Google, We Hardly Knew You (Int'l Herald Tribune)

Google, we hardly knew you
Frida Ghitis
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/26/opinion/
edghitis.php

A few years ago, I walked into an Internet room in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. There were no Chinese soldiers in the room, and no visible government censors nearby. A sign on the wall, however, reminded Web users that even after entering the stateless world of the Web, China's all-seeing eye had not disappeared. ''Do not use Internet,'' the warning instructed crassly, ''for any political or other unintelligent purposes.''

Since then, China's ruling regime has perfected the science of controlling what the Chinese can read or write on the Internet to such a degree that it has become the envy of tyrants and dictators the world over. We might have expected that from a regime that has proved it will do whatever it takes to stay in power. What we never expected was to see Google, the company whose guiding motto reads ''Don't be evil,'' helping in the effort.

Google's decision to help China censor searches on its brand-new Chinese Web site is not only a violation of its own righteous-sounding principles and an affront to those working to bring human rights to the Chinese people. No, Google's sellout to Beijing is a threat to every person who ever used Google anywhere in the world. That means all of us.

That's no exaggeration. Google saves every search, every e-mail, every fingerprint we leave on the Web when we move through its Google search engine, or its Gmail service, or its fast-growing collection of Internet offerings. Google knows more about us than the FBI or the CIA or the NSA or any spy agency of any government. And nobody regulates it. When a company that holds digital dossiers on millions of people decides profits are more important than principles, we are all at risk.

Google will now participate actively in a censorship program whose implications, according to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, ''are profound and disturbing.'' The Chinese government blocks thousands of search terms — including censorship. To be fair, Google is hardly alone in its decision to capitulate to Beijing's rulers in order to gain a Web share of 1.3 billion inhabitants. China's tantalizing market has tested the ethics of many a Western corporation — and almost all have failed the test. That is particularly true in the Internet business.

Just last year, Yahoo helped Beijing's Web goons track down the identity of a Chinese journalist who wrote an e-mail about the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre — a massacre of thousands of Chinese democracy advocates perpetrated by the same regime whose efforts Google now abets. The journalist, Shi Tao, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Reporters Without Borders labeled Yahoo an ''informant'' that has ''collaborated enthusiastically'' with the Chinese regime. Microsoft, too, plays by the dictatorship's rules. Bloggers on MSN's service cannot type words such as ''democracy'' or ''freedom.''

Internet users cannot read or write about anything that even hints of opposition to the ruling Communist Party. Even pro-Western commentary can trigger a block. And forget anything about Tibet or the Dalai Lama. Chinese blog gers, incidentally, must all register and identify themselves to authorities. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft claims to have higher ethical standards than the competition. The often-stated desire to ''do good'' and make the world a better place was one of the traits that endeared Google to the public. It was one of the reasons we trusted them to guard the precious and valuable contents of their thousands of servers. Now Google has become a company like all others, one with an eye on the bottom line before anything else.

The company has decided to help China's censors even as it fights a request for records from the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of online child pornography. Skeptics had claimed Google was resisting the request in order to protect its technology, rather than to protect users' privacy. That explanation now sounds more plausible than ever. We've long known about China's disdain for individual freedoms. But Google, we hardly knew you. It's definitely time to rethink that Gmail account and demand some safeguards from a potentially dangerous company. Perhaps at home, too, we will need to heed the Tibetan cybercafé warning, ''Do not use Internet for any political or unintelligent purposes.''

(Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs and is the author of ''The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television.'' This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.)