Congress Accuses Google of Collusion

The giants of the internet were hauled before Congress yesterday, accused of colluding with China’s secret police and censors to wield a "cyber sledgehammer of repression".

In a hearing of the House international relations subcommittee, Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Google were repeatedly accused of collusion with an oppressive regime, and of selling out the principles of democracy and free speech for profit by bowing to China’s demands to censor web content and monitor email.

"Cooperation with tyranny should not be embraced for the sake of profits," said Chris Smith, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee on global human rights.

The hearings come as Washington is growing restive about Beijing’s efforts to control the internet. On Tuesday, the state department launched a taskforce on internet freedom, and Congress members said yesterday they hoped to introduce a bill this week that could restrict the export of technology to China.

In addition, there are moves within Congress and the administration to increase support for technologies such as proxy browsers that would allow internet users in China to circumvent firewalls.

Members of Congress attacked Google for introducing a Chinese search engine which blocks sites referring to the massacre at Tiananmen Square or other matters that upset Beijing’s sensitivities. They also criticized Yahoo!, whose alleged cooperation with the secret police led to the imprisonment of the cyber dissident Shi Tao. "It is hard not to draw the conclusion that Google has seriously compromised its ‘Don’t Be Evil’ policy. It has become evil’s accomplice," Mr Smith said.

In Google’s defense, Elliot Schrage, its vice-president of global communications, said the firm had tried to navigate between the censors in Beijing and its desire to make its search engine accessible to the 110 million internet users in China. He acknowledged that users of google.cn would never be able to access images of tanks in Tiananmen, but said: "Where there are only imperfect options, we think we have made a reasonable choice."

Yahoo! said it had not acted unethically when it disclosed information about Shi Tao to Beijing, arguing it was obliged to comply with a request from law enforcement officials. Michael Callahan, a vice-president of Yahoo!, also denied reports that Yahoo! Hong Kong had given information to the Chinese government.

The company representatives argued that the mere presence of the internet in China would overwhelm Beijing’s efforts to control the flow of information, and that censorship could not be maintained.