Google

Amazon Should Follow Google’s Lead And Stop Selling Face Surveillance Tech To Cops

June 4, 2018 Iqra Asghar and Kade Crockford, Privacysos.org Resist! Amazon, Google, Police, Surveillance

In response to internal and external protest and expressions of revulsion, Google yesterday announcedit would stop contracting with the Department of Defense to provide artificial intelligence technology to the US military. Google’s move is a rare instance in which one of the Big Five artificial intelligence firms in the United States takes an action to undercut its own profits in service of its professed ethical commitments. Other companies, including Amazon, must follow suit, and stop selling technology to human rights violators, including police departments. Last month, the ACLU and a coalition of over forty civil rights, civil liberties, religious, and community groups sent a public letter to Amazon demanding that the company stop selling its face surveillance software to law enforcement and other government agencies.

Google Employee Opposition Derails Military AI Project

June 3, 2018 By Kate Conger, Gizmodo Resist! Artificial Intelligence, Google, Wars and Militarism

Google will not seek another contract for its controversial work providing artificial intelligence to the U.S. Department of Defense for analyzing drone footage after its current contract expires. Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced the decision at a meeting with employees Friday morning, three sources told Gizmodo. The current contract expires in 2019 and there will not be a follow-up contract, Greene said. The meeting, dubbed Weather Report, is a weekly update on Google Cloud’s business. Google would not choose to pursue Maven today because the backlash has been terrible for the company, Greene said, adding that the decision was made at a time when Google was more aggressively pursuing military work. The company plans to unveil new ethical principles about its use of AI next week. A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about Greene’s comments.

Google’s Delisting And Censorship Of Information

April 24, 2018 Julian Vigo, Counterpunch.org Educate! Censorship, Google, Police State, Repression

In early January, numerous websites discovered that they were suddenly removed from the directory of Google News, a process known as “delisting,” with no feedback from Google. Some hypothesized that the removal of smaller news sites could be ascribed to the latest SEO changes. Then on 8 January, Google reported that it was ready to rectify its “mistake” and restore the pages by of these smaller new sites. The vast majority were not restored. Still, a large number news sites have been abandoned and editors have been making updates daily since January on Google’s ProductForum with many users still noting, even this week, of ongoing problems

Pentagon Capitalism And Silicon Valley: Google’s Drone War Project Shows Big Data’s Military Roots

April 9, 2018 By Elliott Gabriel, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Capitalism, Drones, Google, Military, Pentagon

SAN FRANCISCO (Analysis) – Google — the advertising and search engine monolith that once touted its official commitment, “Don’t be evil” — has thrown its full weight behind the U.S. military-industrial complex’s fast-advancing unmanned drone program – and more than three thousand of its employees will have none of it. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, over 3,100 employees invoked the now-discarded slogan in an appeal demanding that the company not allow its artificial intelligence technology to be used to improve the targeting capabilities of the United States’ deadly drone fleet. Google’s Project Maven is an AI surveillance engine that uses footage captured by the U.S. Armed Forces’ unmanned aerial vehicles to detect and track objects such as vehicles, while combing through, organizing, and feeding the processed data to the Pentagon.

Citing ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Motto, 3,000+ Google Employees Demand Company End Work On Pentagon Drone Project

April 5, 2018 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Resist! Drones, Google, Pentagon, Technology

"By entering into this contract, Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics." More than 3,000 Google employees have signed a letter that's circulating in the company demanding that the tech giant end its involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon program that could be used to develop drone technology. The project, the workers argue, runs counter to the company's stated mission and motto. "By entering into this contract, Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and General Dynamics," wrote the employees, who include senior engineers. "The argument that other firms, like Microsoft and Amazon, are also participating doesn't make this any less risky for Google. Google's unique history, its motto 'Don’t Be Evil,' and its direct reach into the lives of billions of users set it apart."

