Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China

[Swordsmyth]

Google is planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal.
The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.
Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials.
The planned move represents a dramatic shift in Google’s policy on China and will mark the first time in almost a decade that the internet giant has operated its search engine in the country.
Google’s search service cannot currently be accessed by most internet users in China because it is blocked by the country’s so-called Great Firewall. The app Google is building for China will comply with the country’s strict censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable.


The Chinese government blocks information on the internet about political opponents, free speech, sex, news, and academic studies. It bans websites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, for instance, and references to “anticommunism” and “dissidents.” Mentions of books that negatively portray authoritarian governments, like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, have been prohibited on Weibo, a Chinese social media website. The country also censors popular Western social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as American news organizations such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Documents seen by The Intercept, marked “Google confidential,” say that Google’s Chinese search app will automatically identify and filter websites blocked by the Great Firewall. When a person carries out a search, banned websites will be removed from the first page of results, and a disclaimer will be displayed stating that “some results may have been removed due to statutory requirements.” Examples cited in the documents of websites that will be subject to the censorship include those of British news broadcaster BBC and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
The search app will also “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases, the documents state. The censorship will apply across the platform: Google’s image search, automatic spell check and suggested search features will incorporate the blacklists, meaning that they will not recommend people information or photographs the government has banned.
Within Google, knowledge about Dragonfly has been restricted to just a few hundred members of the internet giant’s 88,000-strong workforce, said a source with knowledge of the project. The source spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to contact the media. The source said that they had moral and ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship, which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the company with no public scrutiny.

More at: https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/...ne-censorship/

[Swordsmyth]

Google is not close to launching a search engine app in China, its chief executive told staff on Thursday, the New York Times reported, as employees of the Alphabet Inc unit called for more transparency and oversight of the project. Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told a company-wide meeting that though development is in an early stage, providing more services in the world's most populous country fits with Google's global mission, the report said.
Hoping to gain approval from the Chinese government to provide a mobile search service, the company plans to block some websites and search terms, Reuters reported this month, citing unnamed sources.
Disclosure of the secretive effort has disturbed some Google employees and human rights advocacy organizations. They are concerned that by agreeing to censorship demands, Google would validate China's prohibitions on free expression and violate the "don't be evil" clause in the company's code of conduct.
Hundreds of employees have called on the company to provide more "transparency, oversight and accountability," according to an internal petition seen by Reuters on Thursday.
After a separate petition this year, Google announced it would not renew a project to help the U.S. military develop artificial intelligence technology for drones.
The China petition says employees are concerned the project, code named Dragonfly, "makes clear" that ethics principles Google issued during the drone debate "are not enough."
"We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we're building," states the document seen by Reuters.
The New York Times first reported the petition on Thursday. Google declined to comment.
Company executives have not commented publicly on Dragonfly, and their remarks at the company-wide meeting marked their first about the project since details about it were leaked.
Employees have asked Google to create an ethics review group with rank-and-file workers, appoint ombudspeople to provide independent review and internally publish assessments of projects that raise substantial ethical questions.
Three former employees involved with Google's past efforts in China told Reuters current leadership may see offering limited search results in China as better than providing no information at all.
The same rationale led Google to enter China in 2006. It left in 2010 over an escalating dispute with regulators that was capped by what security researchers identified as state-sponsored cyberattacks against Google and other large U.S. firms.
The former employees said they doubt the Chinese government will welcome back Google. A Chinese official, who declined to be named, told Reuters this month that it is very unlikely Dragonfly would be available this year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/reut...gine-plan.html



"F--- you," said the male Google employee standing at the microphone during a pivotal moment at the company all-hands meeting on Thursday night.
According to three sources in attendance who spoke with Business Insider, the man was addressing whoever within Google was relaying what was said at the gathering in real time to a New York Times reporter. The reporter had posted statements to Twitter that had been made just minutes before by Google's cofounder Sergey Brin and CEO, Sundar Pichai, and her tweets were displayed on a large screen before the gathering.
Sharing what is said during these discussions — known internally as TGIFs — between leaders and employees has long been considered a no-no at Google. Few companies have as much regular open and frank communication about sensitive subjects with their staff, and the thinking is that leaks would make them impossible.
Tweet Embed:
//twitter.com/mims/statuses/1030243849267015681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Sundar speaking to Googlers now at all-hands about Dragonfly: "If we were to do our mission well, we are to think seriously about how to do more in China. That said, we are not close to launching a search product in China."
And that is probably why many inside Google appeared sympathetic to the sentiment expressed by the man at the mic. After he said the profanity and exhorted the leaker to leave, some in the audience applauded, the sources said. The man also received praise on Google's internal communications systems.

