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Google Moving PRC Records Out of China 267

Posted by Zonk from the covering-their-bases dept.
Lam1969 writes "Google says it is moving search records out of China and back to the U.S. to prevent the Chinese government from accessing them, reports Computerworld. Additionally, the company will let Chinese users know when search results are being censored. According to Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, 'Some of the people want to query about democracy, but most of them just want to know about their pop stars.'"
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Google Moving PRC Records Out of China More

Google Moving PRC Records Out of China

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  • Wait a minute (Score:4, Informative)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @12:35PM (#14835916)
    Maybe they should be moving the US records into China, given all the crap with the DOJ recently. That would actually be a pretty good swap, moving the US records into China and the Chinese records into the US.
    • What happens when the Chinese government makes Google turn over the US records they are holding in China?

      • Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Informative)

        by pHatidic ( 163975 )
        China doesn't have the authority to kidnap US citizens without probable cause and send them it Gitmo without trial to be tortured or killed so it doesn't matter. Well, technically neither does the US, but that doesn't seem to be stopping Bush.
        • China doesn't have the authority to kidnap US citizens without probable cause and send them it Gitmo without trial to be tortured or killed so it doesn't matter. Well, technically neither does the US, but that doesn't seem to be stopping Bush.

          Name one US citizen to whom any of this has happened.

          Note: Jose Padilla doesn't count, 'cause he never set foot in Gitmo, and he's never been tortured.
          • Name one US citizen to whom any of this has happened. John Walker Lindh?
            • FIX AUTOPR0N!

            • Re:Wait a minute (Score:2, Informative)

              by corbettw ( 214229 )
              Was he "kidnapped"? No, he was captured by the Northern Aliance in Afghanistan while fighting for the Taliban.

              Was he tortured? Not likely, though his lawyer claims he was put in "highly coercive" holding conditions, which led to his confessing. What this means exactly is unclear. However, it does not appear he was tortured, per se, merely made very uncomfortable. Possibly due to conditions aboard a warship at sea (having served in the Navy, I remember the racks in the brig not being very soft when I had to
            • Lindh voluntarily placed himself in Afghanistan fighting American forces. That's hardly kidnapping!

              Is America not supposed to defend itself against acts of treason?

              Besides, Lindh was never in Gitmo, AFAIK... he was tried and sentenced in the US.
            • Lindh was captured fighting with a foreign military, against US forces.

              I think that ought to be enough to revoke his citizenship right there. In fact previous to some really boneheaded USSC cases in the late 80s, it would have been.

              If you're fighting as a soldier in a hostile military unit and are captured, I don't think you should be able to pull out your US Passport and get special treatment. Go direct to court martial -- do not pass go, do not collect $200.

              If you're caught in a combat area, holding a gun

              • Re:Wait a minute (Score:4, Informative)

                by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @03:48PM (#14837619) Journal
                Lindh was captured fighting with a foreign military, against US forces.

                False. He never fought against US forces. In fact, when given the option of fighting the US forces or the Northern Alliance forces, Lindh specifically said he did not want to fight US forces.

                Further, he was captured by the Northern Alliance forces and put in an Afghanistan jail. He was only found after the riot and attempted takeover of the prison in Mazaor-e Sharif by the prisoners. For reference:

                CNN [cnn.com]
                Wiki [wikipedia.org]

          • Yes, because the framers of our Constitution intended "inalienable" human rights only to apply to residents with U.S. citizenship.
            • Not sure where the inalienable rights come in here, there is no mention of that in the constitution. The declaration of independence mentions the inalienable rights bestowed upon man by god, but that hardly seems to apply here.

              Rather I assume you are refering to Article 1, Section 9, of the United States constitution. This is where 'the framers' said that we can not be held without charges being filed against us. It is a very simple, single sentence.

              The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall n
              • I would assume that the rare case(s) wherein someone is being held without trial would be attributed to the fact that they are an enemy on our soil posing a clear threat to the public safety.

                The blurb you posted from the constitution only mentions two cases in which this can be done, neither of which applies. Just because they're an "enemy" is not a good reason, and any sane person would quickly realize why. Someone needs to define enemy, many in the past (Nixon potentially) believed it was anyone who in an
                • Actually I agree with him. Look at what he said more carefully "the fact that they are an enemy on our soil posing a clear threat to the public safety "[emphasis mine] compared with "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. "[emphasis mine]. Remember our founding fathers did not think they were creating the perfect government, and that we don't have the perfect government. But they created something

                  • Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Informative)

                    by Rakishi ( 759894 )
                    You both seem to totally ignore the first half of the sentence and then take the second out of context. I'll explain this slowly then:
                    "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

                    "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended" - says that this is to not be suspended, as in no law can do this and the president cannot legally do this.

