Google's rocky relationship with China may be coming to an end. In a dramatic post to Google's company blog yesterday afternoon, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond revealed that Google had been the victim of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on [its] corporate infrastructure originating from China." Google claims to have evidence that the goal of this attack was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, although Google believes the hackers "did not achieve that objective."
Perhaps the scariest thing to come out of this for the American public is that Google's investigations into this attack, which is thought to have occurred in December, uncovered that at least twenty other large companies have fallen victim to similar attacks. The companies targeted included Internet, finance, media, and chemical companies, which of courses raises questions as to the security of US and international consumers' personal information, and, particularly in regards to attacks on chemical companies, raises safety and national security concerns as well. According to this report in the Washington Post, sources in Congress say other affected companies may include Adobe, Dow Chemical, and Northrop Grumman, a major US defense contractor--further raising alarm bells for US national security. The US response so far seems to reflect the gravity of the situation. The NSA is already involved in the investigations, and Secretary Clinton expressed "serious concerns" in a statement, going on to say that "We look to the Chinese government for an explanation."
Google's investigations further revealed that the Gmail accounts of "dozens" of US, Europe and China based human rights advocates have been "routinely accessed by third parties," although these security breaches appear to be the result of malware, not a direct breach of Google's systems. This will probably come as no surprise to human rights advocates; LRF has long suspected that the Chinese government or its proxies have been involved in attacks on our own website and network.
Interestingly, Google's immediate response is not to pull out of China, but rather to stop censoring the search results of Google.cn, Google's Chinese search engine. Google executives will begin talks with the Chinese government in the coming weeks to discuss how it can operate an uncensored search engine inside China and remain within the law. Google does not seem very optimistic that these talks will be fruitful however, saying they "recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China." BBC business editor Robert Peston warns that "some Google shareholders... will see this as a commercial example of cutting off your nose to spite your face." I certainly disagree; I think those who have been following Google's tumultuous relationship with China are instead wondering what has taken Google so long. Certainly the prospect of access to 304 million internet users in the China market was irresistible at first. That is precisely the reason Google, in the minds of free speech advocates and even many Google employees, ignored its motto "Don't be evil" and agreed to censor its Chinese search engine, which launched in 2006. But since that time, Google has suffered numerous insults, including further censorship imposed by the government, and public denunciation by Chinese officials, accusing Google of not doing enough to block pornography on the Internet. Meanwhile Baidu, a Chinese search engine with a close relationship to the Chinese government, controls 60% of the market inside China, with Google.cn trailing behind with only a 31% share of the market.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal argued in an op-ed that the ongoing battle between Google, Baidu, and Beijing amounted to protectionism on the part of the Chinese government, and that Google, and other US companies blocked by the CCP's censorship regime such as Facebook and Twitter, should push for the US to bring a case against China before the WTO. According the Washington Post, Chinese dissident Ran Yunfei agrees, suggesting that rather than leaving China Google should pressure the Chinese regime through the WTO and the US government.
Perhaps one lesson to draw from these events involves the Global Network Initiative (GNI), a voluntary coalition of information and communications companies, academics and investors that is supposed to provide companies with guidelines for protecting freedom of speech and individual privacy while operating in repressive societies. If anything, this new development points to weaknesses in the GNI's model of voluntary participation with no enforcement mechanism. Google signed on to the Global Network Initiative in 2008, but it was an attack on Google's corporate infrastructure, rather than its commitments under GNI, that have led it to finally stop participating in the Chinese government's censorship regime.
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