Jan 12, 2010

Surprise! China used Google to spy on activists

Google has threatened to pull the plug on its operations in China after discovering that the emails of human rights activists had been hacked.

From AP:
The company disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China." Further investigation revealed that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google's post said.

Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.

1 comment:

John R. Carlisle said...

I will be shocked if Google really follows through with pulling out China Operations because of the compromised emails. I think Google is just trying to win points with the US Gov in an effort to gain traction in other areas they have having problems in , such as the copy righted materials being scanned and broadcast to the world. I asked a few people here at the John R. Carlisle Institute if they thought Google would really pull out of China and no one thought they would really do it. Time will tell and we will see, probably sooner than later.

John R. Carlisle