Many tech workers now feel they have the opportunity to influence the ways their companies approach ethical questions. Among these movements, one of the most potent tools has been press leaks.
But the practice appeared to backfire Thursday, according to the sources. Not only did the person who shared information to The Times, presumably someone involved with the movement inside Google, hand Pichai and Brin an excuse to stop discussing anything substantive about China at the meeting, but the executives were also made to look victimized by a breach of trust.
All of the sources who talked to Business Insider agreed that the display of the reporters' tweets before the audience stunned the audience and marked a turning point at the meeting. All the momentum and sympathy swung in the direction of management. Some of the sources said they feared the leaks might have a chilling effect on the sharing of information among employees sympathetic to the protests.
One source said the leaker and The Times "overplayed their hand."
Another called it a "stupid mistake" to tweet during the meeting. "It shocked Googlers and it was so unnecessary," the person said. "Why didn't they just wait until after the meeting to publish a full story?"

More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/insid...150532775.html

[Keith and stuff]

It worked so well in the United States. I guess we were the testing ground.

[Danke]

I use a VPN in China. But yeah, google still limits searches. Not like the old days, I hear Duckduckgo is better for finding some stuff google buries.

[Swordsmyth]

A top Google employee has resigned in protest of the company’s work on a censored search engine for China.
The employee, 32-year-old Jack Poulson, who worked as a senior research scientist for Google’s research and machine intelligence division, first raised concerns at the company in early August after documents published by The Intercept first revealed the project’s existence.
Known internally as Dragonfly, the censored search engine would allow the Chinese government to keep its citizens from accessing any data it deems sensitive.

Poulson, who is believed to be one of at least 5 employees to quit over Dragonfly, told The Intercept‘s Ryan Gallagher that he felt an “ethical responsibility to resign” over the “forfeiture of our public human rights commitments.”

Aside from the censored search engine, Poulson also expressed concern over customer data being hosted in China, a country notorious for targeting dissidents.
Poulson laid out his issues with Dragonfly and Google’s direction in a resignation letter to his superiors.
“Due to my conviction that dissent is fundamental to functioning democracies, I am forced to resign in order to avoid contributing to, or profiting from, the erosion of protection for dissidents,” Poulson wrote. “I view our intent to capitulate to censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the market as a forfeiture of our values and governmental negotiating position across the globe.”
The decision to pursue such projects, Poulson further argued, could lead to other authoritarian regimes making similar demands.
“There is an all-too-real possibility that other nations will attempt to leverage our actions in China in order to demand our compliance with their security demands,” Poulson wrote.
Despite growing outcry over Dragonfly, Google has thus far refused to publicly comment on the project, only stating that it does not discuss “speculation about future plans.”

More at: https://www.infowars.com/top-google-...search-engine/

[Swordsmyth]

It's now confirmed that Google's long suspected assistance to the Communist government of China to censor and monitor its citizens' online activity runs deeper and is more proactive that initially thought.
The Intercept published a bombshell report based on internal Google whistle-blower testimony which shows the internet giant plans to launch a search engine for China with censorship capabilities built into it, which provides a backdoor monitoring platform allowing government authorities to track users' entire search history and even their location.
The search system is code-named "Dragonfly," according to a confidential memo outlining the project that circulated inside the company — the contents of which have been leaked to The Intercept by an engineer who worked on the search engine. The Google engineer said that employees were forced by Google bosses to delete the memo as it was authored and circulated among a group voicing concern and dissent over the planned search engine.

The Intercept summarizes the confidential memo's contents as follows:

The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, code-named Dragonfly, would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location — and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have “unilateral access” to the data.

