Google employees push to stop the Dragonfly project

REUTERS: Eleven employees including engineers and officials at Google Alphabet Inc. issued an open letter Tuesday urging the company to stop the development of a censored search engine for Chinese users, by stepping up earlier protests against the secret project.

Google described the search application, known as Project Dragonfly, as an experience that was not close to launch. But since details have been leaked since August, current and former employees, human rights defenders and US lawmakers have criticized Google for not taking a tougher stance against the Chinese government's policy that politically sensitive results are blocked.

The human rights group Amnesty International also on Tuesday launched a public petition calling Google to cancel Dragonfly. The organization said it would encourage Google workers to sign the petition by targeting them on LinkedIn and demonstrating in front of Google offices.

About 1,400 of the tens of thousands of Google employees have asked the company to improve the monitoring of ethically dubious companies, including Dragonfly.

Google has long sought to be more present in China, the largest Internet market in the world. It needs government approval to compete with the country's major local Internet services.

Employees who signed their names on Tuesday's letter said they have seen little progress and expect more colleagues to publicly support Dragonfly's cancellation.

The letter expresses concern that the Chinese government is tracking dissidents with the help of research data and is suppressing the truth through content restrictions.

"We oppose technologies that help the powerful to oppress the vulnerable, wherever they are," said the employees in a letter published on the Medium blogging service.

Employees said that they no longer believed Google was "a company willing to place its values ​​above profits," and cited a series of "disappointments" this year, including the recognition of a considerable gain for an officer accused of sexual harassment.

This incident triggered global protests at Google, which, like other major technology companies, has seen an acceleration of employee activism over the past two years as their services become integral part of the civic infrastructure.

Google was not immediately available to comment.

(Report by Paresh Dave in San Francisco, edited by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)