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Google employees have renewed their public protests against "Project Dragonfly", a censored search application and monitoring that Google would build for the Chinese market. An open letter, now published on Medium, indicates that Dragonfly would make Google complicit in human rights abuses by the Chinese government. He urges Google executives to cancel the project and accuses them of ignoring repeated complaints from employees.
More than a thousand Google employees signed a protest letter against Dragonfly in August. This new Medium message focuses on similar concerns, but is posted online rather than distributed internally. "Google management has not responded to employees who have been asking questions for months," the report says. "Until now, there have been no satisfactory answers."
The letter describes Dragonfly's main problems: it would help the Chinese government to extend its already extensive surveillance system and indicate that Google is ready to capitulate to other governments that want to censor the Internet.
The decision of our company comes at a time when the Chinese government is openly expanding its supervisory powers and control mechanisms of the population. Many of them rely on cutting-edge technologies and combine online activity, personal recordings and mbad surveillance to track and profile citizens. Reports already show who bears the costs, including Uyghurs, women's rights advocates and students. The fact of giving the Chinese government quick access to user data, as required by Chinese law, would make Google complicit in oppression and human rights violations.
The dragonfly would also allow censorship and misinformation led by the government and destabilize the truth on which popular deliberation and dissent lie. Given the crackdown on dissent by the Chinese government, such controls would likely be used to silence marginalized people and promote information that favors the interests of the government.
We refuse to build technologies that help the powerful to oppress the vulnerable wherever they are. The Chinese government is certainly not alone in wanting to stifle freedom of expression and use surveillance to crack down on dissent. Dragonfly in China would set a dangerous precedent, which would prevent Google from denying other countries similar concessions.
Google has spoken little about Dragonfly, but many reports have detailed its planned features, ranging from blocking specific keywords like "human rights" to creating links between searches and users' phone numbers. Its existence has led a former principal investigator, Jack Poulson, to resign in protest. The new letter is currently signed by 11 employees, including Meredith Whittaker, head of Google Open Research.
This letter comes as Amnesty International protesters gather in front of Google offices to protest against Dragonfly. In a press release, Joe Westby, a researcher in technology and human rights, described the application as "decisive moment for Google". The release of Dragonfly would cancel a decision made in 2010 when Google withdrew from China to avoid working with government censors.
Many of us have accepted a job at Google keeping in mind the company's values, including its previous position on Chinese censorship and surveillance, and understanding that Google was a company willing to place its values in above his profits. After a year of disappointment, including the Maven project, Dragonfly and Google's support for the abusers, we no longer think it is. That's why we take a stand.
We join Amnesty International in demanding the cancellation of Dragonfly. We also demand that leaders commit to transparency, clear communication and real responsibility. We deserve to know what we are building and we deserve to have our say in these important decisions.
Employees from other companies previously used Medium to highlight the issues: Amazon and Microsoft employees posted letters about him, raising concerns about military contracts last month. And as the letter says, Google has angered its employees several times this year. He signed an agreement with the US government for a military AI system called Project Maven, which was arrested after protests. Thousands of Google employees have also protested the company's treatment of badual badault and harbadment charges, prompting Google to change the way it deals with badual misconduct.
When he was contacted to comment, a Google spokesman said The edge to a previous comment. "We have been investing for many years to help Chinese users, from the development of Android to mobile applications such as Google Translate and Files Go, and our development tools. But our research work has been exploratory and we are about to launch a research product in China, "he says.
Update 10:00 ET: Add Google comment.
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