from Hacker News

Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

by nedp on 7/17/19, 1:22 PM with 280 comments

by khc on 7/17/19, 3:57 PM
As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some information that they otherwise wouldn't be able to. And by surfacing better information for queries, it can also help people finding what they want for things that are not censored.
I know some people prefer to stick their noses up and hold what they perceive as the moral high ground, but do consider how lives of hundreds of millions of people will be affected by your actions/inactions.
by peteretep on 7/17/19, 2:55 PM
To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.
by ta20190717 on 7/17/19, 2:23 PM
Does anyone know the technical details of what Google would have needed to comply with in China? From my understanding, a lot of western companies do business in China via (51% local controlled) "Partners" that ostensibly run their infrastructure for them, and obviously have to abide by local regulation. This includes operating an "Information Security Management System" (a euphemism of a sort) that interfaces with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for auditable end-user access logs and content blocking.
It seems this is governed by these standards, but I failed to dig up a copy of them. Is it true that any western company offering a mainland Chinese version of their product exposes these interfaces?
YD/T 2248-2015 - 互联网数据中心和互联网接入服务信息安全管理系统技术要求 - Interface requirements of information security management system for Internet data center/Internet service provider
YD/T 2406-2017 - 互联网数据中心和互联网接入服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test specifications of information security management system & interface for Internet data center/Internet service provider
YD/T 3212-2017 - 内容分发网络服务信息安全管理系统接口规范 - Interface standard of information security management system for content delivery network service
YD/T 3213-2017 - 内容分发网络服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test specifications of information security management system for content delivery network service
YD/T 3214-2017 - 互联网资源协作服务信息安全管理系统接口规范 - Interface specification for information security management of Internet resource collaboration service
YD/T 3215-2017 - 互联网资源协作服务信息安全管理系统及接口测试方法 - Test methods of information security management system for Internet resource collaboration service
by i_am_nomad on 7/17/19, 1:56 PM
... for now. What would be far more reassuring would be a statement from Google that Project Dragonfly does not meet their ethical standards as a company.
by ZeroCool2u on 7/17/19, 2:15 PM
While a certain amount of cynicism is healthy and it should be acknowledged that Google can always back track, I'm still happy that for now they've decided not to assist and facilitate one of the most Orwellian nation's to ever exist.
by cletus on 7/17/19, 4:16 PM
Good.
Some argue this is just Google following local laws. I say that being legal != being moral and helping the government of China censor and track citizens is not a moral position, law be damned. The amount of internal resistance this got is good evidence of this project not being consistent with the values of most of the people who work there.
The fact that leadership tried to hide this project, keep it secret and deny its existence is... disappointing.
Then again, I already had the opinion that Sundar is the most overpaid CEO in the world.
by sidibe on 7/17/19, 4:09 PM
It's amazing the outrage a project investigating how to comply has generated while Bing is quietly working just fine in China.
by kpU8efre7r on 7/17/19, 2:18 PM
Why was it terminated? In theory a search engine that merely adheres to Chinese law sounds fine. Give a better product than they already have with the same restrictions they already have. I wonder if there ended up being far more control and restrictions than they bargained for and with the increased risk of tech theft the project just wasn't worth it.
by mnm1 on 7/17/19, 5:28 PM
So corporate censorship (Google search outside of China) is fine but government censorship (Google search inside China) isn't. Also, government censorship by Western governments (UK, etc.) is fine but government censorship by non western governments (China) is not. I don't see much difference myself but it seems others do.
by carapace on 7/17/19, 7:00 PM
There is a clash of fundamental values, it's deeper than politics.
Technology is driving confrontations with our values, our ideas of what it means to be human.
Organlegging was science fiction, now it's happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China
"What kind of future do we want?", is no longer the question, because it's here, now.
by educationdata on 7/17/19, 2:14 PM
This is definitely not enough. There still need to be an thorough investigation into the history of the project, at least include but not limited to:
1) the internal decision making process involving this project
2) personnel who are responsible for initiating / approving the project
3) how many resources have been put into this project
4) the exact content (data sources, roadmap, goals, etc.) of this project
5) how far this project went
6) where the product / data is stored, how will they be handled when the project is terminated
7) how many of the project outputs have being provided to the Chinese government
8) the details of Chinese government involvement into this project
