Dhondup Chomphel Gelek
If you walk 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 proven 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 the company’s brand New Chinese website is not only a violation of its own righteous-sounding principles, and it’s not just an affront to those working to bring international standards of human rights for 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, its G-mail service or its fast-growing collection of Internet offerings. Google knows more about us that than 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 that 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 government blocks thousands of search terms — including censorship.
To be fair, Google is hardly alone in its decision to capitulate to Beijing’s rulers to gain a Web share of China’s 1.3 billion inhabitants. That 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 1994 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 His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Chinese bloggers, incidentally, must all register and identify themselves to authorities. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft claim 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 an enormous request for records from the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of online child pornography.Skeptics had claimed that Google was resisting the request 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 G-mail account and demand some safeguards from a potentially dangerous company. Perhaps here, too, we will need to heed the Tibetan cybercafé warning, “Do not use Internet for any political or unintelligent purposes.”
Human rights groups, TSGs and Studentsforafreetibet.org. with its 650chapters worldwide have leveled intense criticism against U.S. Internet companies for their role in limiting access to information online, particularly after Google introduced a Chinese search engine earlier this week that filters results about the Tiananmen Square massacres, Tibet, Taiwan , His Holiness the Dalai Lama, democracy and freedom so on. Tibetans in Italy and their supporters are calling for a mass break up with Google this Valentin e’s Day, citing Google’s new partnership with the Chinese Government, Google.cn. Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) launched the website NoLuv4Google.com in order to help people navigate the tricky waters of this massive life change, as well as to provide an outlet for widespread anger and grief. SFT is also coordinating protests at Google’s offices worldwide on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, to help channel users’ emotions and, according to the organizers, “to provide closure.”