By requiring users to log-in to perform a simple search, system administrators can immediately identify the person behind the search and their profile; and a Chinese partner would then have the capability to “selectively edit search result pages” with few limitations, according to the memo.
The "Chinese partner" — thought to be a private company working in tandem with the Chinese government — will store user information in a database on servers in Taiwan.
A Dragonfly search engine prototype is under development for use as an app on Android and iOS devices, which would require sign-in. According to the leaked memo a user's searches will be linked up with their personal phone number, and thus even their movements and IP addresses associated with the device will be stored.
The confidential "dissent" memo which Google executives have reportedly been relentless in attempting to stamp out accuses the company of creating "spy tools" on behalf of the Chinese government in order to monitor citizens' activity. The Intercept report further describes the specially designed system as removing searches related to democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.
As the nature of the search system became more understood by those brought in to design it, a quiet protest movement within Google headquarters began.
The Intercept report details aggressive tactics by Google's leadership to try and squash the mounting criticism:

According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it.
Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.

The report reveals that censored and black-listed terms for the system are to include words and phrases in Mandarin like “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize”. And a Chinese partner company will be able to “selectively edit search result pages…unilaterally, and with few controls seemingly in place," according to the memo.
Even though Google CEO Sundar Pichai had previously told company employees that plans for a specialized Chinese search system was in its “early stages” and merely "exploratory," the report reveals employees were told in late July they should get the search system in "launch-ready state" to roll out in a matter of weeks, "pending approval from officials in Beijing".
The memo reveals that at least 215 employees have been working full-time on Dragonfly, which is "larger than many Google projects," according to the memo. The memo says further that screenshots of the app “show a project in a pretty advanced state,” and that most details about the project “have been secret from the start.”
A Google employee interviewed by The Intercept noted the duplicitous tactics used even on those tasked with working on the project:“Leadership misled engineers working on [Dragonfly] about the nature of their work, depriving them of moral agency,” the source said.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ommunist-china

[timosman]

[goldenequity]

I use a VPN in China. But yeah, google still limits searches. Not like the old days, I hear Duckduckgo is better for finding some stuff google buries.

sorry...The 'core' search functions of Duckduckgo is G O O G L E.
It's like a stripped down version leaving off some of the invasive 'features' of google.
but
they (DDGo) did NOT 'create' a new 'search engine'.... the 'core' is google.
I use DDG but am under no disillusion about it.

[Swordsmyth]

sorry...The 'core' search functions of Duckduckgo is G O O G L E.
It's like a stripped down version leaving off some of the invasive 'features' of google.
but
they (DDGo) did NOT 'create' a new 'search engine'.... the 'core' is google.
I use DDG but am under no disillusion about it.

I thought DDG used several other search engines besides GOOLAGLE.

[goldenequity]

I thought DDG used several other search engines besides GOOLAGLE.

probably worth a search but that is what I turned up when I was shopping around...
as I look/read now wiki etc... it says it's 'proprietary'. so... really, who knows.
I use DDG just to avoid anything google... google maps, images, translate, chrome etc.
I could find no references now that DDG uses the google core.

[Swordsmyth]

probably worth a search but that is what I turned up when I was shopping around...
as I look/read now wiki etc... it says it's 'proprietary'. so... really, who knows.
I use DDG just to avoid anything google... google maps, images, translate, chrome etc.
I could find no references now that DDG uses the google core.

[timosman]

DDG sends your IP to Google when performing queries.

[Swordsmyth]

DDG sends your IP to Google when performing queries.

They claim that they keep you anonymous, do you have a source we can go to?

[timosman]

They claim that they keep you anonymous, do you have a source we can go to?

Google would refuse to process their queries if they didn't send your IP.

[Swordsmyth]

Google would refuse to process their queries if they didn't send your IP.

They can't send their IP?

[timosman]

They can't send their IP?

They can, but without a special arrangement they will be subject to quotas and served captchas or outright blocked. Nothing like this happens with DDG which indicates an arrangement must be in place and from Google perspective it is the same as if you were blocking cookies on google.com and going to google.com directly.

[Swordsmyth]

They can, but without a special arrangement they will be subject to quotas and served captchas or outright blocked. Nothing like this happens with DDG which indicates an arrangement must be in place and from Google perspective it is the same as if you were blocking cookies on google.com and going to google.com directly.

DDG is still the best alternative I know of, do you know of a better one?

[timosman]

DDG is still the best alternative I know of, do you know of a better one?

No.

