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Google has built a censored search engine prototype for China, which would link users' searches to their home phone numbers, making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor its citizen requests.
The application-based project, dubbed Dragonfly, would also remove content deemed sensitive by the authoritarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party, including information on freedom of expression, dissidents, peaceful protests and human rights, reported The Intercept.
Previously unknown details about Dragonfly included a blacklist of censorship that Google compiled and included terms such as "Student Protest" and "Nobel Prizes" in Mandarin.
Human rights organizations have criticized Dragonfly and seven engineers have resigned to protest the lack of accountability and transparency of the controversial project.
HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS PRESS GOOGLE TO ABANDON CITED RESEARCH IN CHINA
"It's very problematic from a privacy perspective, because it would allow much more detailed tracking and profiling of people's behavior," said Cynthia Wong, an internet researcher with Human Rights Watch. "Tying searches to a phone number would make it much harder for people to avoid the kind of excessive government oversight that is pervasive in China."
Fox News asked Google to comment and received the following statement from a spokesman on Sunday:
"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, as well as our development tools. But our research work has been exploratory and we are not about to launch a research product in China. "
Last August, more than a dozen human rights groups sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai asking him to explain how Google was protecting Chinese users from censorship and surveillance.
The search giant told Fox News that it "has been investing for many years to help Chinese users, from the development of Android, to mobile applications such as Google Translate and Files Go, as well as our development tools. . But our research work has been exploratory and we are not about to launch a research product in China. "
GOOGLE EMPLOYEES LEAVE CHINESE RESEARCH ENGINE PROJECT
In 2010, Google announced that it was leaving China, citing the censorship tactics of the communist country as the reason for its decision.
However, Pichai said he wants the world's most widely used search engine to serve China's 800 million Internet users.
Chris Ciaccia of Fox News contributed to this report.
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