                    "unless" - okay, now we get an exception.

                    "when in Cases
              • I only mentioned inalienable rights as among the fundamental ideals in whose spirit America's legal and social apparatus were founded--the liberal principles shared by "fathers" as diverse as Jefferson and Hamilton, Jay, Madison. My mistake was mentioning the Constitution, as the legal intricacies and requirements of the document aren't really relevant.

                I'd still argue the present administration's actions are, in fact, unconstitutional. The American government, and pretty much every political regime in histo

            • Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)

              by SquadBoy ( 167263 )
              The Constitution says *nothing* about human rights. Inalienable or otherwise.

              That would be the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence was written by a group of private citizens (well for the most part and certainly acting as such) as a statement of belief and philosophy trying to incite revolt against a sitting government by their fellow citizens.

              The Constitution was written by a sitting goveernment 11 years later in order to establish the law of the land for the country that that grou

              • The Consitution, for obvious reasons, can and does only apply to citizens of that country.

                No it doesn't. Parts apply to citizens (voting) and parts apply to anyone on US soil (most of the bill of rights, for instance). Non-citizens can't own firearms, but they can't be stopped and searched on a whim.

                But the simple fact is that there is *no* legal basis for interfering with another country.

                Well, there is the argument that the other country poses an imminent threat, but that doesn't really apply to Ch

              • "Now you could argue that the founding fathers felt that these rights should be universal, based on the Declaration of Independence..."

                Yep, that was my point, which was obscured, unfortunately, by my sloppy thinking and writing. You said it much better than I did--thanks for that.

                "but you would also have to agree that they were smart enough to leave that out of law."

                The shame here is that our administration fails to live up to these ideals even when (a) it's completely within their legal and administrative
              • The Constitution applies to all actions of the United States Government and its constituent states. It does not apply to any other entity.

                Note that the 10th Amendment says "or to the people", not "or to the citizens".
              • There are numerous international treaties the define the ways countries interfere with one another. Most of those the US never signed, the others it just ignores.

                Admittedly a lot of other countries also ignore them, although they usually did sign them :).

        • Re:Wait a minute (Score:4, Insightful)

          by donutello ( 88309 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @01:33PM (#14836464) Homepage
          No, China would never do something like that.

          What kind of fucking bubble world do some of you idiots live in? Yes, our rights are being eroded away and the US government is doing many bad things and we need to fight that but don't be so stupid as to let that diminish the much worse atrocities of certain other governments.
          • Much worse atrocities? The Soviet Union is history, friend. There's nobody who can compete with the U.S. for magnitude of evil in this millenium. Some pockets of abject tyranny exist, but their scale is small. There's only one evil empire today, and you're in it.

            China? China hasn't spread nuclear waste over the cradle of civilization. China hasn't invaded non-beligerent nations in decades, and hasn't killed a quarter of a million people in another country in order to keep them from forming a government
        • I don't need to see some complete politically motivated garbage. We get it, man. You hate the president. We don't, however, need to subject slashdot to this ridiculous hyperbole and completely unintelligent rhetoric that is entirely flamebait.

          No rational comparison can be made even from Gitmo to what China does.. for instance.. to Tibet. This is total non-intelligent political flamebait.
    • Google should make some artificial island or buy Midway from the US.
    • Maybe they should be moving the US records into China, given all the crap with the DOJ recently. That would actually be a pretty good swap, moving the US records into China and the Chinese records into the US.

      I can only assume this is a joke and the people who modded you "informative" hit the wrong identifier by accident. You aren't actually comparing privacy rights in the US and China and equating them... I can't be actually reading this.. and seeing other people modding it up as actually informative.
      • It was a joke. Theoretically though it actually makes sense since the Chinese governments can't prosecute US citizens and the US government can't prosecute Chinese citizens. In reality though it would be an unmitigated disaster.
      • Look up the term "Groupthink."
        On a related note- I would be all for censoring "pop stars"
    • Just move it all to Sealand [sealandgov.com] and live in peace. I think with google's backing Sealand could expand a little.
    • or, better yet, just set up shop in some minor, peaceful country that doesn't have any extradition treaties with anyone. problems solved!

    • Maybe they should be moving the US records into China, given all the crap with the DOJ recently. That would actually be a pretty good swap, moving the US records into China and the Chinese records into the US.

