Google might not be the best at dodging questions, but the company’s Chief Privacy Officer surely is. During the Senate Privacy hearing that happened on Wednesday, the CPO managed to dodge almost all the questions regarding China and the Project Dragonfly. Although the focus of the senate hearing was privacy of data sharing and policy, the senators had raised questions regarding the company’s alleged plans to launch a censorship-friendly search engine in China. Keith Enright, however, decided not to answer these questions, hinting at the fact that Google is not yet ready to face the facts. The senators were comparing the policies of Google with this alleged plan.
Instead of directly answering the questions raised by the senators, Keith Enright decided to quote something Sundar Pichai had said earlier. “I will say that my understanding is that we are not, in fact, close to launching a search product in China, and whether we would or could at some point in the future remains unclear. If we were, in fact, to finalize a plan to launch a search product in China, my team would be actively engaged.” It should be noted that the company is revealing not much information about the project or its nature. He was not ready to share more details about the app.
It’s clear that Google is not ready to share complete details about the project. If it admits that the company has a plan to launch such a search engine in China, it would go against the sole privacy policy it upholds. The Project Dragonfly is expected to work by linking browsing history with individual phone numbers so that the data can be tracked down. Details about the project was revealed by The Intercept this month and Google had tried to suppress the internal memos regarding the projects thereafter.