[Swordsmyth]

A former Google employee has warned of the firm's "disturbing" plans in China, in a letter to US lawmakers.
Jack Poulson, who had been a senior researcher at the company until resigning in August, wrote that he was fearful of Google's ambitions.
His letter alleges Google's work on a Chinese product - codenamed Dragonfly - would aid Beijing's efforts to censor and monitor its citizens online.
Google has said its work in China to date has been "exploratory".
Ben Gomes, Google's head of search, told the BBC earlier this week: "Right now all we've done is some exploration, but since we don't have any plans to launch something there's nothing much I can say about it."
A report by news site The Intercept last week alleged Google had demanded employees delete an internal memo that discussed the plans.
Google has not commented on the staff row, but said: "We've been investing for many years to help Chinese users, from developing Android, through mobile apps such as Google Translate and Files Go, and our developer tools."
It added: "We are not close to launching a search product in China."
'Censorship blacklist'

Mr Poulson's letter details several aspects of Google's work that had been reported in the press but never officially confirmed by the company. It was submitted to the Senate Commerce Committee, which held a hearing on Wednesday in Washington DC.


The letter alleges Google is working on:

• A prototype interface designed to allow a Chinese joint venture company to search for a given user's search queries based on their phone number
• An extensive censorship blacklist developed in accordance with Chinese government demands. Among others, it contained the English term "human rights", the Mandarin terms for 'student protest' and 'Nobel prize', and very large numbers of phrases involving 'Xi Jinping' and other members of the CCP
• Explicit code to ensure only Chinese government-approved air quality data would be returned in response to Chinese users' search

Mr Poulson said the sum of these efforts amounted to a "catastrophic failure" of Google's internal policies on privacy - as well as going against assurances made to the US trade regulator regarding data protection measures in its products.

More at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45653035

[Brian4Liberty]

Try to search on Google for Dr. Ford’s past...censorship in action.

[Swordsmyth]

Tech experts are turning down job offers from Google over the company’s development of a censored search engine for China.
Ryan Gallagher, who first exposed at The Intercept last month the existence of the “Dragonfly” project, said on Twitter Thursday that he’s received numerous messages surrounding the backlash.
“I’ve had quite a few messages like this one over the last few weeks — people are turning down job offers from Google because of Dragonfly,” Gallagher said.


A partly-redacted email posted by Gallagher shows a once-potential employee declining an opportunity with the tech giant.
“After reading about project Dragonfly… I lost respect for a company I once admired,” the email says.
The secretive app, which would require users to link their identities to searches while being tracked, was also found in a prototype version to censor results for terms such as “Nobel prize” and “human rights,” documents provided to The Intercept revealed.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence weighed in on the issue Thursday during a speech at the Hudson Institute in which he urged Google to “immediately” end the controversial project.
“Google should immediately end development of the ‘Dragonfly’ app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers,” Pence said.

More at: https://www.infowars.com/techs-turn-...rship-project/

[timosman]

https://twitter.com/real_vijay/statu...25526958714881

[Swordsmyth]

A large group of Google employees published an open letter on Medium on Nov. 27 asking for the U.S. tech company to cancel its Dragonfly project with China.

More at: https://worldview.stratfor.com/situa...-project-china

[Swordsmyth]

Q
!!mG7VJxZNCI
ID: 4b6f4d
No.4267057

Dec 11 2018 23:33:44 (EST)

Anonymous
ID: 7aca81
No.4266938

Dec 11 2018 23:23:56 (EST)

Screenshot 2018-12-11_23-23-27-497.jpg


Breaking: Fire breaks out in Raycom Info Tech Park, which houses Google’s office, in the Zhongguancun technology hub in Beijing, China.

https://twitter.com/PMBreakingNews/s...05722746585088

>>4266938

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...-sundar-pichai

Google CEO Says No Plan to ‘Launch’ Censored Search Engine in China"
How do you cover your tracks?
Start a FIRE.
GOOG says NO PLAN TO LAUNCH…….
What if GOOG already gave access to China?
CHINA launch?
WILL CHINA BE ANNOUNCING A STATE-FUNDED & STATE-MADE NEW SEARCH ENGINE IN THE COMING MONTHS?
The FIRE that brought down GOOGLE.