Google’s Alliance With Military: Ruling Class Responds To Social Unrest In America

March 14, 2018 Andre Damon, Wsws.org Educate! Google, Internet, Military, Repression

Last week, Google confirmed that it has provided artificial intelligence software to assist the United States military and intelligence apparatus in analyzing data as part of its drone war and assassination program in the Middle East and beyond. The website Gizmodo, which first broke the story, reported that the military program using Google is called Project Maven. A military report announcing the project last year said it “focuses on computer vision—an aspect of machine learning and deep learning—that autonomously extracts objects of interest from moving or still imagery.” Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, identified as the “chief of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team in Intelligence...

Google ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Intensifies Suppressing ‘Fake News’

February 13, 2018 Eric Zuesse, Intrepidreport.com Educate! Censorship, Fake News, Google

On November 18, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt spoke about how Google will help to defeat Russia. He said that Google helps in this effort not by “censoring” Russian news media, but by “deranking” them in Google web-searches, so that web pages from these sites, which he calls “propaganda,” will show so far down in the rankings in any Google-search, so that users of Google will not encounter (or will be vastly less likely to encounter) Russian sites—or any other non-mainstream sites (such as this one), which refuse unquestioningly to trumpet government lies. Schmidt was speaking to the NATO-sponsored Halifax International Security Forum, which is headquartered actually in Washington, DC, though “The Forum is best known for its annual security summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in order to strengthen Canada’s bond to America’s anti-Russia military alliance, NATO.

Google Hiring 10,000 Reviewers To Censor YouTube Content

December 12, 2017 Zaida Green, wsws.org Educate! Censorship, Google, Internet

Google is escalating its campaign of internet censorship, announcing that it will expand its workforce of human censors to over 10,000, the internet giant announced on December 4. The censors’ primary focus will be videos and other content on YouTube, its video-sharing platform, but will work across Google to censor content and train its automated systems, which remove videos at a rate four times faster than its human employees. Human censors have already reviewed over 2 million videos since June. YouTube has already removed over 150,000 videos, 50 percent of which were removed within two hours of upload. The company is working to accelerate the rate of takedown through machine-learning from manual censorship, according to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in an official blog post. The hiring drive by Google is yet another advance in the campaign against any expression of political opposition. Other social media giants have implemented measures against “fake news”; Facebook has altered its algorithms to reduce the visibility of certain news stories, and Twitter has banned the Russian-funded media outlets RT and Sputnik from advertising on the platform. While railing against “extremist content,” “child exploitation” and “hoaxes” in the interest of “public safety,” the ultimate goal of this campaign is the suppression of left-wing, anti-war sentiment.

From An Open Internet, Back To The Dark Ages

November 26, 2017 Jonathan Cook, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Facebook, Google, Independent media, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Jonathan Cook for Counterpunch. In December the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to repeal already compromised regulations that are in place to maintain a semblance of “net neutrality”. Its chairman, Ajit Pai, and the corporations that are internet service providers want to sweep away these rules, just like the banking sector got rid of financial regulations so it could inflate our economies into giant ponzi schemes. That could serve as the final blow to the left and its ability to make its voice heard in the public square. The social media giants soon responded. It is becoming ever clearer that Facebook is interfering as a platform for the dissemination of information for progressive activists. It is already shutting down accounts, and limiting their reach. These trends will only accelerate. Google has changed its algorithms in ways that have ensured the search engine rankings of prominent leftwing sites are falling through the floor. It is becoming harder and harder to find alternative sources of news because they are being actively hidden from view.

Google Admits Political Censorship Of Search Results

November 24, 2017 Niles Niemuth, wsws.org Educate! Censorship, Digital, Google, Internet

By Niles Niemuth for WSWS - Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, confirmed this weekend that the world’s largest Internet company is, in close coordination with the state, manipulating search results to censor sites critical of the US government. Responding to a question about the “manipulation of information” on the Internet during an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, Schmidt announced that Google is working on algorithms that will “de-rank” Russian-based news websites RT and Sputnik from its Google News services, effectively blocking users’ access to either site. Schmidt’s remarks at the gathering of military and national security officials confirm the World Socialist Web Site’s charges that Google has been deliberately altering its search algorithms and taking other steps to prevent people from accessing certain information and specific websites through its search engines. The WSWS has itself been a principal target of these efforts. The statements expose as lies the company’s previous claim that changes to its search engine were aimed at “improving search results” and that these changes were politically unbiased. Google’s efforts are just one part of a much wider government-corporate drive to assert control over the flow of information over the Internet, involving Amazon, Twitter and Facebook, as well as Internet service providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T.

