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Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China
- IBM 8y agoRyan Gallagher seems to own this story like John Carreyrou did Theranos. Pretty much every scoop about Dragonfly has been reported by him.
- yuhong 8y agoI began working on the Google DoubleClick Mozilla essay earlier in the year, though I am not as famous.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ipsum2 8y agoGenuine question: why is there not more outrage over Bing working in China? Surely there's as much user tracking/censorship as Google is doing?
- przmk 8y agoI think it is just due to the fact that Google has such a massive market share. In comparison, Bing seems pretty insignificant and would make less of an impact.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tareqak 8y agoMicrosoft and Bing never started with the mantra of "Don't be evil". Microsoft also has a much more established history of working with different government agencies and foreign governments. The perceived contrast from what people expect from Google and what Google is doing now is just that much more glaring/obvious.
- RamshackleJ 8y agoYep claiming to be a force for good when behaving like an amoral organization only concerned with profit optimization is what irks people. pretending to be something you aren't is whats frustrating
- mtgx 8y agoAnd that is part of the reason why Microsoft has been hated/less trusted than Google for so long (and still is). Google is making a very big mistake ruining this image and supposedly core principles with the actions it's been taking in the past couple of years. They won't recover for decades from this, just like Microsoft still hasn't fully. Google's "Don't be evil" has been a huge branding asset, but it seems Google has been too eager to step all over it and throw it in the garbage lately. I wonder if it will be worth it. I hope it won't be. These days I distrust almost every move Google makes by default, and I imagine there is a growing number of people like me. Google may think "eh, so what, we'll just lose a few percent of our users, but gain all of those juicy killer machines and censorship contracts instead," but now people like me will also be first in line to support governmental action against the company (GDPR, etc), while before I would've been the first in line to defend it. So Google won't be losing just users or even advocates, but it's also turning them into vocal enemies - all in the name of continuing to grow those quarterly profits.
- JoshMnem 8y ago> These days I distrust almost every move Google makes by default, and I imagine there is a growing number of people like me. Google has lost its way, not just with this, but with AMP/Chrome/URLs, and their impending destruction of one of the great achievements of modern technology -- the decentralized, open WWW. The Web was always under attack but to see the fatal blows delivered by Google is very depressing. I've already removed Facebook's companies entirely from my life. This year, I'm working on moving away from Google as much as possible.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoGoogle has not lost their way. They walked away from billions in China when the government tried to hack Gmail accounts. Google made it so ALL people can afford a smartphone not just the rich like Apple. Apple on the other hand https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy-betrayal-for-chinese-icloud-users/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy... Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud ...
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoSome at Microsoft, especially foreigners working in China, had some issues about it, but Microsoft has always been really consistent about how it operates in China, which, for better or worse, has always been close to the desires of the Chinese government.
- option 8y agothis is one of the reasons why I left MS working on Bing (though, not the most important at that time)
- cheeze 8y agoEveryone knows that Microsoft has no backbone though.
- creaghpatr 8y agoWell sure, they censor/manipulate their users, why wouldn’t they do the same to their employees?
- skybrian 8y agoYou do realize that anything you do for your employer belongs to your employer? And that protecting trade secrets is part of practically every employer agreement? There are whistleblower exceptions, but generally, if you can't be trusted to keep secrets, you're not a professional.
- pcwalton 8y agoThis is whistleblowing.
- skybrian 8y agoThat's unclear. Google hasn't launched, so they haven't done anything wrong yet, as far as users in China are concerned. This is all internal politics, which seems to be getting increasingly nasty.
- pcwalton 8y agoIf you leak your company's plans to rob a bank to the press, you're still a whistleblower, even if the bank hasn't been robbed yet. Whistleblowers are under no moral or professional obligation to let people become victims before coming forward. If supplying search history to a government known to imprison or torture dissidents is an immoral activity, then bringing it to light is whistleblowing. You can make a cogent argument that it's morally fine to do that, but you can't simultaneously say that facilitating spying is immoral and that it's unprofessional/immoral to reveal plans to that effect.