Q

[Swordsmyth]

Q
!!mG7VJxZNCI
ID: 4b6f4d
No.4267248

Dec 11 2018 23:42:39 (EST)

Q
!!mG7VJxZNCI
ID: 4b6f4d
No.4267057

Dec 11 2018 23:33:44 (EST)

>>4266938

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...-sundar-pichai
Google CEO Says No Plan to ‘Launch’ Censored Search Engine in China"
How do you cover your tracks?
Start a FIRE.
GOOG says NO PLAN TO LAUNCH…….
What if GOOG already gave access to China?
CHINA launch?
WILL CHINA BE ANNOUNCING A STATE-FUNDED & STATE-MADE NEW SEARCH ENGINE IN THE COMING MONTHS?
The FIRE that brought down GOOGLE.
Q

>>4267057

GOOG (upcoming) financial statements should receive extra scrutiny [10-Q].
Follow the money.
Help will be provided.

Q

[Swordsmyth]

https://twitter.com/maga_swaga/statu...21710015688709

[enhanced_deficit]

Does this mean US version of engine is uncontrolled?



Related

Rep. Zoe Lofgren grills Google CEO over images search results for "idiot"

[Swordsmyth]

Does this mean US version of engine is uncontrolled?



Related

Rep. Zoe Lofgren grills Google CEO over images search results for "idiot"

It means it is less controlled than what China wants and that it is controlled by the Neofeudalists at GOOLAGLE instead of the ChiCom party.

[Swordsmyth]

When Google told the world back in December that it had abandoned plans to re-launch its search service in China, what it really meant, according to a group of employees who have been monitoring the company's plans, was that it was putting the project on the back burner.
According to the Intercept, which, at this point, has established itself as the preferred venue for disgruntled Alphabet employees seeking to leak damaging information about the company, despite saying it would mothball the project, Google has continued work on some aspects of "Project Dragonfly" - the codename for its self-censoring search engine for the mainland, marking yet another example of the company misleading the press about the project.

Google withdrew from China nearly 10 years ago under pressure from the Communist Party. But CEO Sundar Pichai has apparently decided that access to the world's second-largest economy would be worth tolerating the government's strict restrictions on political speech. Much to the consternation of Pichai, who had apparently hoped to keep the company's plans hush-hush, a group of employees have been closely monitoring internal communications after Google refused to definitively rule out ever returning to China.
They discovered emails sent by "Dragonfly"'s top managers suggesting that some developers have continued to work on the project, rather than being reassigned, as the company had initially promised.

Over the past few quarters, we have tackled different aspects of what search would look like in China. While we’ve made progress in our understanding of the market and user needs, many unknowns remain and currently we have no plans to launch.
Back in July we said at our all hands that we did not feel we could make much progress right now. Since then, many people have effectively rolled off the project while others have been working on adjacent areas such as improving our Chinese language capabilities that also benefit users globally. Thank you for all of your hard work here.
As we finalize business planning for 2019, our priority is for you to be productive and have clear objectives, so we have started to align cost centers to better reflect what people are actually working on.
Thanks again — and your leads will follow up with you on next steps.

However, while the group of rogue employees told the Intercept that they had discovered changes made since the beginning of the year to code belonging to two of the China-focused apps under development, some said these changes might have just been developers tying up loose ends before moving on to other projects.

The employees have been keeping tabs on repositories of code that are stored on Google’s computers, which they say is linked to Dragonfly. The code was created for two smartphone search apps — named Maotai and Longfei — that Google planned to roll out in China for users of Android and iOS mobile devices.
The employees identified about 500 changes to the code in December, and more than 400 changes to the code between January and February of this year, which they believe indicates continued development of aspects of Dragonfly. (Since August 2017, the number of code changes has varied between about 150 to 500 each month, one source said.) The employees say there are still some 100 workers allocated to the “cost center” associated with Dragonfly, meaning that the company is maintaining a budget for potential ongoing work on the plan.
Google sources with knowledge of Dragonfly said that the code changes could possibly be attributed to employees who have continued this year to wrap up aspects of the work they were doing to develop the Chinese search platform.
“I still believe the project is dead, but we’re still waiting for a declaration from Google that censorship is unacceptable and that they will not collaborate with governments in the oppression of their people,” said one source familiar with Dragonfly.

Whether the developers remain focused on Dragonfly or not, the lack of clarity from upper management has been disconcerting, the employees said. For a long time, Google's official motto within its code of conduct was "don't be evil." However, the company removed it last year.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...it-would-scrap

[Swordsmyth]

Google Is Conducting a Secret “Performance Review” of Its Censored China Search Project