Imagine if the U.S. government was able to freely access your search history and use it against you. That’s what may end up happening in China, thanks to a censored search engine built for the country by Google.
As reported by The Intercept, “The search engine, codenamed Dragonfly, was designed for Android devices, and would remove content deemed sensitive by China’s ruling Communist Party regime, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.”
That’s right, terms like “human rights,” “Nobel prize,” and “student protest” were all added to a censorship list compiled by the massive tech company for the Chinese government.
Keep in mind that China already has a social-credit system that ranks citizens and punishes them for behavior deemed inappropriate, such as bad driving or buying too many video games, according to Business Insider. Now think about the idea of your search history ending up tied to this system.
Naturally, Google doesn’t want to talk about what it’s doing.
“Google has so far declined to publicly address concerns about the Chinese censorship plans and did not respond to a request for comment on this story,” The Intercept reported. “It has also refused to engage with human rights groups regarding Dragonfly, ignored reporters’ questions, and rebuffed U.S. senators.”
Google has previously removed “don’t be evil” from its code of conduct.
Considering Google’s history of bias against conservatives, one might wonder what the future holds for the search engine in the United States.