- skybrian 8y agoThat would be a better argument if they were planning to do something illegal.
- gaius 8y agoEmails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined. Not very nice being tracked is it? I hope that will be a wake-up call for everyone at Google.
- dekhn 8y agoMany google engineers already knew that a great deal of information was being collected on them.
- gaius 8y agoBut this will bring home the reality of how it can be used against them. Just as they have helped to gather information that could be turned against ordinary people very easily.
- skybrian 8y agoEveryone knows that you can be fired or worse if you're caught leaking. It's part of employee training and there are many reminders. (Clearly, it's not working, but this is a wake up call for nobody.)
- gaius 8y agoEveryone knows that you can be fired or worse if you're caught leaking. But that’s not what’s happening. They are being reported to HR for even reading it or being aware of it. That’s why this is relevant. Just like the way Google tracks people everywhere on the web, and would gladly sell their browsing history to employers, insurers, anyone.
- jrockway 8y agoDo you have a link to Google's website where I can buy someone's browsing history? You did say they would sell it to anyone.
- jaclaz 8y ago>Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined. This seems like the worst part (not that the rest is not bad), anyone has an idea of what this "pixel trackers" are and how they actually work?
- Aethers 8y agoIt's a small transparent pixel loaded from a website (assuming the email client loads HTML). I'd make a unique image called mywebsite.com/jaclaz_read.png and when that image was loaded I'd know you read my email.
- jaclaz 8y agoI see, never knew they were called "pixel trackers". I am particularly "old style", I know, but I tend to use not whenever possible email clients that load the html, so an old habit turns out to be also (at least partially) "safer".
- crunchlibrarian 8y agoIn large companies like this you rarely get a choice for which email client you are allowed to use, or a say in which software you are allowed to install.
- jaclaz 8y agoYep, I can understand that, but I thought that this was an elite, a subset of high rank developers that surely (or at least I would hope so) could have a bit more of leeway by the management and/or be capable of work around this kind of nonsense. Of course in the US a lot of practices revolving around "controlling employees" are allowed and even considered "normal" whilst in Europe they are seriously frown upon.
- GlitchMr 8y agoProbably something like <img src="http://google.com/pixel.gif?mailid=23949129"> http://google.com/pixel.gif?mailid=23949129"> in a mail. When you download the image, Google knows you have read the mail.
- wrs 8y agoOuch. It must be really fun for Googlers to hear their company is working so hard to repress dissidents trying to reveal its secret project to help China repress dissidents.
- devoply 8y agoFact of the matter is that there is a Chinese internet and a US internet. Going forward there will be a Chinese internet, that some authoritarian countries will adopt that are a part of the Chinese sphere of influence. American companies, and the American government through them want a foothold on that internet. This is the only way for them to do so. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-predicts-internet-split-china.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-schmidt-ex-google-ceo-p...
- lph 8y agoThe idea that this appeasement will make Google a contender in China is blazingly ignorant of Chinese politics. No foreign company will ever be allowed to gain significant market share; it would be seen as a national security threat. The only way for Google would be to forge an equal partnership with a Chinese tech giant---Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, or maybe one of the two dominant cell carriers. Google is selling out for nothing.
- 4cidix 8y agothe US has 1/4 of the population of China - I bet Google is hoping for a Chinese owned spin-off using Google technology, and wants to own 1/4 of the shares
- thisgoodlife 8y agoThat's bs. Apple is making billions from China each year without any bs partnership.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mtgx 8y agoGoogle's new internal motto must now be: "Be more evil."
- 2bitmachine 8y ago>Blacklisted search terms on a prototype of the search engine include “human rights” If there was any remaining debate about Google being something like a “good company,” I hope this will settle it. I’m sure there are many thoughtful and ethical individual employees (such as those who circulated and leaked this memo), but that isn’t represented in executive decision making or the company’s general direction.
- 394549 8y ago> According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined. Has the Dragonfly memo leaked publicly yet?
- Havoc 8y agoThis whole thing feels like it's going to hit Google straight in the face like a ton of bricks. At a minimum there is some serious streisand effect potential.
