User:Afgmcdonald/dragonflysandbox

Possible Other Topics:

Baidu Censorship

Xinjiang Censorship

SOURCES:

https://medium.com/@googlersagainstdragonfly/we-are-google-employees-google-must-drop-dragonfly-4c8a30c5e5eb

On November 27, Google employees wrote an article on Medium backing Amnesty International's call for Google to cancel Project Dragonfly. They argued that the project sets a dangerous precedent for similar services in other countries and has direct ramifications for vulnerable groups in China.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/01/tech/google-china-censorship/index.html

In 2006, Google started Google.cn, which was a Chinese language search engine that complied with Chinese censorship laws-- did not show results for things that the government wanted blocked. But, it notified users when the content they wanted to view was censored. Criticism still ensued on the basis that Google was flouting "Don't be evil" and disregarding its commitment to web freedom so it could access a massive customer base. Google's main competitor is the Chinese search engine Baidu. But, in 2010, Chinese hackers targeted Google and other Western companies and hacked the email accounts of Chinese dissidents abroad. This led to political conflict between US and China. Shortly after, in March 2010, Google announced that it was ending its self-censored service and would be directing Chinese users to an uncensored Google platform based in HK. Almost immediately, the Chinese government began blocking citizens' access to certain search results hosted on Google.hk. Google's move was criticized as a de facto withdrawal from China, because they made the switch knowing that the government would begin to censor certain results/ search terms from Google.hk. Google even instituted a dashboard page intended to serve as a running chronicle of the Google services still accessible in China. The benefits of returning to China are significant, as most of Google's revenue are from ads and China boasts 1.4 billion users with less competition for ad revenue, because FB is also blocked there currently.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/google-worker-strike-discussions-on-project-dragonfly-censored-search.html

Google employees have begun to raise money for a strike fund which would support those who decide to leave work in protest over Project Dragonfly. One employee tweeted that she would match up to 100K in donations to the strike fund by her colleagues.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18118711/google-strike-project-dragonfly-fundraising

The motivation for the strike would be if Google "crossed a red line" by launching Dragonfly without the customary review by its Security and Privacy team, or if higher level executives put pressure on the Security and Privacy team to approve the project.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/does-dont-be-evil-still-apply-google/2018/12/04/634f065c-f731-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html?utm_term=.d755844f281a

Over $200K has been raised for the strike so far. Sundar Pichai stated that Google's new platform would "serve well over 99 percent of queries," meaning that only 1% of queries would be blocked.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/07/senator-slams-googles-censored-search-engine-work-in-china.html

Senator Mark Warren (D-VA) said that project dragonfly evidences China's "successful efforts to recruit Western companies to their information control efforts."

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/google-dragonfly-letter/

There was also a pro-dragonfly letter written by Google employees, suggesting that Dragonfly aligned with google's mission to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The unsigned letter acknowledged that Dragonfly had the potential to do more harm than good, but urged Google to continue work on Dragonfly.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/julianvigo/2018/10/18/project-dragonfly-and-googles-threat-to-anti-democratic-processes/#42a92a9f7c47

China is developing a "social credit system" where certain actions improve your score and others dock you. Chinese companies are required to disclose data to the government so that it can be mined and added to the system. There are fears that Google could end up contributing to the social credit system as well.

--> social credit system: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/

https://9to5google.com/2018/10/15/sundar-pichai-project-dragonfly-china/

Sundar Pichai said that Project Dragonfly was initiated as a means to "learn what it would look like if Google were in China." He said that reintroducing Google to China would benefit consumers, because they can deliver better search results than other search engines: "there are many, many areas where we would provide information better than what’s available." He specifically mentioned search results r/e cancer treatments, possibly alluding to the Baidu cancer treatment incident.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-china-will-chinese-users-want-google/

From 2010 to now, China's internet user population increased by 70% to reach 772 M. But, Google knows nothing about those users, which would make its usual strategy of collecting data and running targeted ads difficult. Currently, Baidu has 60% of the search market. Google wouldnt be able to use the strategy of making its search engine a default in a web browser like Chrome, because the Crome download page is blocked in China. But, Google might benefit from the perception that overseas companies are more trustworthy

Old Sections: bold font denotes my additions.

Historical Background section is entirely my work.

Lead
According to press reports, Dragonfly is an Internet search engine app being prototyped by Google that is designed to be compatible with China's state censorship provisions. Unlike previous models of Google Search in China, Dragonfly would not notify users that results or search terms have been censored.

Development
The search engine is reportedly designed to link users' phone numbers to their search queries, and censor websites such as Wikipedia and those that publish information about freedom of speech, human rights, democracy, religion, and other issues considered sensitive by the Chinese government. It is not designed to notify searchers when the information they want has been censored. On September 21, 2018 The Intercept reported the existence of an internal memo authored by a Google engineer showing details about the project. According to a transcript of a July 18 meeting published by The Intercept, Google's search engine chief Ben Gomes stated that although the future was "unpredictable", he wanted the app to be ready to launch in "six to nine months".

Google executives have asserted that Project Dragonfly is "exploratory", "in early stages" and that Google was "not close to launching a search product in China". In a mid-October 2018 presentation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai discussed Dragonfly, saying, "We don't know whether we could or would do this in China, but we felt it was important for us to explore." He praised the prototype, saying '''it would provide better information to users than do the other search engines which currently operate in China. Pichai specifically highlighted Google's ability to provide accurate search results regarding the efficacy of certain medical treatments, perhaps alluding to the death of Wei Zexi, a Baidu user who died after receiving an experimental cancer treatment that he had learned of via a promoted result on that search engine.  Pichai also emphasized that the scope of censorship carried out by the Project Dragonfly prototype is to be quite limited: by Google's calculation, the search engine will be able to return results for 99% of queries by Chinese citizens, and will leave only 1% unanswered.'''

