{"id":37833,"date":"2018-09-16T07:04:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T12:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37833"},"modified":"2018-09-16T07:04:19","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T12:04:19","slug":"google-engineers-quit-after-secretive-china-project-links-phone-number-to-searches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37833","title":{"rendered":"Google Engineers Quit After Secretive China Project Links Phone Number To Searches"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Google Engineers Quit After Secretive China Project Links Phone Number To Searches<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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A prototype of Google’s censored search engine for China links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers<\/strong>, “thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries,” reports\u00a0The Intercept<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Photo: Alex Castro \/ The Verge<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The search engine, codenamed Dragonfly<\/em>, revolves around the Android platform and is designed to remove content deemed by government officials to be sensitive or offensive<\/strong> – such as information about protests, free speech, political dissidents, democracy and human rights violations.<\/p>\n

Sources familiar with the project said that prototypes of the search engine\u00a0linked the\u00a0search app on a user\u2019s Android smartphone with their phone number<\/strong>. This means individual people\u2019s searches could be easily tracked \u2013 and any user seeking out information banned by the government could potentially be at risk of interrogation or detention\u00a0if security agencies were to obtain the search records from Google.<\/p>\n

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the search platform also appeared to have been tailored to replace weather and air pollution data with information provided directly by an unnamed source in Beijing. The Chinese government has a record of manipulating details about pollution in the country\u2019s cities. One Google source said the company had built a system, integrated as part of Dragonfly, that was \u201cessentially hardcoded to force their [Chinese-provided] data.\u201d<\/strong> –The Intercept<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“This is very problematic from a privacy point of view, because it would allow far more detailed tracking and profiling of people\u2019s behavior,” says Human Rights Watch senior internet research Cynthia Wong. “Linking searches to a phone number would make it much harder for people to avoid the kind of overreaching government surveillance that is pervasive in China.”<\/p>\n

Human rights groups have slammed Dragonfly,\u00a0<\/em>insisting that it could result in Google “directly contributing to, or [becoming] complicit in, human rights violations.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

Google engineers agree – and they’ve been resigning\u00a0over the ethical concerns with the project.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google Engineers Quit After Secretive China Project Links Phone Number To Searches A prototype of Google’s censored search engine for China links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers, “thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries,” reports\u00a0The Intercept.\u00a0 Photo: Alex Castro \/ The Verge The search engine, codenamed Dragonfly, revolves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120,130,21682,378,21681,4318],"class_list":["post-37833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-china","tag-dragonfly","tag-google","tag-search-engine","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37834,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37833\/revisions\/37834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}