      1. Google starts doing business in a foreign country
      2. US government complains when Google helps with cencorship
      3. Google takes data from PRC to the US
      4. Data from the PRC becomes subject to US Patriot Act like all other friggin' data.
      5. Profit????

      I sure as hell don't think they should be importin

      • That bloody evil Patriot Act seems to automatically give them extra-territoriality over everything in the friggin' world.

        Yeah, if it just authorized warrantless wiretaps it'd be in line with Canadian law since 1973.

  • Oh! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chordonblue ( 585047 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @12:35PM (#14835918) Journal
    'Some of the people want to query about democracy, but most of them just want to know about their pop stars.'

    Sooo... They're like your average American then? :)

    • Re:Oh! (Score:2)

      by CFTM ( 513264 )
      Actually to be slightly more precise, albeit less humorous, "They're like your average Mammal then?". I know slashdot has run a few articles on it and what not; here's a brief synopsis from the Discovery Channel. [discovery.com].
  • Nothing for you to see here. Move along.

  • The reach of national laws (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Aspirator ( 862748 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @12:37PM (#14835935)
    It is interesting that an American company are moving data out of China,
    in order to make it inaccessible to Chinese law.

    At the same time American (and some other countires) law is assuming more
    global coverage.
    • They might be doing it to get leverage over the Chineese government, saying look, if you don't get off our back will make your private search records vulnerable to US sovriengty. In addition, it might be a good way to get the powerfull political forces to back them up in their privacy fight against the US government. Or perhaps the US government wanted googles records for things other than fighting porn, and protecting children was just an excuse.

  • Uh (Score:2)

    by mcc ( 14761 )
    That's a good gesture on their part, but I have to wonder, couldn't the Chinese government just snoop on data going into and out of google and collect that same search data themselves?
    • What if they move it physically out of China? I mean, pack up a few dozen 250GB HDDs, drive to a port, get on a boat to Japan. Then fly back or use bandwidth.
      • Parent means the Chinese government could intercept HTTP traffic towards and from Google and then analyse it themselves.
    • all they have to do is install packet sniffers at every demarc, or at every neighborhood uplink system. Can't be THAT hard. Google must've pulled a page from Sun Tzu, hehe.. Sure, we'll move the SEARCH data to the US you effing congressional NITWITS. But, did you EVER top to think China STILL WILL get those records, by keyboard, cpu, machine, user and neighborhood.

      I imagine China will start biometric tagging of citizens who want to surf. No need tagging all 2 billion, just the ones who surf. But, how diff w

  • why US? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joe 155 ( 937621 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @12:39PM (#14835952) Journal
    how can they know that the records won't be forced to be released in the US... I think it'd be best to go somewhere like switzerland, then it'd be safe, no one ever asks questions there

  • So...umm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gorm the DBA ( 581373 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @12:40PM (#14835966) Journal
    What's going to keep China from saying "Give us access to the records you've got stored in the US, or we're shutting your service down"?

    And will Google kowtow to that demand, or depart the largest potential growth market in the world these days?

    I do think the "Google has 47,000 other search results to your query, but to comply with laws, we have removed them from the results we're showing you" is a nice little thing though...we'll see how long that lasts.

  • And what about Yahoo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cyranose ( 522976 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @12:43PM (#14835980) Homepage
    I'm pretty sure this google news is just a reannouncement, since privacy protection seemed to be the intent from the beginning--but they certainly did a horrible job on the PR...

    On the other hand, from what I hear, Yahoo! is still busy cooperating with China and landing dissidents in jail by releasing their "private" information. I must have missed the constant stream of /. front page stories about Yahoo! being evil, but the google ones have been just great!

  • Because that could *never* happen here... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @12:44PM (#14835999) Journal
    back to the U.S. to prevent the Chinese government from accessing them

    Yeah, great idea - Because, y'know, the "land of the free" would never try to force Google to turn over its search records. And certainly never for something as frivolous as trying to further the religious agenda of right-wing crackpots... Oh, I mean "democracy". Slip of the tongue there, please ignore it.


    So will we hear tomorrow that they've moved all search records involving porn to Japan, to protect them from the US government?
    • Yeah, great idea - Because, y'know, the "land of the free" would never try to force Google to turn over its search records.

      So... Are you suggesting it's a waste of time moving these records out of China? Are you suggesting Google start a repository on the Moon? You got a better idea, or do you intend on just moaning, bitching, and complaining? Honestly, if you've got a better idea for Google, why not let us all know?

