Aug 21, 2018

If Google goes to China, will it tell the truth about Tiananmen Square?

From The Guardian

If Google goes to China, will it tell the truth about Tiananmen Square?

By Deirdre K Mulligan and Daniel S Griffin

Google’s plan to relaunch search in China, the world’s largest market, is facing pushback from employees, human rights defenders and politicians. With good reason. The Chinese government will insist that the search engine suppress results related to the Tiananmen democracy protests of 1989, in which several hundred peaceful protesters were shot by the army.

But international norms oblige companies to treat human rights atrocities such as the Tiananmen Square massacre differently. Suppressing information about these atrocities undermines the individual and collective right to truth that is increasingly recognized in human rights law....

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Deirdre K. Mulligan is an associate professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information, a faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, and a founding member of the Global Network Initiative. Daniel S. Griffin is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley's School of Information. This article is based on an earlier analysis in the Georgetown Law Technology Review.

 A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square, 1989. Photograph: Jeff Widener/AP
A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square, 1989. Photograph: Jeff Widener/AP

Last updated:

August 21, 2018