Google’s China search engine plans ‘unethical’ says Jack Poulson

Alphabet CEO Larry
Page.
Reuters

• An internal war is raging at Google between those who
  want the company to be transparent about its China search
  engine plans, and those who do not.
• That’s the view of Jack Poulson, a scientist who quit
  Google last month over the so-called Project
  Dragonfly.
• Poulson said he was part of a growing Silicon Valley
  movement, demanding “transparency, oversight, and
  accountability” for the systems built by companies like
  Google.
• His comments came as Google confirmed the existence of
  Project Dragonfly for the first time in a public
  forum.

An internal war is raging at Google over the company’s project to
build a censored search engine in China.

That’s the picture painted by Jack Poulson, a scientist who quit Google last
month over the China plans, in a letter to the Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Poulson revealed that there are two sides emerging at Google:
Those who want to discuss and expose information about the secret
plans, dubbed “Project Dragonfly,” and those who want to suppress
transparency.

The scientist said Google management is “clamping down” on
whistleblowers trying to lift the lid on Project Dragonfly
details, while many employees also “fear the possible
consequences” of speaking out.

In his letter to Senator John Thune, he listed four details about
the China plans he has been able to verify. These included
linking phone numbers to search queries and only including
Chinese government-approved air quality data in results.

“Each of these details was internally escalated by other
employees to no avail, and many of them were discussed
extensively on internal mailing lists; I understand that such
discussion has since been increasingly stifled,” Poulson
continued.

His words about the two factions at Google echo the reporting of
The Intercept, which has led the way in exposing details about
Google’s ambition to return to China after exiting in 2010.

The website reported last week that Google
management responded furiously when they discovered that secret
details about Project Dragonfly were being circulated in a
confidential memo authored by an engineer.

“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,” The Intercept said.

Poulson said transparency is vital. “I am part of a growing
movement in the tech industry advocating for more transparency,
oversight, and accountability for the systems we build,” he
added.

Google acknowledges Project Dragonfly for the first time

Google’s reluctance to face questions about Dragonfly were
illustrated this month when Alphabet CEO Larry Page refused to
give evidence to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He was empty chaired at the
hearing.

But this changed on Wednesday, when Google responded to the
concerns of lawmakers who sit on the Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

The search giant confirmed the existence of Project Dragonfly for
the first time in a public forum. “There is a Project Dragonfly,”
said Google’s Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enright.

But Enright was evasive under questioning and stressed that the
project is nowhere near launch. He added that if Google does
build a China search engine, it will be “consistent with our
values in privacy and data protection.”

“I will say that my understanding is that we are not, in fact,
close to launching a search product in China, and whether we
would or could at some point in the future remains unclear,” he
said. “If we were, in fact, to finalize a plan to launch a search
product in China, my team would be actively engaged.”

Here’s Jack Poulson’s letter in full:

Dear Members of the Senate Commerce Committee:

Senator Thune set the tone for the upcoming hearing by stating
that “Consumers deserve clear answers and standards on data
privacy protection.”

Given the scale and social impact of the technical systems being
deployed by Google and other corporations, I would add that
greater oversight and accountability of not only data, but also
the systems that are designed and deployed based on such data, is
urgently needed.

Until the beginning of this month, I worked in Google’s Research
and Machine Intelligence division as a Senior Research Scientist,
where one of my primary responsibilities was improving Google’s
search accuracy across a wide variety of languages.

I was compelled to resign my position on August 31, 2018, in the
wake of a pattern of unethical and unaccountable decision making
from company leadership. This culminated in their refusal to
disclose information about Project Dragonfly, a version of Google
Search tailored to the censorship and surveillance demands of the
Chinese government.

Like most of the world, including most Google employees, I
learned about this effort on August 1, 2018, from public
reporting. It is notable that Project Dragonfly was well underway
at the time the company released its AI Principles.

As has been widely understood, by human rights organizations,
investigative reporters, Google employees, and the public,
Project Dragonfly directly contradicts the AI Principles’
commitment to not “design or deploy” any technology whose purpose
“contravenes widely accepted principles of […] human rights”.

Some of the most disturbing components of Project Dragonfly,
which I here directly verify, include:

• A prototype interface designed to allow a Chinese joint
  venture company to search for a given user’s search queries based
  on their phone number.
• An extensive censorship blacklist developed in accordance
  with Chinese government demands. Among others, it contained the
  English term ‘human rights’, the Mandarin terms for ‘student
  protest’ and ‘Nobel prize’, and very large numbers of phrases
  involving ‘Xi Jinping’ and other members of the CCP.
• Explicit code to ensure only Chinese government-approved air
  quality data would be returned in response to Chinese users’
  search.
• A catastrophic failure of the internal privacy review
  process, which one of the reviewers characterized as actively
  subverted.

Each of these details was internally escalated by other employees
to no avail, and many of them were discussed extensively on
internal mailing lists; I understand that such discussion has
since been increasingly stifled. I cannot speak for those who
escalated these concerns, but I share their fear of the possible
consequences.

I am part of a growing movement in the tech industry advocating
for more transparency, oversight, and accountability for the
systems we build. The primary goals are laid out in the Google
Ethics Code Yellow Petition, which not only continues to
circulate throughout Google but has also been endorsed by 14
human rights organizations and several technology experts.

I humbly ask that The Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation call on Google’s representative for the hearing,
Mr. Keith Enright, to respond to the sincere and credible
concerns of the coalition of 14 human rights organizations who
drafted an August 28th Open Letter To Google.

I also ask the committee to inquire about how Google is meeting
its commitments to privacy under its own AI Principles and the
Global Network Initiative, of which Google is a member. Dragonfly
is part of a broad pattern of unaccountable decision making
across the tech industry.

It has been made clear, both by word and by action, that the
leadership at Google will be clamping down on the types of
internal investigation that were necessary to bring Project
Dragonfly to light. I would hope that The Committee would help
protect the environment needed for future whistleblowers by
taking steps to guarantee ethical transparency and oversight
across Silicon Valley.

Sincerely,

/S/ Dr. Jack Poulson

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