Senator Dodd, Google, and China

Filed in archive Internet on December 17, 2007

I've spent a lot of time and energy keeping track of the umpteen presidential candidates in America over the last year and examining their positions. There's a lot of stupid, even scary, thinking out there among the candidates. So it was refreshing to hear someone say something I pretty much agreed with...

Democratic Candidate Chris Dodd, a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, visited the Googleplex recently. It seems like about half the candidates for president have been there. But Dodd had more than the usually platitudes about Google's greatness in his speech.

Dodd's message to Google: Stop working as the censor for the Chinese government.




Dodd suggested that Google should tell the Chinese government to get bent on censorship and spying on individuals, and that if the Chinese government didn't like that, then they should pull the plug on their China operation - Google.cn.

Google, of course, has a response to that line of argument (or a rationale, at least). They're just a business. Why should they take on burdens like human rights or world peace. They do what's necessary to make a profit.

That rationale also works for arms dealers, prostitution rings, and people who smuggle elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns. But it sounds pretty lame coming from someone with the clout of Google.

I liked the response of Stephen Smoliar. It's worth reading.

Dodd has more change of becoming the next dalai lama than become president, I suspect. But I'll leave you with this portion of his speech:

If you believe that the Googles of the world can serve as a democratizing force and expand freedoms-after what we have seen in the wake of 9/11, with the sheer amount of information you have, we would be fools to not also believe the other side of that equation: that such power can also take those freedoms away...