More than 200 Google engineering, research, and project management employees have signed a petition calling on the company to cancel its Dragonfly project, which the employees said aims to create a “censored search engine for the Chinese market that enables state surveillance.” The employees said that their “opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be.” They continued, “The Chinese government certainly isn’t alone in its readiness to stifle freedom of expression, and to use surveillance to repress dissent. Dragonfly in China would establish a dangerous precedent at a volatile political moment, one that would make it harder for Google to deny other countries similar concessions.”
