On Tuesday, Google shouted “J’accuse” at the Chinese government in a big way:

“Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. 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 … [W]e have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves … [A]s part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that 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.”

The NY Times tells the story of one of these targets, Tenzin Seldon, a young Tibetan activist living in California. She was notified by Google that her Gmail account had been compromised:

“She also allowed Google to examine her personal computer at the company’s request. Google returned it this week, saying that while no viruses or malware had been detected, her account had indeed been entered surreptitiously.”

The same day they disclosed China’s hacking, Google decided to activate https access for *all* Gmail accounts. It was not necessarily a coincidence, according to the NY Times:

“Sam Schillace, an engineering director at Google Apps, said the shift to default HTTPS was not prompted by the attacks and, to the best of his knowledge, would not have averted them. The move had been in the works for some six months, during which time Google engineers did extensive testing and made numerous technical fixes to enable a smooth transition. However, the announcement itself was prompted by the attack news. ‘The Gmail team decided, why wait?’ he said. ‘We want our users to be as safe as we can make them be.’”

But that’s not all. Google has decided to stop filtering Chinese Web results:

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

They did not just say that they’d pull the plug on the biggest market for Internet ads in the world, did they? Oh yes, they did. And the Chinese reaction? Pfffft, according to Bloomberg:

“China, in a veiled response to the announcement by Google Inc. that it will stop censoring its Chinese Web site, said it welcomed global Internet companies provided they obey laws that restrict their content. ‘The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet,’ Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing in Beijing today.”

So what are we to make of this? According to Jessica Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal [sub required], this was a hotly-debated moral issue:

“[Google CEO Eric] Schmidt made the argument he long has … namely that it is moral to do business in China in an effort to try to open up the regime. [Google co-founder Sergey] Brin strenuously argued the other side, namely that the company had done enough trying and that it could no longer justify censoring its search results.”

Other sources are nososure. TechCrunch’s Paul Carr says that “anyone who is applauding Google for taking a stand against censorship needs – ironically – to sit the hell down and shut the hell up.”

“… you have to accept that Google spent four years, and earned vast sums of money, operating under China’s censorship laws. And now only when they suffer an attack that threatens to damage their business worldwide – ‘What? The communists can hack my Gmail?’ – have they suddenly found a conscience. This may be a case of scorched-earth diplomacy on the part of Google, it may just be pure retaliation against a government which tried to hack their servers or it may be a shrewd business move dressed up as ‘taking a stand’. But what it’s absolutely not is a ‘moral position’, nor one that they should be particularly applauded for, any more than a man who has spend four years beating his wife should be applauded when he decides to stop. If anyone should be applauded it’s the man who didn’t beat his wife in the first place: companies like Twitter and Facebook whose refusal to work with the Chinese government lead to them being blocked last July.”

And Douglas Rushkoff of The Daily Beast thinks that “Google is attempting to create a distraction”:

“From what? From the fact that some Chinese hackers broke into their servers and gained access to what was supposed to be secure private and corporate data. Get it? That means none of our stuff on Google’s servers is safe. Now this would be a big deal—especially for those of us who have already bought into Google’s halcyon promise of a secure, always on, and always accessible ‘cloud’ in which to do our computing … So what is Google to do? Make sure that people don’t believe that a few hackers could have accomplished such a feat … Instead of letting our minds even go there, Google blames the government. At least the Chinese government sounds big and scary and qualified enough to break into a few corporate servers—and surely they wouldn’t be interested in any of America’s companies or users.”

Last (and least, imho) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says “We look to the Chinese government for an explanation.”

Thanks … I’d been a bit nostalgic about the Cold War recently.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on January 14, 2010 - 2:36 pm

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