Since none of our guests specializes in policy issues, especially in an international context, I would like to suggest the following story as a subject of online (via this blog) debate. This is one of the several topics I will propose between now and Moira Gunn’s visit.
Google is in the news (again) for refusing to share with the US government information it has gathered from its hundreds of millions of users. According to USA TODAY:
Google (GOOG) on Thursday rebuffed the Bush administration’s attempt in federal court to force it to hand over search-engine data on millions of customers.
The Justice Department asked a federal judge in San Jose on Wednesday for an order to turn over the records as part of the adminstration’s efforts to revive a controversial online pornography law. The issue is expected to be resolved by March.
Google has refused to comply with a subpoena, issued in August, to turn over a mountain of material, including all requests entered into Google’s search engine from any one-week period and 1 million randomly selected websites from Google databases.
At the same time, Google is accused by human rights activists of overeagerness in complying with the Chinese government’s requests to filter the information that the website delivers to mainland China. “New Scientist” reported, for example, in 2004 that the then new Google news site was tweaked to molify the Chinese leadership, fearful that the site will serve “subversive” information to the Chinese users. To make the matters worse, Google did not deny the allegation, although it tried to justfy it, according to Wired News, on technical grounds:
Researchers at Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT), a US company that provides technology for circumventing internet restrictions in China, have discovered that the recently-launched Chinese version of Google News omits blocked news sources from its results.
The origin of a computer sending a search request can be identified using its internet protocol (IP) address.
Google admits to omitting some news sources within China but says this is meant to improve the quality of the service.
“In order to create the best possible news search experience for our users, we sometimes decide not to include some sites, for a variety of reasons,” says a statement issued by the company. “These sources were not included because their sites are inaccessible.”
Bill Xia, chief executive of DIT, however, accuses Google of reinforcing Chinese internet restrictions by leaving some sites off its list. “When people do a search they will get the wrong impression that the whole world is saying the same thing,” he told New Scientist.
The two radically different positions Google took in less than 5 years makes one wonder if the most successful new media company in the world isn’t afflicted by a serious case of situational ethics. Or, in layman’s terms, of opportunism. Yet, this seemingly commonsensical observation deserves more attention before concluding too abruptly that Google has no moral compass.
Google’s position in the US is understandable and for many justifiable. The Department of Justice made an unreasonable request. They wanted Google to do the research for them. In addition, the privacy of millions of individuals is under a real threat here. In China, however, Google does not seem to be able to muster the power to say no. Moreover, where in the US Google felt queasy about doing the government’s rather boring research work, in China it seems to be ready to do the Chinese government’s policing job. And a nasty one, too.
Some defend Google’s China policy, saying that this is nothing compared to what its rivals, Yahoo! or Microsoft, did in similar situations. Both companies are embroiled in nasty human rights scandals. Microsoft recently took down a popular Chinese blogger’s website, at the request of the Chinese authorities, while Yahoo! collaborated with the Chinese secret police in identifying and arresting a dissenting journalist. The Google defenders add to this that the simple presence of Google in China creates a competitive environment for media content. This will in the long run erode the Chinese government’s hardline position. After all, the advocates believe, it is immaterial if you block information about the Tienanmen massacre or about Falun Gong, as long as people have full access to the Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, Locke, Edmund Burke, etc. The educative impact of the information delivered by Google (or even by Yahoo!, who actively censors the news flow getting into China), is immense, even if all they offered were personal blogs and news about Brittney Spears. If only modest in scope and trite in nature, information outside the narrow scope of Communist propaganda teaches the ordinary Chinese the value of individual choice and gives them a taste of personal freedom and creativity. Web portals such as Yahoo! or Google are real breathing holes in the ice cap that fetters Chinese media. With time, the hope goes, these holes will get larger and larger until the ice will break up allowing access for all to the open seas of knowledge. Naturally and unavoidably autonomy has a tendecy to extend from the personal to the social and political realms.
