Google is encrypting web searches in China in order to prevent surveillance and censorship by the government and hackers alike. However, as the vast majority of netizens there use Chinese search engine Baidu, with Google searches accounting for less than five percent, the move may not have a big impact on widespread censorship.
The search giant reported that all text entered into its search engine in China will be made indecipherable automatically, as part of a global expansion of privacy technology designed to put a stop to surveillance by government intelligence agencies, police and hackers who can view unprotected e-mails, search queries and video chats.
Google users in most countries have already been able to use search encryption since 2010, but it is the first time Google has enabled the measure by default in China.
China’s Great Firewall has long intercepted searches for information it deemed politically sensitive, such as “Tiananmen Square” or “Dalai Lama”. Google’s use of encryption means that the official monitors will be unable to detect when users search for these terms, as the encryption makes them appear as indecipherable strings of numbers and letters.
However, China could just block the search engine altogether without significant uproar, given Google’s small market share among Chinese net users. International companies on the other hand do use Google (particularly Google Apps for webmail and other office services), so there might be some economic consequences to an outright block.
The move is the latest result of NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden last year, which showed just how far government surveillance of the Internet goes. Google and other tech giants responded with major investments in encryption worldwide.
“The revelations of this past summer underscored our need to strengthen our networks. Among the many improvements we’ve made in recent months is to encrypt Google Search by default around the world," a Google spokesperson said.
Percy Alpha, the co-founder of GreatFire.org, an activist group which monitors censorship in China, noted that Google began encrypting searches in China more than two months after Greatfire.org publicly challenged the company to do so in November, following a statement from Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, saying he believed censorship could be eliminated within a decade.
“No matter what the cause is, this will help Chinese netizens to access information they’ve never seen before,” said Alpha. “It will be a huge headache for Chinese censorship authorities. We hope other companies will follow Google to make encryption by default.”
[Image via Flickr]
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