- CaptSpify 8y ago> This whole thing feels like it's going to hit Google straight in the face like a ton of bricks. Does it? I feel like Google has been doing similar stuff for a long time and nobody really cares.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoI don't think so. Half of US's electorate already see Google as hypocrite. Only ones will be truly annoyed is a certain fraction of its own employees.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoComputers are magic. Half of the US electorate is completely ignorant about what's going on. The people that do know have no sway over a self-serving Congress.
- JoshMnem 8y ago> "The Dragonfly memo reveals that a prototype of the censored search engine was being developed as an app for both Android and iOS devices, and would force users to sign in so they could use the service. The memo confirms, as The Intercept first reported last week, that users’ searches would be associated with their personal phone number. The memo adds that Chinese users’ movements would also be stored, along with the IP address of their device and links they clicked on." This seems to be the direction for all users of Google. The new version of Chrome signs you into the browser even if you don't want to sign into the software itself. You can't really use Google's browsing device (Google Chrome) without providing your identity, if you ever want to sign into a Google website. Support for Firefox is more important than ever.
- tapoxi 8y agoOr you could just use Chromium.
- JoshMnem 8y agoChromium has many of the same problems as Chrome. I don't think Google can be trusted to not abuse their position any more.
- noir_lord 8y agoI wonder how far they can push it before one of the larger more open distro's just goes "yep, that was far as you are going" and we end up with the Chromed Ice Weasel.
- _red 8y agoWell there is already vivaldi, iridium, and ungoogled-chromium. But a better choice, IMO, is to install Brave since they are not just removing spy-features, but enabling new ideas to incentivize support for a more privacy focused internet.
- 8y ago
- chrischen 8y agoWhy is there no such outrage over google closely tacking search users in America?
- dustinmoorenet 8y agoBecause Google doesn't come to your house, take you in for questioning and then pressuring you into confessing that you did something wrong which disturbed civil order. Stories about what happens in China: https://chinachange.org/ https://chinachange.org/
- echevil 8y agoThey would still send your data to the government when there is a subpoena I suppose
- whamlastxmas 8y agoThere is a big relationship between Google and the US government for the sake of retrieving user information and logs for legal purposes.
- bduerst 8y agoIf they didn't comply with subpoenas, people would be complaining that Google thought it was above the law.
- echevil 8y agoIt does seem there’s little difference from what they’re trying to do in China then.
- SuperNinKenDo 8y agoThere's a massive difference. Complying with subpoenas is not the same as giving the government on-tap access to all data at their leisure. And for all the US's problems, the rule of law and respect for the rights of citizen's and responsibilities of the state toward them in the administration of justice is leaps and bounds better and more transparent in the United States.
- tomlu 8y agoDisclaimer: I work for Google. I also think that there is an anti-Google bias on hacker news, holding Google to a standard not applied to others and taking any excuse to roll out the same old tired rants in response to almost any Google post (DAE Google Reader etc). If what I read is true then this is the first thing that has truly rocked my confidence that the company generally tries to do the right thing (while making money of course, we're not a charity). I expect significant internal backlash if they proceed and I hope they learn from this.
- Multicomp 8y agoWhile I cannot speak for user comments after this one, nobody is referencing Google Reader here. The stakes are higher here than general "Google ain't what they was back in the Good Old Days", they are "People could be detained, tortured, (please just be hyperbole...) killed because of searches they made that were tracked by this Google Joint Venture and handed over to a repressive government".
- tomlu 8y agoBut that's kind of my point. This is substantively different and is pretty serious. And no, I haven't seen any particularly unreasonable comments in this thread.
- kbenson 8y agoSo, here's an honest question: How do they find people to work on these products if the general consensus is that this is a bad thing to do? How do they keep word of these projects from spreading within the company? It seems if enough people feel strongly about this, then at least one would quit after being assigned to this project, and even if there's an NDA and they can't relate the details of why they quit, it would be alarming enough to say "I felt compelled to quit because I could not in good conscience work on the project I was assigned." I'm not sure an NDA can protect against something like that.