On the other hand, those who criticize Google might say that when the web portal limits Chinese choices and redirects user interests and creativity to “soft targets,” it in fact engages in a process of “hegemonic” construction of reality. This naturalizes the official version of what is right, permissible, and desirable. In the end it makes more difficult to contest what the government says because half-truths are far easier to defend than outright lies. Google (or Yahoo!, or Microsoft) do more bad than good, the critics continue, when they conive to such manipulation of public opinion. This is as deleterious and far more insidious than open censorship or propaganda. Furthermore, critical observers add, people will have less confidence in being able to win their struggle for freedom when they will realize that even great American corporations can be made to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist powers that be. Finally, people’s ability to discern between truth and propaganda will decline since they will not be able to tell anymore if the information distributed through purportedly free on-line channels, is valid or not.
Google’s attempts to defend itself from these accusations of collaborationism have become, paradoxically or not, weaker since the world found out about Google’s stiff opposition to American requests for judicial cooperation. Moral claims of rectitude in the US seem hypocritical when seen in counterpoint to a position of “pragmatism” in China. For many, grandstanding in the US becomes suspect when projected on the white-as-fear screen of Google’s cowering posture in China.
What do you think about these opinions? Are the excuses some find for Google or Microsoft in relation with their dealings with the Chinese or American governments wishful thinking or not? Are those who think that a half-truth is more dangerous than a downright lie right? Is Google a first class opportunist when it shows its teeth when there is no cost for doing so and when it answers over eagerly to “fetch,” when things get tough?
If you want to discuss any of these issues at some length, please post a new messge to the blog. Otherwise use the comments section. Do not forget to use the tags (I created a bunch of them, see the list).
Over all I think that Googles presence in China will have a positive impact on the country and I have full faith in the Chinese people to learn to read between the lines. Simply having access to Googles search technology is a step forward. I’ve heard a lot about the blocking of websites in China but I don’t know how effective the filters are. Is there anyone that could describe their effectiveness or the topics they filter other than Falun Gong and dissident political views? It’s hard to judge Google without know the extent to which it’s complied and what was already being blocked.
Jonathan Zittrain, at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, has done quite a bit of research on internet filtering in China (see: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/ for one article, and http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/ for another with links to similar studies in countries such as Iran, Singapore, and UAEmirates). In China, filtering is not limited to political topics, but also spans cultural control — particularly sexually explicit sites and topics.
Some of Google’s responses here may be an international business compromise. In 2001, access to Google was generally blocked by government officials. Beginning in 2002 it was allowed (and I haven’t tracked it recently), but controlled.
I’d recommend Zittrain’s work for anyone interested in the policy and legal background on this issue.
In a Wired news interview posted today Brin defended Google’s China decision saying: “”I didn’t think I would come to this conclusion — but eventually I came to the conclusion that more information is better, even if it is not as full as we would like to see,” (Wired, Jan 24, ’06). I believe his defense is that a little information is better than no information at all, something the free speech advocates might find hard to argue against.
Secondly, I find the argument about censorship and hegemonic construction of reality interesting. Does it mean that political censorship does not merely squash dissent and push it under the carpet, but that it can actually create a common political and cultural ethos among a people?
Vinita, you should probably post a link to Brin’s article on the blog. And the discussion about hegemony needs to be continued, I think. China wants to be at the same in the 21st and the 20th centuries. She wants to be modern (controlling, regimenting, singleminded) and postmodern (hybridized, diverse, open to new ideas). You cannot be both unless you have some degree of control over what is considered to be true and right (or at least until you confuse everybody about what true and right is). The only way to do it is not by censoring everything. It is enough to say half truths about some things…
Ironies are rife here–
– In the world’s most populous country it widely reported that people in China use the Internet to support their social lives.
– Access to the Internet is based on the IP address system, something that can be accessed and searched with highly automated tools, but the Chinese authorities employ some 30K live people to search for ‘objectionable sites.’
– The majority of Western press coverage is focused on the government’s monitoring and suppression of dissident political sites, surely a bad thing, but the majority of the gov’t effort so far has focused on commercial sites.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/business/worldbusiness/08chinanet.html