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We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

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Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#561

Post by bduerst »

kodablah wrote: post #432
tomlagier wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont forget AAPL! (who hesitated, but ended up capitulating on the iCloud front). I think the moral of the story here is that it's better to sell out from day 1 than to be seen as a hypocrite.

> who hesitated Source? I was not aware there was any hesitation or even disagreement from Apple's side. Is there an Apple statement saying they disagree w/ Chinese government requests similar to the statements saying they disagree w/ US government requests? In their absence, is it safe to assume they agree since they have shown that when they disagree they make public statements?

They didn't really hesitate, they just dodged questions. Apple moved their user data and keystore to local datacenters in China [1]. Apple even updated their TOS and forced their Chinese users to accept (or drop service) to reflect this.

As of July, these datacenters were nationalized [2], giving the Chinese government access to all Apple user data.

It took only two years to go from refusing the FBI request for one user to handing over the encryption keys to millions of users.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

[2] https://mashable.com/article/china-government-apple-icloud-d...

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#562

Post by [deleted] »

tomschlick wrote: post #558
sdenton4 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly the riot cop problem. On the cop side, the more armor you have, the less you see and the more hostile the world /seems/; this increases the chance of using force instead of diplomacy in any given situation. On the civilian side, you get to feel like you live in a goddamned war zone, with the police as combatants. It's not a nice feeling. My own approach is to treat cops as large, gun-wielding wild animal…

> this increases the chance of using force instead of diplomacy in any given situation. I'm not sure diplomacy works when someone is actively shooting at you or other people. If people are rioting (actually rioting, not protesting) then I honestly don't care how the presence of a MRAP makes them feel. It's the police's job to stop the riot and they need tools to do that. > I'm not going to call the cops for anything…

[deleted]

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#564

Post by bduerst »

beams_of_light wrote: post #490

If you think that denying information to Chinese people because their Orwellian government demands it is the same as the stone you use to grind your obviously conservative axe on, you may need to pause and think a bit more on it.

Even if Google did not remove blacklisted sites from results, users clicking on the link would still not be able to load the site because it's China censoring the content, not Google.

How do you feel about Google respecting the EU's right to be forgotten? Over 40,000 requests from politicians have been received to remove themselves from search results. Do you agree with Google abiding by this form of censorship?

Which is better - access to the information that's made available, or access to no information at all?

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#565

Post by kirkules »

nrook wrote: post #438
scarface74 wrote: post #341

And if the employees placed thier values over profits, why are they still there? I wonder if they are going to refuse their stock based compensation?

Collective action by employees can be more effective than a boycott. These Google employees clearly believe there is a chance they can change Google's actions by writing this open letter. Employee activism has changed Google's behavior before, so there is reason to think this strategy might work.

I agree. Sometimes saying people should avoid working for a company, which does some things they don't like and some things they do like, sounds like telling people to leave the US if they don't like the current state of affairs. It may be a valid choice for some people, but it's not the only (or even the most effective) way to work against the company doing the things they don't like.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#566

Post by Multicomp »

tomschlick wrote: post #559
simplify wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add the question of, can a civilian buy it and use it on the streets? Just owning one in a garage doesn't really mean anything.

I have personally seen Humvee's driving on the roads so I dont see why not. Basically an MRAP is just a big truck so as long as it didn't break any traffic laws (too wide, too heavy, etc) then I'd assume its fine. Would depend per state though.

Anecdote from 6 months ago: Humvees are often sold without title for $4K to $8K in GA. Titled vehicles (the ones that can legally drive on public roads) go for $22k for a beater on up.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#568

Post by garmaine »

gfo wrote: post #237
garmaine wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used the internet in China? There is no meaningful presence of foreign companies. They’re already kicked out.

Not disagreeing with you, but with a lot of our manufacturing happening in China there is definitely a different kind of presence. But still, not sure if they would give up the low cost of manufacturing for this. Frankly, the regime makes that possible.

Are there? You can’t open a business in China without it being majority Chinese owned. There are plenty of companies doing their manufacturing in China, but every example I know of the wforeigb company contracts the Chinese company to do the manufacturing. Often they’re even further removed, such as Apple who works with a Taiwanese company who just happens to have their manufacturing in China.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#569

Post by brandall10 »

WalterSear wrote: post #407
maemilius wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing people might be easy, but it's never cheap - even in industries with an abundance of candidates. The real issue with having your work-force leave is three-fold. First, you lose all the accumulated knowledge of your team. Second, you lose the cohesiveness of your team. Thirdly, you have to _pay to get a new team_. All of these things conspire to make all but the lowliest of jobs (think Target Associate) much…

Fourth, your potential employees know what happened to your previous employees.

Fifth, many of your remaining employees may be inspired to jump ship to a FAAN if the worst comes to pass. Much easier to be a silent follower than a vocal leader.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#570

Post by nicodjimenez »

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Google's leadership has a responsibility for doing what they think are best for the long term prospects of the company.

In the grand scheme of things, yet another censored search engine in China is not going to hurt anyone.

China can run their country however the hell they want. YOU may not agree with their values, but THEY might not agree with yours.

The irony is that Google is hardly known as a company that values free speech - look at what happened to James Damore.

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