  • May I suggest that they move their records out of the US and into the Bahamas, and re-incorporate there so they will not be obligated to show their search records to the US government.
  • Google's board members, looking at a stack of negative press reviews on one hand and the equally negative scuttlebutt reports from their paid slashdot-reading MBAs on other other, decide that something needs to be done. "'Don't be evil' is not as black and white as you might at first think," a google board member and attorney who daily handles marketing and cultural sensitivity issues relating to novelty holiday and seasonal variations of Google's home page logo, was quoted as saying.

    Google's "goodness i

    • You are absolutely correct. Google is catching hell for their behavior in China, and rightly so. This, combined with their missed earning reports and subsequent stock crash, tells them they have to "do something".

      It's a start, but it's still not that much of an improvement.
  • They should move the US records to China to prvent the US government from accessing them...
    • They should move the US records to China to prvent the US government from accessing them...

      *beep* We are sorry, but we are not able to accept your karma-whoring troll at this time. This flamebait has already been posted by some other retard, been modded up by more retards, and hijacked the entire thread. Please try again later.
  • Wouldn't the government of China already have access to this same information through other sources? Presumably if they have physical access to the cables, they should be able to sniff out whatever is going through. (or check ISP records).

    Also, instead of *moving* the records to the US, why didn't google just stop storing the search records so they wouldn't exist in the first place?

    • Also, instead of *moving* the records to the US, why didn't google just stop storing the search records so they wouldn't exist in the first place?

      For two reasons: 1> Pagerank 2> Adwords

      HTH, HAND.

    • That's why Google and any other marketing/data aggregation firm will continue to collect records. Assuming they honestly "de-identify" or "anoymize" the end user from the samples of data and information, they will have BEELIONS of pieces of stuff to sell to other US-based companies vying and trying to gain insight into the mind of the average Chinese consumer, maybe to eventually turn them into PROsumers.

      But, OTOH, if Google *were* to stop collecting or storing the search data, the US govt would get pissed

    • Wouldn't the government of China already have access to this same information through other sources?

      Isn't all Internet traffic in China routed through the 'great firewall' already? They could simply log all Google traffic (including IP addresses and search queries) at this point.

  • Additionally, the company will let Chinese users know when search results are being censored

    I thought they already did... No?
  • Who's the idiot who keeps posting dupe tags on non-duped stories? There should be a kind of meta-mod on tags.

  • "'Some of the people want to query about democracy, but most of them just want to know about their pop stars.'"

    From all the whining that goes on here, you would think that the entire population of China is yearning for democracy and searching for any anti-government information, when in fact, people there don't care as much about democracy in China as much as people here do.

    Fact is, their authoritarian government is doing a good job at improving their economy and therefore quality of living, so why woul

    • Fact is, their authoritarian government is doing a good job at improving their economy and therefore quality of living, so why would they want to change things?

      Funny that. I was just reading an article [foreignpolicy.com] that claimed

      China's economic performance since 1979, for example, is actually less impressive than that of its East Asian neighbors, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, during comparable periods of growth. Its banking system, which costs Beijing about 30 percent of annual GDP in bailouts, is saddled with

      • Statistics are great a manipulating the truth. Why choose those specific years? Why not compare China's economic performance in the past 10 years compared to their neighbours?

        Because it doesn't support your cause that's why.

        Fact is, China's economy is doing better than most countries in the world today, and NO ONE can deny that. The quality of life is improving more than most countries today. They aren't interested about democracy as much as research pop stars.

        In this case, I believe we're focusing too
  • Don't you just hate it when you get tossed a volleyball soft and high over the net? One gets paralyzed by indecision as to exactly how to spike it.

    'Some of the people want to query about democracy, but most of them just want to know about their pop stars.'

    • Important change germinates from a minority opinion that is well-formed, not through groupthink herd mentality.
    • "Let them eat cake."
    • Providing a steam of information on pop stars as a way to distract from real issues -- didn't the U.S. already try this
  • I just *knew* google was planning to launch a music service!

  • Wrong way (Score:2)

    by Tom ( 822 )
    Google says it is moving search records out of China and back to the U.S. to prevent the Chinese government from accessing them

    That's a joke, right? For all we know, the US government is trying to get a hand on their search records, not the chinese one. How about moving them to Canada or some other still-free country?
  • "Some of the people want to query about democracy, but most of them just want to know about their pop stars."

    How naive (or disingenuous). Maybe more people would want to know about subversive subjects if they weren't afraid of being ratted out.

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