Google’s response to Snowden foiling Chinese censors
by David Atkins
Of all the reactions so far to the Snowden revelations, Google’s new encrypted searches may be the most consequential in advancing human freedom and online privacy. While the Western world benefits from greater privacy protections against warrantless surveillance by the NSA and other agencies, the impact in China may be much greater:
Googling the words “Dalai Lama” or “Tiananmen Square” from China long has produced the computer equivalent of a blank stare, as that nation’s government has blocked websites that it deemed politically sensitive.
But China’s Great Firewall, as the world’s most sophisticated internet censorship and surveillance system is known, is facing a new challenge as Google begins to automatically encrypt searches in China as part of its global expansion of privacy technology, company officials say.
Most Google searches soon will appear to Chinese censors as gibberish, blocking the government’s ability to screen searches for particular words.
Chinese officials – and those from other nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, that censor the internet on a national level – will still have the option of blocking Google search services altogether. But routine, granular filtering of content will become more difficult, experts say. It also will become more difficult for authorities to monitor search queries for signs that an individual internet user may be a government opponent, experts say.
The development is the latest – and perhaps most unexpected – consequence of Edward Snowden’s release last year of National Security Agency documents detailing the extent of government surveillance of the internet. Google and other technology companies responded with major new investments in encryption worldwide, complicating relations between the companies and governments long accustomed to having the ability to quietly monitor the Web.
Chinese officials did not immediately respond to questions about Google’s decision to automatically encrypt searches there, but the move threatens to ratchet up long-standing tensions between the American tech powerhouse and the world’s most populous nation.
“No matter what the cause is, this will help Chinese netizens to access information they’ve never seen before,” said Percy Alpha, the co-founder of GreatFire.org, an activist group that monitors China’s Great Firewall. “It will be a huge headache for Chinese censorship authorities. We hope other companies will follow Google to make encryption by default.”
Of course, there’s still the question of what Google is doing with all of your search data and what it all means for the endangered if not defunct automatic presumption of privacy. Just yesterday my brother received a Facebook ad talking about a rare medical condition that a mutual family member suffers from–even though my brother had never mentioned the disease on Facebook, nor can we find any instance of the sufferer mentioning it on Facebook either. He was understandably a little freaked out about that. I’m more resigned. It’s a brave new world out there.
But at the very least we can do something to chip away at the state’s ability to abuse our private data both at home and by much more totalitarian governments abroad.
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