China syndromeGoogle to pull out of China following government-sponsored cyberattacks

Published 14 January 2010

In order to operate in China, Google agreed to implement stringent government-dictated censorship as to what Chinese consumers can – and cannot – find when doing Google searches; Google’s compliance with Chinese censorship was harshly criticized by human rights and freedom-of-speech organizations, but Google responded that this was the cost of doing business in China; the Chinese government’s hacking of Gmail accounts in order to monitor political dissidents proved to much for Google, though, and the company is now set to end its operations in China

Google may end its controversial practice of censoring search results in China after experiencing a massive cyberattack in which politically motivated hackers based in the country (this is a polite way of referring to the Chinese government’s intelligence operatives) attempted to access certain Gmail accounts. In a corporate blog post on Monday David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said: “We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.”

Two accounts were accessed, although only the subject lines rather than the content of e-mails themselves was revealed.

Drummond says that the attack leaves Google no option but to reconsider its operations in the People’s Republic. The censorship of search results will stop, and a complete withdrawal from the country remains an option, he says.

‘These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered, combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web, have led us to conclude that we are no longer comfortable continuing to self-censor our results on http://www.google.cn.”

Despite reports that previously censored results are now appearing, nothing has yet been changed about how Google’s Chinese site functions. “Over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all,” says a Google spokesperson.

Paul Marks writes that the company has not said that the change of heart on censorship is because the attacks were state-sponsored. When asked directly what links the attacks and the decision to end censorship, the spokesperson only repeated a statement already released by the company.

Many people have read between the lines, however, and concluded that Google is angry that the Chinese government is willing to allow, encourage, or even support such attacks. “They wouldn’t be taking an action suggesting that they cannot operate in China… if it was not related to the Chinese government,” Leslie Harris, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, told PC World.

Marks writes that while investigating the source of the attacks Google also found that, independently of the attacks on its systems, the Gmail accounts of “dozens” of people based in China, Europe and the United States had been compromised. All of the users are advocates of human rights in China, and their accounts were accessed by placing spyware on the victims’ machines to harvest login information.

A variety of organizations have long campaigned against Google’s stance on cooperating with the Chinese government’s requirement for censorship. In July 2006, Amnesty International accused Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft of placing their corporate interests ahead of human rights in China, by variously aiding and abetting the regime’s online repression with censored searches, divulging names of anonymous bloggers and shutting down blogs.

The companies countered that the only way to do business in China is to obey Chinese law.

The notion of Google pulling out of China has sent shockwaves through the internet community in China, according to the Wall Street Journal, which says such a move could jeopardize the many technology partnerships Google has struck with Chinese internet and telecomms firms.