Also, not limited to Google, any U.S. company helps any authoritarian government doing censorship needs to be investigated.
BTW, I got lots of downvotes from comments criticizing China.
by chollier on 7/17/19, 4:36 PM
what about microsoft / bing? they are available in China and no one seems to give them shit compared to google
by alexnewman on 7/17/19, 4:29 PM
I have friends at google still working on this.
by dbg31415 on 7/17/19, 7:51 PM
I'm happy Google is dropping this. I don't want them developing more censorship tech that they can then roll out to the US, or other markets. It should be hard to censor things on the internet, and the less effort that is put into censorship tech, the better off humanity is.
by chvid on 7/17/19, 2:07 PM
Does anyone know the exact requirements set by China on google for them to enter the Chinese market? I suppose adherence to Chinese law but what exactly? Support of law enforcement, censorship of specific sites, personal data stored in China etc...
by La-ang on 7/17/19, 3:35 PM
Not buying this. It was previously told that the project was suspended while in reality it wa still worked on in secret. Chances are they will terminate Dragonfly, but start working on it under a different banner.
by bad_user on 7/17/19, 6:51 PM
I'm happy that Dragonfly is being terminated and I'm sure this is also the direct result of all Google employees who objected to it.
To the Chinese people here on HN try to understand that this is larger than the welfare of the Chinese.
China is now in a position to export its culture to the rest of the world due to its economic strength.
It can, for example, force companies like Google to censor information to the rest of the world and this is a fact.
How do I know this? Because us EU citizens already have to suffer the US views on sex and nudity, among others and the US has the strongest free speech protections of all countries.
The whataboutism on this discussion btw is interesting since this forum would be censored in China and this conversation wouldn't be possible. There's no comparison to be made in terms of free speech. In China you have none.
So I regret the situation, but many of us value our liberal freedoms and we don't want China to export its flavor of communism to us.
Yes I was born and raised in an ex-communist country, I know communism when I see it, I don't want any and I'm prepared to fight for my freedoms.
I do hope to see China become a liberal democracy. But I'm not holding my breath, because I also know what it takes for a revolution to happen and China won't be there for the foreseeable future.
by elchupanebre on 7/18/19, 5:00 AM
They said they have terminated the project Dragonfly. But did they actually stop working on the censored search for China? And why was the statement made by a PR dude Karan Bhatia instead of Ceasar Sengupta who was supposedly in charge of the project?
by RenRav on 7/17/19, 2:00 PM
I wonder if they will they put this on killedbygoogle.com?
by gowld on 7/17/19, 4:01 PM
The news here is just that Google told the Senate hearing confirmation of the same thing people were saying informally before.
by phoe-krk on 7/17/19, 2:05 PM
I am accepting bets on when the project will be terminated again in the future.
Bitcoin only. Tether only in high amounts.
by teknopurge on 7/17/19, 5:16 PM
That was fast. Good job Peter.
by xxxpupugo on 7/17/19, 2:07 PM
Who said China would allow Google to go back in the first place?
by patientplatypus on 7/17/19, 2:10 PM
Meh...they'll rename it "Happy Pancakes", do it again until they get caught and then fire some hapless nitwit middle manager that they wanted to get rid of anyway.
Yay, capitalism. Where no one's to blame and everything's always on fire.
by fareesh on 7/17/19, 3:29 PM
How different is project dragonfly from what is already being proposed by some political folks in the USA?
YouTube has arbitrary content policies which seem to mirror whatever the Democratic party wants. From China's POV they want the same thing except they call their party the Communist party.
Guys like Dennis Prager are trying to run a YouTube channel with conservative viewpoints and are finding it impossible to do so without obstacles. I don't think there is a single channel that is right of center which is not mistreated by YouTube.
Politics aside, let's look at political correctness. On YouTube you cannot be critical about a class of people because of their immigration status. I watched a documentary about of smuggling of illegal immigrants from North Africa into Europe. They showed footage of a guy who couldn't go out into his own farm at night because smugglers would trespass on his property en route to the shore where the boats were. The documentary was one of those "live" launches on YouTube. Conveniently the live launch was bugged out. I had to refresh the page an hour after I realized it didn't release.
24 hours later it was banned by YouTube.
So I ask again, is it only Chinese censorship that western society has a problem with?
by Gpetrium on 7/17/19, 2:26 PM
It would not surprise anyone if Project Dragonfly's termination occurred as a consequence of current trade spats between the two nations which could lead/has led to some animosity towards each other's products/services.
by ryanmercer on 7/17/19, 2:08 PM
Probably because China has sufficiently copied/stolen it to not need Google any longer. It would be trivial to put government agents inside the local team and copy whatever they wanted, or coerce the local team to contribute everything they learned to the government.