Google Critic Ousted From Google-Funded Think Tank

September 1, 2017 Emily Wells, www.truthdig.com Educate! Foundations, Google, Money in Politics, Propaganda

By Emily Wells for Truth Dig - The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the New America Foundation, an influential Washington think tank that has received $21 million from Google, fired a scholar, Barry Lynn, over criticism of the tech giant, in the form of a blog post praising the European Union’s penalty against Google: Mr. Schmidt, who had been chairman of New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar. The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Mr. Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington offices where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.” The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.

Google Blocking Key Search Terms For Left Websites

August 6, 2017 Andre Damon, www.wsws.org Educate! Censorship, Google

By Andre Damon for WSWS, An intensive review of Internet data has established that Google has severed links between the World Socialist Web Site and the 45 most popular search terms that previously directed readers to the WSWS. The physical censorship implemented by Google is so extensive that of the top 150 search terms that, as late as April 2017, connected the WSWS with readers, 145 no longer do so. These findings make clear that the decline in Google search traffic to the WSWS is not the result of some technical issue, but a deliberate policy of censorship. The fall took place in the three months since Google announced on April 25 plans to promote “authoritative web sites” above those containing “offensive” content and “conspiracy theories.” Because of these measures, the WSWS’s search traffic from Google has fallen by two-thirds since April.

Google’s New Search Protocol Restricting Access To Leading Leftist Web Sites

August 3, 2017 Andre Damon and David North, www.wsws.org Educate! Google, Internet

By Andre Damon and David North for WSWS - New data compiled by the World Socialist Web Site, with the assistance of other Internet-based news outlets and search technology experts, proves that a massive loss of readership observed by socialist, anti-war and progressive web sites over the past three months has been caused by a cumulative 45 percent decrease in traffic from Google searches. The drop followed the implementation of changes in Google’s search evaluation protocols. In a statement issued on April 25, Ben Gomes, the company’s vice president for engineering, stated that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to “offensive” sites, while working to surface more “authoritative content.” The World Socialist Web Site has obtained statistical data from SEMrush estimating the decline of traffic generated by Google searches for 13 sites with substantial readerships. Of the 13 web sites on the list, the World Socialist Web Site has been the most heavily affected. Its traffic from Google searches has fallen by two thirds. The new statistics demonstrate that the WSWS is a central target of Google’s censorship campaign. In the twelve months preceding the implementation of the new Google protocols, the WSWS had experienced a substantial increase in readership. A significant component of this increase was the product of Google search results.

Firm Hired By DNC Has Ties To Hillary Clinton, A Ukrainian Billionaire And Google

March 24, 2017 Michael Krieger, www.libertyblitzkrieg.com Educate! DNC, Google, Hillary Clinton, Ukraine

By Michael Krieger for Blitzkrieg - In yesterday’s post, Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question, I examined how CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to look into its hacking breach, had been exposed as being completely wrong about a separate attack it claimed originated from the same group it claimed broke into DNC systems, and supposedly works for Russia’s military intelligence unit, GRU. Here’s some of what we learned: An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.

Google Sparks Outrage By Abolishing Palestine On Maps

August 9, 2016 Staff, www.telesurtv.net Resist! Google, Palestine

By Staff of Tele Sur - Google's decision to wipe Palestine from its map app and portray the occupied territories as Israel sparks online protest campaign. Journalists and activists have excoriated Google for wiping Palestine completely off its map app, depicting the entire occupied Palestinian territories as part of the state of Israel. The Palestinian Journalists’ Forum initiated an online campaign to pressure the internet giant to reconsider its stance.

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