Empire State of Mind

Experts on the field of information technology weigh in on Google vs China and technology vs censorship.

Over the past year or so the Chinese government has done some outrageous things to censor the internet on their shores, and Google looking to increase its presence in the world’s biggest market has swallowed their bitter regulations at every turn. Until today.

From the Google blog:

In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident—albeit a significant one—was something quite different.

The all-seeing-eye that is Google claims that the goal of the attacks was “accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.” and they also uncovered more interesting  tidbits from their investigation…

“the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.”

Anyway this has led google to declare that “we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn.” Which basically means that in the next few weeks, unless the Chinese government buckles, Google will lose all legal search presence in China.

I commend Google for its integrity in the face of a major potential economic blow. Check out the link for more information and analysis from the tech gurus over at Ars Technica.