Google's secret 'Dragonfly' project is a major threat to human rights
"This has much wider implications for Google, and for human rights online more generally."
CASEY MICHEL
DEC 11, 2018, 8:00 AM
For years, Google has acted as the model of a Big Tech company with an ethical backbone. Much of that reputation stems from the company’s 2010 decision to leave China entirely, a move Google attributed to its desire to “no longer continue censoring our results” in the face of Chinese government pressure.
Over the past few months, however, Google’s moral standing has plummeted. Thanks to a series of insider leaks and investigations, coupled with concerted pressure from human rights groups, Google’s plans to quietly return to China and aid the Chinese government’s unprecedented censorship regime are no longer secret.
Google’s “Dragonfly” project is a new search engine — one the company claims is only in its earliest stages — that would censor information at the behest of the Chinese government. Dragonfly would not only allow Chinese authorities to prevent citizens from learning about issues like human rights, but it would also, according to one Google employee who resigned in protest, even block access to accurate air quality data.
The development of Dragonfly comes as the Chinese government continues building the world’s largest system of concentration camps globally, disappearing and detaining at least one million Muslims across the country’s western region of Xinjiang. The camps are the latest in the Chinese Communist Party’s lengthy list of human rights abuses, from becoming the global leader in executions to cracking down on Christians to widespread organ harvesting.
https://thinkprogress.org/google-dragonfly-china-censorship-human-rights-fe1fe1ddf55a/
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