

Edit: removed references to whataboutism because after reconsidering the context, I think the parent comment is less of a deflection that I initially perceived.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#180

Post by dirtyid » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #112

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

If Google had more business in China, the CCP could blackmail them into censoring their results in other countries as well. Just look at how the CCP bullied international airlines about Taiwan, the laws being awfully vague hasn't helped one bit. Letting the CCP export its censorship back into the West in the hopes that Google will improve life in China is a hell of a gamble.

>bullied international airlines

Airlines only remove Taiwanese paraphernalia when flights operates in China - you know complying to domestic Chinese laws. That's completely reasonable stuff that doesn't extend beyond Chinese borders. Has Bing exported censorship back to the West. Has EU right to be forgotten even made it's way to US and Canada? This is just fear mongering.