If you look into some of the claims and evidence supplied by Google in their official document, you'd be clueless and wonder "what is G complaining?" Media censorship? Infringement of property rights? Violation of human rights? For the first variable, GFW and censorship has been there ever since Google made the inroad into the Chinese market in 2006, and G is well aware of the filtered search engine they introduced to China from the beginning, so why now? On the second level, if breaching their servers is the concern here, why didn't other companies with their systems hacked complain? Were they threatened? What is the comparative scope of damage? The comparative POV is important because G could be making an exaggerated accusation by over-victimizing itself. So far I found the third claim simply groundless. On what ground does G catalogue the political engagement of their users? How does G distinguish what email accounts belong to "advocates of human rights"? Even if the accounts belong to prominent social activists, were the exact emails being accessed contain human rights-related topics? If not, then it's at best a privacy and internet security problem. Why drag human rights into this discussion? I understand that China has a horrible record when it comes to media censorship and encroachment of civil right, but I don't see how G can back up their arguments in this incident. For example, not sufficient evidence is supplied by G on the intended target and motivations of the email hacks. If the email strip-search affects many more companies, what gives G the right to claim that human rights related topic is the outstanding reason for the hacks? Why doesn't G grant the Chinese authority the benefits of the doubts?
The point here is not internet censorship in China in general, but this specific event. Based on this text and other blog articles, I don't see how the limited evidence G provided support their argument that "the primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activist", or so as they maintained.
If you were a human right activist, would you put "human right activist" as your name? Your occupation? Your interest? Your affiliated group when you sign up for the Gmail accounts? When I sign up mine, I didn't put my Chinese name in my gmail account, do you know how many "Christine Luk" are there in HK alone? I left my date of birth open too. The point is, it seems very unlikely G can deduce the political engagement of its email users from the mere account information provided at the time of signing up. These info. are circumferential at best. I understand that G needs to protect the privacy of its users, but it should disclose the sources of evidence by which they employed to back up their claim. Moreover, G said the information being assessed is only limited to the subject line and the account activity rather than the content of the emails. So how does what appeared to be an internet security problem (which is a separate but important issue) to a human right-related issue?
If you were a human right activist, would you put "human right activist" as your name? Your occupation? Your interest? Your affiliated group when you sign up for the Gmail accounts? When I sign up mine, I didn't put my Chinese name in my gmail account, do you know how many "Christine Luk" are there in HK alone? I left my date of birth open too. The point is, it seems very unlikely G can deduce the political engagement of its email users from the mere account information provided at the time of signing up. These info. are circumferential at best. I understand that G needs to protect the privacy of its users, but it should disclose the sources of evidence by which they employed to back up their claim. Moreover, G said the information being assessed is only limited to the subject line and the account activity rather than the content of the emails. So how does what appeared to be an internet security problem (which is a separate but important issue) to a human right-related issue?
Apparently I am not the only one who questioned Google's decision. This blog article provided a possible (and plausible) explanation of the Google's farce. I don't have valid evidence to verify this story, but at least the situation is skeptical and dubious enough to attract counter-arguments from the netizens. If there were indeed an engineering spy from the CPC, the divulge of the account information of the human rights activists appeared to be more precisely and concretely demonstrated rather than some vague grounds that "anything is possible on the net" as my FB friend threw out. It also explained the unofficial announcement of this consequential decision. But there is no evidence so far lending support to this anecdotes.
Also, Shanghai Scrap gave a critical account of the "cowardice" of Google by pulling all out from the Sinosphere instead of hanging in there and make a difference in the long run.
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