- tomlu 8y agoThe suggestion from the link is that some people involved didn't fully understand what they were working on. And obviously they weren't able to keep word spreading in this case. But obviously a number of people must have known. I don't know how they approach and recruit these people, it's above my paygrade.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- noetic_techy 8y ago"Don't be evil" History will judge them poorly for this.
- whatever1 8y agoMake sure they don’t catch you doing evil
- imhelpingu 8y agoThat would be really horrible, living in a country where Google functions as a quasi-government entity consolidating everyone's access to useful resources on the WAN and tracking users, on some secret police's behalf, under the guise of marketing. Who can even imagine such a thing.
- Aunche 8y agoAll this outrage about about Google wanting to censor search in China is even less productive than men being angry at women having abortions. At least with abortions, men can claim to speak for the fetus. Even if Google expands makes a censored search engine for China, at worst it maintains the status quo. I'm sure you could come up with a philosophical argument to why it's bad, but it definitely has no weight over millions of Chinese people who could benefit from access to Google.
- whatever1 8y agoSure why not provide the best tracking technologies to the worst regimes. I would also go even further and provide them services for the development of nuclear arsenal. Imagine all of these jobs that will be created in the US.
- Aunche 8y agoWhere are you getting the idea that they're giving China the "best tracking technologies?" They're doing the same things that literally every other internet company in China is doing.
- zanmat0 8y agoThe "worst regimes"? Oh my sweet summer child.
- netheril96 8y agoI am sure China has more experience building tracking technologies. They are not high tech at all, unlike nuclear arsenals.
- tomlagier 8y agoI agree so much. How about we hear from some Chinese people about how they feel about the developments? The few comments I've seen have expressed excitement and highlighted the extreme issues with Baidu. The outrage seems to be coming entirely from people with no real stake in this news. I absolutely believe there's a discussion worth having about the extent capitulating to authoritarian demands is morally and practically allowable, but to dismiss it out of hand because it conflicts with Western notions of privacy while ignoring the cultural realities in China seems shortsighted.
- lolc 8y ago> “Leadership misled engineers working on [Dragonfly] about the nature of their work, depriving them of moral agency,” said a Google employee who read the memo. Lying to our own colleagues now are we? The end justifies the means I guess. Wait, what was the end again?
- ccnafr 8y agoNo offense, but Google is gonna launch that search engine regardless. Even if it's gonna have to outsource coding to China itself.
- lolc 8y agoHow does that justify lying about it? If you're going to lie to your colleagues better have a very good reason ready. "They won't help me if they knew the truth" is not a good reason.
- qubax 8y ago"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive..."
- prepend 8y agoI guess we’ll get a new blog post from Pichai about the people he fired because tracking users against their wishes, exposing data against their wishes, and compelling employees to delete their own files “contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct.” [0] Fortunately Google is an ethical company and not hypocritical when it comes to very important issues. Maybe this will be positive and result in new US law like the foreign corrupt practices act of 1977 [1] that prevents US companies and their subsidiaries from bribing officials in other countries, even when local law allows it. So forcing US companies to follow the minimal US laws protecting privacy even if to comply with other laws will be a net positive for humanity. [0] https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/diversity/note-employees-ceo-sundar-pichai/ https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/diversity/note-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
- snaky 8y ago> prevents US companies and their subsidiaries from bribing officials in other countries That's how US lost Africa, and China acquired it.
- prepend 8y agoWhile the US certainly lost business because of this, it’s hard to say that they lost Africa when there’s still huge FDI in Africa [0] even compared to China the US had $50B in 2014-the last year I found both country data- vs China’s $32B. FCPA is 40 years old. China will surpass the US in Africa, but they’ll surpass the US in everything economic, eventually. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/188594/united-states-direct-investments-in-africa-since-2000/#0 https://www.statista.com/statistics/188594/united-states-dir... [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2018/07/25/figures-of-the-week-trends-and-determinants-in-chinese-fdi-in-africa/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2018/07/25/fi...
