Google’s announcement that they were hacked in December, reminds us how bad people can do nasty things with new digital tools. I recently had the pleasure of sharing a platform with Evgeny Morozov, who has been warning us how totalitarians can use the Internet to watch us on the web for some time. Evgeny made a strong case for technology companies showing a lead in human rights. He was also critical of liberal minded Western geeks wearing rose tinted glasses when peering into the future of the Internet. Here’s an extract from his recent article in Prospect:
“So how do repressive governments use the internet? As we have seen, the security services can turn technology against the logistics of protest. But the advent of blogging and social networking has also made it easier for the state to plant and promote its own messages, spinning and neutralising online discussions before they translate into offline action. The “great firewall of China,” which supposedly keeps the Chinese in the dark, is legendary.”
Google’s discovery that the attack was an attempt to hack the Gmail accounts of known Chinese dissidents will shock many. It’s clearly had a deep impact on the bosses of the company. They’re ending their much derided policy of censoring search results in China. We should all applaud them for this brave corporate move.
And we should also use their lead to put pressure on other technology companies to stop all this nonsense once and for all. Apple should go next. They should refuse to censor the Dalai Lama applications from their App store.
I’m tabling an Early Day Motion in the Commons on this issue. Here’s the draft:
This House notes with concern Google’s announcement that their corporate infrastructure was attacked from sources originating in China and that the primary reason for the attempted hack was to target private email accounts of human rights activists; congratulates Google on the decision to end their policy of censoring search results in China; believes that other technology companies should follow Google’s lead by refusing to collaborate with demands to censor their activities.
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Similarly, we should not permit other governments from using the same technologies in the same ways as those widely recognised as repressive.
Especially our own.
Well done Tom, Now, will you enter an early day motion to deplore the actions of the Foreign Secretary in refusing to support the Tibetan People in the right to a free nation and an end to the Chinese policy of genocide of Tibetans?
Right, but let’s start a little closer to home by promoting encrypted traffic on our own national networks to prevent snooping by anyone shall we?
I’d like to see a Google without any censorship too. We’ll start with one that’s immune from US laws like the DMCA, and dubious leverage that is used to black out certain parts of Google Earth.
Then we’ll criticize China from some form of moral high ground.
What about a motion or royal commission into Chinese industrial espionage and whether Chinese gov’s protectionism of its coys falls afoul of global trade rules?
Perhaps it is time for Chinese coys operating or buying in UK/EU to be subject to more stringent Government control regulations?
[...] The motion will also call on other technology companies to follow Google’s lead, Watson wrote on his blog on [...]
Hopefully Google have laid down a gauntlet to their western competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo!, who are still operating in China and still complying with the authorities’ censorship demands.
It’s easy for people to be cynical about Google’s motives but their announcement will surely embarass the Chinese authorities and prompt further discussion of censorship in China, maybe even wider issues of corporate complicity in human rights abuses.
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