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About thirty-five Google programmers, technicians and managers complained in an open letter about Dragonfly, a Google project in which a Chinese search engine is under development. They demand that Google unplug the machine
A group of thirty-five signatories denounces the censorship that is part of the search engine. According to Google's critical employees, this technology allows power holders to suppress the weak in a society. They explain that their criticism is not about China, but about technology. it is said that there are more and more governments in the world trying to suppress freedom of opinion.
According to the signatories, the search engine will lead to state surveillance. They fear that if Dragonfly ends up in China, it creates a dangerous precedent. Google would then make concessions less quickly with other countries that also removed freedom of expression. In addition, critical staff believe that the search engine facilitates the dissemination of misinformation by the government and helps to silence marginalized groups.
In the letter, worried employees claim to be part of thousands of Google employees involved, including reference to critics of human rights organizations and investigative journalists . They join the call of Amnesty International to cancel Dragonfly. Amnesty has appealed through a petition to oppose Google's plans. According to the organization The Intercept, the human rights organization will hold protests, including in a Google office in the Netherlands.
Google employees say they have decided to join the resistance because they no longer use Google. consider it a company that values its values more than the chances of making a profit. To motivate the call, the group also reports other "disappointments" from Google, such as Project Maven, a project in which artificial intelligence would be used to classify the Pentagon's UAV images.
responded unsatisfactorily to criticism. They are probably referring to statements by Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, who had previously stated that he did not publish a search engine in China at the moment. He made this statement after 1400 Google employees sent a critical letter in August
In the current letter, the signatories say Google is too powerful not to be held responsible. Employees also say that they have the right to know what they are building and that they want to have their say in such important decisions.
The Dragonfly Project is a censored version of a search application that Google would like to publish in China. For example, this Android application would censor search results on topics such as human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protests, in accordance with the wishes of the Chinese government.
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