New Details Revealed About Google's Project Dragonfly

On August 1st, the beans were spilled about Google’s development of a censored search engine app for China. The project, code-named Dragonfly, has drawn heavy criticism from both Google employees and human rights groups. Since then, more details have been revealed concerning the nature of project Dragonfly.

As previously stated, project Dragonfly is a search engine app for android that will comply with the Chinese government’s censorship criteria by omitting blacklisted search results. According to a new report done by The Intercept, some of these blacklisted keywords include “human rights”, “student protests”, and “Nobel Peace Prize.”

The report also revealed that search queries would be linked to the user’s phone. This can allow Chinese authorities to zero-in on people who search for information they deem to be subversive to their government. Besides the fact that this is a violation of personal privacy, it can also facilitate political persecution.

Many have voiced their concerns over Google partnering up with Chinese organizations to enable the government to restrict its citizen’s access to information. A letter signed by 1,400 Google employees was shared through the company’s internal network in order to voice their concern to top executives regarding the project.