To mark Internet Freedom Day, a coalition of Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur and human rights groups held protests on January 18 outside Google offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark.They were calling on the company to scrap its controversial plans to develop a censored search engine in China, Project Dragonfly.
The protest, which hit the international press, was part of a wider campaign by these groups to urge Google executives to officially close Project Dragonfly. If Dragonfly goes ahead, Google will create a search engine that complies with the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s internet censorship laws; this would facilitate state surveillance in China by linking users’ search history with their telephone numbers.
A Google employee who wanted to remain anonymous is quoted by the Tibet Society as saying,“It’s quite a big topic. It’s a big topic inside as well”. Another said, “It’s a good cause. Keep going”. Significant opposition to Project Dragonfly has been reported from within Google. Thousands of staff members have circulated letters expressing their concerns, leaked information to the press and in some cases resigned in protest.
Gloria Montgomery, Director of the Tibet Society in London, said: “Our conversations with Google employees in London today reinforced just how many of its staff members vehemently oppose Project Dragonfly[…] Google’s executives must urgently listen to its employees’ concerns.”
The campaign is ongoing; over 54,000 people have signed a SumOfUspetition addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, calling on him to halt Project Dragonfly and commit the company to a free and open Internet. Sondhya Gupta, Senior Campaigner at SumOfUs, said, “Google continues to collect and profit from the data of its millions of users […] Project dragonfly would normalise tech giants’ complicity in human rights abuses: Google must cancel it immediately.”
Student activists from Students for Free Tibet
Dorjee Tseten, Students for a Free Tibet, said, “Freedom of expression, online and offline, is virtually non-existent in Tibet and this action of Google will further lead into arresting or imprisoning people simply for expressing their views online which make the company complicit in human rights violations.”
The Intercept, a news organisation that covers national security, politics, civil liberties, technology and the media, said that although Google said they had “effectively ended” the project in December, Google bosses have not publicly stated that they will cease development of Dragonfly and have refused to rule out launching the search engine at some time in the future.
The campaign continues. The protestors have said that they will continue to demonstrate “until Google executives confirm that Project Dragonfly has been cancelled, once and for all.”
Print
Email