Google May Leave China
Google Tuesday said it may end its operations in China after discovering that the Google e-mail accounts of human rights activists have been breached. In a blog post, Google Senior Vice President and Senior Legal Officer David Drummond said it discovered the breach when it detected a cyber attack in December originating from China.
"We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," he wrote. "Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective." Drummond noted that only two Gmail accounts had been breached and it appears only account information not the content of the e-mails was accessed. However, he said Google has discovered through its investigation that other Gmail accounts of dozens of U.S., China and European-based human rights advocates have been "routinely accessed" by third parties via e-mail phishing scams or through secretly installed malware.
In addition to making security improvements to its operations, Drummond said the incidents have forced Google to re-evaluate its operations in China. He noted that when Google launched its Chinese operations in 2006, it hoped the benefits of free speech would outweigh the firm's uneasiness with censoring some search results, as demanded by Chinese authorities. Drummond said it will no longer censor results on Google.cn and will discuss with Chinese officials whether the company can "operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."
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China-Internet
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