- sincerely 8y agoReminds me of this tweet: https://twitter.com/nmgrm/status/1038790691529273345 https://twitter.com/nmgrm/status/1038790691529273345 >programmers get upset about the words “master/slave” in software now, but are happy to keep constructing a global surveillance economy and becoming middle caste
- echevil 8y agoThere are a lot more they can track than the search history. Google maps app has a timeline feature that tracks every place I go :)
- bduerst 8y agoYou can turn that off here, FYI: https://myaccount.google.com/u/1/activitycontrols https://myaccount.google.com/u/1/activitycontrols
- getpost 8y agoDoes turning it off stop the data collection, or just remove it from view?
- bduerst 8y ago>You can use your Activity controls to choose what kinds of activity are saved to your Google Account. These settings apply on all devices that are signed in to your account. You can change these settings and view or delete your saved activity at any time. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6139018 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6139018
- justtopost 8y ago>YOUR Google Account (emphasis mine). This says nothing of internal tracking, and the data is certainly being sent to multiple google services.
- kart23 8y agoI've turned it off, but I found out that it removes a very useful feature: I can no longer set a home or work address. Why is this? You could've easily just stored those two addresses and not track everything else. They are clearly incentivizing the user to turn on activity tracking. Now instead of just typing in 'home', I have to input the entire address.
- jarym 8y agoDo more evil
- jarym 8y agoHonestly at this point I wonder how much there is between what US agents can do with a FISA warrant and what Chinese agents can do with their surveillance - if there is a difference it’ll be pretty small I imagine. I’m not trying to justify Dragonfly but just pointing out that tech companies are being pushed into more censorship and tracking by governments all over the world.
- zerealshadowban 8y agoAre there major Chinese companies currently investing in the development of systems specifically tailored to help total surveillance of US citizens by the US government?
- amckinlay 8y agoIsn't this the kind of thing Alex Jones was "warning" about About Google being communist or something? Oh yea, he's gone now. Just like the millions of Chinese people Alphabet will silence with this project.
- tclancy 8y agoComment about stopped clock, including unnecessary quotation marks. Using political label as a meaning-free pejorative. “Connecting” it all with yarn on an old National Geographic map and a bit of swearing to indicate This Is Important. Discourse in the year 2018.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- qubax 8y agoGoogle being google. It's strange people are still so shocked by what google is.
- throw2016 8y agoGoogle is already a creepy organization. Android is intentionally designed to leak like a sieve, they are stalking people 24/7. No one at Google can pretend they are not building invasive surveillance systems, they can only hand wave it away and attempt valiantly to 'normalize' it. Whether it is amazon and its work practices, Google or Facebook the common factor is there are thousands of employees willing to do their bidding without protest, without mass resignations, without whistle blowers. Its difficult to believe that after decades of posturing about freedom and liberty there is only one person in technology who had the guts and integrity to stand up. Everyone else in spite of knowing what these companies are upto are lining up to sellout. What these discussions do on technology forums is perpetuate the illusion that people care and gives apologists and sellouts an opportunity to normalize, diminish and dilute the implications of surveillance and stalking.
- joering2 8y agoLet's forget childish arguments of who will do what to punish Google. Noone will do anything; Congress in US is unable to call in top execs to answer questions, meanwhile EU $5B penalty is a slap on GOOG wrist. They may as well start a child kidnapping ring tomorrow and it would take years before any LE would get to the bottom of this in such huge corp. Users won't stop using Google because its good enough. Advertisers won't stop paying for AdWords because these yield good enough results. But Google purpose is not finding information; it is rather to search thru a huge mess (that loosely organized internet is) and find info to a good enough extent. So other than Duck Duck Go, who is working on search and what other alternatives do we have today, and will have in the near future, please? Anyone?
- flyGuyOnTheSly 8y ago>Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined. The surveillants are becoming so paranoid that they are now surveilling themselves.
- RikNieu 8y agoAt what point did they scratch out the "don't" and just switched to "be evil"?
- blahxblah 8y agosuper evil fuck google
- blahxblah 8y agosuper evil. fuck google
- GEmployee2018 8y agoGoogle is a private company. Google can do whatever it wants.