January 31, 2006

"Focus on the user and all else will follow." This is principle number one listed on Google's Web site of "Ten Things Google Has Found to be True."

This principle holds great irony upon release of announcements that Google has agreed to comply with Chinese government censors in launching its new site Google.cn, catering to Internet users inside China. With this in mind, it would seem more appropriate for the principle to read: "Focus on the user, unless the user happens to be Chinese, in which case the government is more important than the user."

If the user is Chinese, allowing listings of Web sites regarding human rights, religious freedom, and Chinese government abuses of religious freedom may perhaps expose the user to information the government considers "threatening."

Google's acceptance of Chinese government censorship comes as an even greater disappointment in light of its recent vigor in resisting subpoenas from the United States Department of Justice. The Department of Justice subpoenas came as a part of U.S. efforts to enforce the Child Online Protection Act, which Congress passed in attempts to combat Internet child pornography.

Google's efforts to defend the right to privacy of United States citizens might seem more genuine were the company not so ready and willing to facilitate the Chinese government's denial to its own citizens of freedom of the press, freedom of religion and rights to free expression. In this instance, it appears that Google lawyers will go to bat to defend the right to privacy of Americans doing searches for child pornography, but they deem it less important to defend the rights of Chinese citizens to learn more about religious freedom and democracy.

Recent studies from the OpenNet Initiative show that while Chinese Internet filters block about 7% of the top 100 search results for pornography, more than 70% percent of the top 100 results were blocked in searches on the Falun Gong movement, outlawed in China in 1999. More than 80% were blocked in searches for the China Democracy Party. Now searches on Google.cn will yield similar results.

An ongoing experiment, the first of its kind, initiated by Reebok, demonstrates that companies can push local limits in China and still make money. In 2002, despite regulations that outlaw free trade unions, executives at Reebok decided to make association rights a priority at their factories in China by instituting a process for factory-wide elections at sites of their largest contracting plants.

Reebok executives claim they undertook tense negotiations to ensure that rank-and-file workers would have their say and that the elections would offer workers true representation. Of course, the Reebok union, like every other union in China, still falls under the umbrella of the All China Federation of Trade Unions, however, impartial observers report that conditions have improved since its installation.

The experiment is far from perfect, but it never would have started had Reebok not taken a stand. Likewise, Google could have countered Beijing's censorship with tenacity equal to its ongoing efforts to resist compliance with subpoenas from the Department of Justice.

Google has said that it complies with regulations in China in the same way that it complies with regulations elsewhere. Has its board of ethics considered that laws and regulations and rule of law operate on a different plane in China than in most other countries?

In America, a lengthy process exists. It includes checks and balances on government agencies, which must seek thorough approval to demonstrate their lawful right to demand companies turn over any sort of corporate records.

Additional processes guarantee the rights of defendants to fight such subpoenas in court.

In China, the process is quite different. It relies not upon legitimate rule of law, but upon a priority to preserve the power of the Communist Party.

The top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party writes a list of the topics it deems threatening to its complete control over political and social capital within the country. It hands that list to Google executives, who proceed to build their China search engines with filters installed.

Chinese Internet users log on and search for information on Falun Gong and they receive results of sites for Chinese propaganda of an "evil cult." They receive no information regarding the imprisonment of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in Chinese reeducation through labor camps.

Perhaps Google may argue, at least they logged on, at least there is a search engine, and some Chinese users may learn ways to evade the censors.

Those who evade the censors may then contribute to the ongoing efforts of the Chinese people to push for greater governmental accountability and for greater individual rights. It is unfortunate, though, that they will be forced to fight the technology of a giant like Google in order to get around the limitations that the search engines have succumbed to.

It is unfortunate that through their compliance, companies like Yahoo, MSN, and now Google have implied that the Chinese Communist Party has legitimate rights to enforce such limitations.