Two important controversies are addressed in their blogs
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/free-expression-and-controversial.html
Free expression and controversial content on the web
Posted by Rachel Whetstone, Director of Global Communications and Public Affairs, EMEA
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/11/global-privacy-standards-should-focus.html
Global privacy standards should focus on preventing harm to consumers
Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel
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Rachel Whetstone's post is interesting, although it's really vague when you look into it more deeply.
But one thing she says is crystal clear – Google goes beyond what is legally required. From the second-last paragraph:
"...it's not only legal considerations that drive our policies. One type of content, while legal everywhere, may be almost universally unacceptable in one region yet viewed as perfectly fine in another ... so we try to take into account local cultures and needs ... when developing and implementing our global product policies"
You know, I don't actually want a corporation deciding that the information presented to me will take into account my geographically-local "cultural needs". No thanks.
If they have to do this, perhaps they would let me set a preference on my account, something like this:
CULTURAL FILTERING LEVEL:
[ ] Let corporate nanny decide what's good for me
[ ] No government criticism please
[ ] Nothing crude (no goatse, vomit etc)
[ ] Mainstream commercial consumer stuff only
[ ] Suppress content that might lead me towards thoughtcrime
[ ] Don't stray outside a local narrowminded cultural stereotype
[x] Show me everything – I'll do my own filtering thanks
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I dropped the following letter to Google press support, I hope they give answers on these issues (though they ignored these types of questions from me previously):
<<Hi Google,
I just read your article "Free expression and controversial content on the web" on the Google Blog. You mention your aim for transparency in these matters. So I have some questions which I hope you can answer:
1. How many domains do you censor in China? Also: which domains are those?
2. How many domains do you censor in Germany? Which ones are those?
3. How do you communicate with the Chinese authorities about which domains or pages to blacklist? Do you ever disagree on certain additions to the blacklist? Also; how often does the blacklist change?
4. Why did you choose not to offer non-Mainland publishers for your Google Books China service?
5. Which sources did you remove from Google News China? Which Chinese government department ordered you to do so? What was the nature of the order, i.e. which documents were sent to you?
6. How many people in the China office handle maintenance of the self-censorship module? Do you have a separate department for these matters in China?
7. In the recent case about you offering an Orkut IP from an Indian user to authorities – who requested the information, and in what ways were the information requested?
8. What percentage of web searches on Google.cn result in a partially self-censored top 10?
9. Have you ever contemplated offering the self-censorship notice in Google.cn web results on top of results, instead of at the bottom where it can be easily missed? If so, what were your considerations for not doing so?
10. Does Google invest in anti-censorship tools to make information more universally accessible to users, like anonymization proxies?
Again, I would greatly appreciate if you can answer these questions.
thanks
Philipp>>
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Google's reply:
<<many thanks for your email. You raise a number of interesting points. As I made clear in the blog these are not easy issues – there are no simple solutions, nor do we dot pretend to have all the right
answers.
Vis a vis China – our starting point is engagement not estrangement. Google believes that by enabling more people to access more information we will help development in China. We do however recognize that many people disagree with this approach – believing that isolation is the best course of action. The reality is that how best to approach China is a subject on which reasonable people can (and do) disagree – indeed the launch Google.cn was the subject of intense debate even within Google.
It's also important to remember we took a number of China specific steps to maximize free expression and protect our users' rights and privacy.
. First, we do not host or store in China services that would make personal, confidential information subject to Chinese jurisdiction or put
users at risk for expressing their opinions.
. Second, we continue to provide an unfiltered Chinese-language version of Google.com – exactly as we always have. That gives our users a choice.
. Third, we keep removals to a minimum; we estimate that well under 2 per cent of our Google.cn search results are affected. Our basic strategy is to go no further than the filtering performed by Chinese Internet service providers, meaning we attempt to remove only results that would cause an ISP to block access to Google.com.
. Fourth, where we do restrict information we make clear we have done so on that very search results page. We were the first search engine in China to do this.
In addition, we are continuing our long campaign in Washington and other capital cities to have Internet censorship recognized as a trade barrier within the global free trading system. In particular, we are pushing for this principle to be recognized in bilateral free trade agreements currently under negotiation by the US, EU, and other major trading powers. We are also working with NGO's to put Internet freedom on the list of considerations that governments review when allocating development aid.
As I said in the blog, Google analyzes different countries' laws before launching services or opening offices abroad. There are some countries whose governmental processes are so at odds with Google's principles that we simply can't comply or operate there in a way that benefits our users and enables us to pursue our values.
We recognize that our decisions about which countries to serve have consequences. In an ideal world, all countries would give equal respect to principles of free expression and protection of user privacy. In the reality we confront, however, we have to make difficult decisions such as whether we can move closer to our principles through engagement or estrangement. In China, we made a rather careful and important distinction based on that analysis: on freedom of expression, we concluded that we could do more for Chinese users, and for the expansion of access to information, by launching a localized Google.cn, rather than getting blocked entirely. On protection of user privacy, we reached a different conclusion, and have determined that we should not store personal, confidential information on servers inside China.
I hope this helps>>
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My reply to their reply:
<<Thanks for your reply. I agree the moral issue at hand is no easy topic – however my questions were not about the moral issues at
large, but about specifics of implementation and processes, as you said you want to be transparent. And out of my 10 specific questions,
you only answered question 8. Do you still intend to answer the other questions? I would greatly appreciate it.
Unless Google as a company considers outside criticism to be without value, then it should share the facts that will help critics reach independent conclusions. If you agree the moral issue at hand is complicated, then you can allow others to offer their analysis to aid
yours. You already help this process in other countries where you submit authority requests for censorship to ChillingEffects.org, for
instance, but you decided not to share anything that specific about what you do in China, for instance.
As for question 8, you answer:
> we keep removals to a minimum; we estimate that well under 2
> per cent of our Google.cn search results are affected.
When you say under 2% of search results are affected, does this mean that an average of under 2% of daily searches show censored results,
or does this mean under 2% of all sites in the index are censored in China? Because my question was aimed specifically at the former
number, the actual "effect" of the censorship (well, it's a more realistic number at least, though even then it doesn't take into
account all those searches people self-censor out of fear... by not even entering the query in the first place, afraid authorities might
find out). E.g. let's say Google would "only" censor a single domain, Wikipedia.org, which for the sake of argument we'll estimate at the
hypothetical 0.001% of all web pages indexed, then it might still be that this results in e.g. (hypothetical) 1% of all results... because of Wikipedia's popularity.>> |
