SEARCHING FOR CHANGE
As Google expands its already wide reach, its corporate colours are beginning to show,
When Vanessa Harris started working at Google, she didn’t think the company would ever be the subject of human rights protests. But eight years later, that’s exactly what’s happened. Google, which famously adopted the creed “Don’t be evil,” has fallen into a corporate club previously filled by oil companies, mining giants and weapons manufacturers.
Last week, more than 60 human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, demanded Google end an effort to launch a censored search engine in China, saying the move could make the company “complicit in human rights violations.”
“Well, Google united the human rights groups,” Harris wrote on Twitter.
More than a week earlier, Amnesty accused Google of helping the Chinese government spy on its citizens, and posted a fake job ad on Twitter to help the company replace employees who may have quit over the “Dragonfly” project.
“When I joined Google I never expected we would be the target of an attack ad by Amnesty International,” Harris replied on Twitter, appending her tweet with a sad face emoji. “The Google I joined once (appeared to? pretended to? actually?) stood for so much more than increasing ad revenue,” she added in a tweet on Nov. 30.
Harris, a lead product manager at the company, didn’t respond to requests for comment. But her social-media posts are indicative of a broader uneasiness among some Googlers.
“Ethics are something that Googlers really, really care about,” said Yana Calou, engagement and training manager for advocacy group Coworker.org, who’s working with some Google staff activists. “There’s been some trust that’s been broken.”
The internet giant, which builds products loved by billions of people, was until recently seen by many as an anomaly among tech giants: corporation with a heart. Now, the reality that Google is much like any other large company is setting in — both inside and outside the company.
“The reason people are so shocked by this is they joined Google with a certain sense that they were building technologies that were beneficial for society,” said Joe Westby, a researcher at Amnesty International. Google declined to comment.
Efforts such as Dragonfly, along with Google’s immense size and power, have undermined this image. It is one of the most-valuable companies, controlling how a significant part of the world’s information flows online. Google is also de- veloping artificial intelligence technology with the potential to make other important decisions. That kind of power demands closer scrutiny, according to Westby.
“We’ve really ramped up our work on technology and human rights in light of the very clear ways in which new technologies have been shown to have such a direct influence on people’s rights and lives,” said Westby, who used to focus on mining companies.
Earlier this year, the International Committee for Robot Arms Control wrote an open letter to Google executives demanding the company cancel an AI contract with the Pentagon.
“We are deeply concerned about the possible integration of Google’s data on people’s everyday lives with military surveillance data and its combined application to targeted killing,” the group wrote in May. “Google has moved into military work without subjecting itself to public debate or deliberation, either domestically or internationally.”