After a year of objection by its own faculty against its workwith the military machine , alleged plan to build acensored Taiwanese search locomotive engine , and handling ofsexual harassment allegationsagainst executives , Google is doing some soul - searching and self - reflection over the true meaning of “ Do n’t be evil . ” Just chaff ! According to theTimes of London , they ’re doubling down on finding and firing leaker .
Word of God of a renewed exertion to rootle out staff who presume talk to medium come via Jack Poulson , a former inquiry scientist with Google who said he left the ship’s company because of hisconcerns over Project Dragonfly , the censored search engine Google is reportedly building to enter the Chinese market with the boon of state censors . Poulson tell apart the Times that block off leakers is now the “ number one priority ” for Google management , with staff form an internal internet page to describe unauthorized contact with media and one fourth-year railroad engineer holler “ Fuck you leakers ” at an all - hand meeting . The composition wrote :
employee at the company ’s HQ near San Jose , California , are encouraged to monitor their fellow worker and list on a web Sir Frederick Handley Page within Google called “ Stopleaks ” any secret information that they see externally . Anyone who is caught unveil data to the press is provoke .
Tensions between employee over leak to the public press have also resulted in foul - mouthed arguments , Mr Poulson revealed . During a interrogative sentence and reply session at a company - wide-eyed get together , a aged engineer took the mike to shout “ F * * * you leaker ” at his fellow colleagues … . [ Poulson ] said employees ’ concern about Dragonfly have for the most part been ignore by direction , who are focused on prevent leaks . “ The narration is that leaking is tough and that the number one precedency is to forbid any leaks , ” said Mr Poulson , who work for Google for two- and - a - one-half years , both at the troupe ’s main office and its post in Toronto .
Notably , Poulsonwrote in a letterto members of the Senate Committee on Commerce , Science , and Transportation that he had only discover of Dragonfly frompublic media reportsoriginating in the Intercept , despite efforts from employee to get senior management to disclose more information about what they were working on . Similarly , Google ’s work with the Pentagon to build AI dick for analyze drone footage became public knowledge via anonymous employeeswho talk with Gizmodo . Its handling of at least three cases of senior managers accused of intimate misconduct , which include non - obligatory Johnny Cash payment to two diverge administrator and the third remaining “ in a extremely right post at the company , ” became known in part because of current and former staffers who spokewith the New York Times , many anonymously .
Battles over Google ’s alleged culture of privacy are not young . In 2016,court documentsfrom a suit by a Google locomotive engineer who tell he was falsely impeach of leaking to the media alleged that employee confidentiality agreements bound staff from making public “ without limitation , any selective information in any form that relates to Google or Google ’s business that is not generally cognize . ” News of an internal “ undercover work syllabus ” ( Stopleaks)also emerged that year . But with three of the tech giant ’s biggest Porto Rico headaches this year being at least partially the termination of whistleblowers who spoke up , direction seems to be tackle the job more belligerently .
Fellow tech whale Facebook , which has been harass in late story with unnumbered scandals ranging fromprivacy failuresto allegement ofcomplicity in racial extermination , has also reportedly been cracking down on leaker . In November , the Wall Street Journal reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had declare the companyto be “ at war”to protect its picture and blamed the media for “ bad morale , ” which could be charitably described as afundamental misunderstandingof the job . presently after , Zuckerberg basically began exact that some of the company ’s late scandalswere imitation news . Areport in BuzzFeed Newsalleged that some Facebook stave were paranoid enough to use disposable “ burner telephone ” to discuss issues at work , with one leaker severalise the site :
“ It ’s otherwise intellectual , sane people who ’re in Mark ’s eye socket spouting full - blown anti - media rhetoric , enjoin that the imperativeness is gang up up on Facebook , ” a former senior employee told BuzzFeed News . “ It ’s the bunker outlook . These people have been under siege for 600 days now . They ’re getting tired , get cranky — the only survival scheme is to quit or fully bribe in . ”
In a disjoined incident , an executive at Amazonpublicly chastised“the genius leaking info ” about the company ’s countrywide hunt for a location for its second headquarters , saying whoever had leak out information about a rumour site in northern Virginia ( later confirm ) should “ stop treating the NDA you signed like a used napkin . ”
Gizmodo has hand out to Google for scuttlebutt , and we ’ll update this post if we hear back . Unrelatedly , anyone reading this with information on the release - on at any major tech companycan summit Gizmodousing ouranonymous SecureDrop system , by sending an electronic mail to[email protect ] , or contacting any of our writer at once .
[ Times of London ]
Andy RubinGoogleleaksTechnology
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