In late November 2018, an engineer who worked on Dragonfly told The Intercept that Google had shut their privacy and security teams out of the Dragonfly project. However, a director of security and privacy at Google said she "saw no sidelining whatsoever." Google issued a statement, saying privacy reviews were "non-negotiable".

Historical Background
Google's relations with China have been fraught since the tech giant's arrival there in 2006. Google's first China-specific platform, Google.cn, was also a self-censored one: like the Dragonfly prototype, it was engineered so as not to return results for topics blacklisted by the Chinese government. Unlike Dragonfly, though, Google.cn was set up to notify searchers when the results they sought had been removed. In response to criticism over that first search engine, Google asserted that "while removing search results is inconsistent with our mission, providing no information is more inconsistent with our mission," referring to the alternative of not servicing Chinese users at all. Google downplayed the extent of Google.cn's censorship, reminding users that it also removes search results from its German, French, and U.S. platforms in order to comply with local government regulations in those countries. Ultimately, Google.cn received tepid acceptance: some commentators even praised the search engine with the logic that Chinese citizens, through conducting searches and observing which results had been removed, could better their understanding of what it was their government did not want them to see.

In January 2010, Google fell victim to Operation Aurora, a sophisticated series of cyberattacks carried out by Chinese hackers who targeted a number of major U.S. corporations, including Yahoo, Adobe, Dow Chemical, and Morgan Stanley. The hackers stole Google source code and gained access to the Gmail accounts of several prominent Chinese human rights activists who were living abroad. In response to both the attack and what then-Google-CEO Sergey Brin called a "broader pattern" of China's surveillance of human rights activists, Google discontinued Google.cn and began rerouting Chinese users to Google.hk, an uncensored (at least on Google's end) search engine based out of Hong Kong. Almost immediately, though, the Chinese government blocked Chinese users' access to certain results produced by that engine. Brin justified Google's sudden policy switch by arguing that operating a search engine in China no longer aligned with Google's goals of advancing internet freedom, as the company was seeing a daily increase in requests for certain topics or search terms to be censored, rather than the other way around. Google faced widespread criticism for the decision which some commentators called a "face saving capitulation": an attempt by Google to take a stand for internet freedom while still preserving their share of the Chinese market. Other critics alleged that Google's shuttering of Google.cn was simply a well-timed business move--made because the company had only a 35% market share after four years in China--which had little to do with either Operation Aurora or Beijing's growing demands for censored content.

Since March 2010, when Google stopped servicing China via Google.cn, China's internet user population has increased by 70%. It currently clocks in at 772 million users, but could grow to 1.4 billion users with time. This means that, for Google, who makes most of its revenue from advertisements run on its search engines, the potential profits of reentering the Chinese search engine market are enormous. Yet, analysts have suggested that if Google does reenter China--either with the Dragonfly prototype or a different search model--it might initially struggle to meet its revenue goals. Google's advertising strategy is highly targeted: it involves collecting data on users' search histories and using that data to select advertisements which are applicable to them. Google has missed out on nearly a decade of data on prospective Chinese users, making that strategy difficult to execute, at least immediately. Additionally, it is not clear that Google would be able to outcompete Chinese search engines such as Baidu and Sogou, which have coveted partnerships with other technology platforms like Windows and WeChat, respectively.

Criticism
Project Dragonfly has been subject to harsh criticism, particularly from Google employees, or Googlers, themselves. Shortly after the publication of the Intercept article leaking the project, 1,400 Google employees signed a letter demanding more transparency about Dragonfly, as well as more say in the nature of the work done by Google in general. In September 2018, Amnesty International released an open letter to Google's management c'''ondemning the project as an "alarming capitulation by Google on human rights." At the end of November 2018, Google employees banded together to author a Medium article which supported Amnesty International's call for Dragonfly to be cancelled. They argued that a Dragonfly launch would set a precedent for the development of censored Google services in other countries, and expressed concern about Dragonfly's potential to contribute to a program of widespread state surveillance in China. China is rumored to have been developing a so-called "social credit system" which assigns each citizen a "score" based on their actions, conducted both online and offline. Purchasing alcohol and jaywalking reduce a citizen's score, for example, while purchasing diapers increases it. Chinese corporations are required by law to disclose the consumer data they collect to the government, presumably in part so it can be used to calculate these scores. Were Dragonfly to become a reality, Google could be compelled to do the same. '''

'Following the publication of the second Intercept'' article alleging that Google bypassed standard security and privacy checks of Dragonfly, Google engineer Liz Fong-Jones tweeted a proposal for Google employees worldwide to go on strike. She wrote that the "red line" for initiating the strike will be crossed if Google launches Dragonfly without conducting a thorough security and privacy review, or if evidence emerges that members of Google's Security and Privacy team were coerced into approving the project. Fong-Jones has started a preemptive "strike fund" intended to support Google employees should they leave their positions, to which Google employees have already donated over $200K. '''

American politicians have also spoken out against Project Dragonfly. In a speech in October 2018, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence called for an end to Google's development of the Dragonfly search engine, and said that, if released, it would strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers. '''In early December 2018, Senator Mike Warren (D-VA) criticized both Beijing and Google for their roles in project, stating that Dragonfly evidences China's success at "recruit[ing] Western companies to their information control efforts." '''

Support
Amid widespread backlash, one contingent of Google employees has expressed its support for the project. A Google employee submitted an unsigned letter to TechCrunch, an online technology news platform, calling for work on Project Dragonfly to continue. The letter stated that Dragonfly aligned with Google's mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Its author(s) admitted that Dragonfly had the power to "do more harm than good," but maintained that ending the project prematurely would mean losing a valuable opportunity to understand "how different approaches may work out in China."