WikiLeaks: “Hillary Emails: Google Tried to Boost Assad Defections”

I am not making the claim that lack of evidence is proof, but there really isn't a control group for "unbiased results".

- people see different results.

- countries see different results

- all search engines use page rank and model results of google

Without a whistleblower, or someone literally searching millions of things with a battery of diagnostics (which google would notice) it would be hard.

Either way, it doesn't matter. Google (cobsolidation) is one of the bigger risks we face now.

This was a very different branch of Google than Search. The email was from Jared Cohen, who I had to look up to verify that he even worked at Google (apparently, he left the State Department in 2010 to become a director at Google Ideas). I never saw so much as an email or presentation while I was at Google; my understanding is that he operated in a siloed part of Google (now Alphabet) whose mission specifically was to spread democracy across the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_(company)

I don't think restricting the flow of information because you don't trust people to interpret it correctly is morally okay. People have been influenced by other people since the dawn of language. Deciding by whom they can be influenced shouldn't be the state's concern.

This kind of thing isn't new though. The Internet is just the latest means of communication with the public. Public opinion has, and still is, manipulated for good and bad via mass media, grassroots campaigning, bribery, agent provocateurs, etc., etc. Replace "internet" with "telephone" or "printing press" and your post would read the same. Governments always want to control their "internal political processes" and to achieve that they tend to block out anything that interferes, whether it be foreign governments or internal factions that run counter to their interests.

"I'm sure almost 100% of Google employees would never support such a thing..."

Even to stop Trump? I'm betting quite a few employees, especially at the top, wouldn't mind tweaking things to stop what they see as a very real threat.

> many island solutions with firewalls

I wonder if it will be less pernicious than this.

> Same goes for China, Russia ... great firewall.

I don't know about Russia but it certainly seems that China is establishing some social networks that are wholly distinct from other western ones. In that way they're "island solutions" but less malicious sounding.

>For one Google could influence the US presidential elections by skewing search results and making certain candidates look bad and others good.

It'd be very hard to prove, but yes. This could be extremely granularly controlled, too-- apply a few filters to weed out those who are likely to be able to detect subversion, then drill down to the demographic in the geographical area that needs to be energized to vote for a certain candidate.

> is he wrong when he is accusing foreign powers from trying to incite demonstrations or manipulate public opinion? I'm pretty sure he is not.

Please substantiate. Turkey is a NATO member which, other than the recent kerfuffle with downing a Russia fighter jet, has decent relations with most of its neighbours, and no real Great Enemies. Turkey has always had a press-repressive (!!) orientation because they've wanted to keep internal Islamist forces at bay. Amusing, Erdogan has flipped the script and now it's his Islamist government which is cracking down on other voices, although the take-over of the Zaman news organization is really about internal fighting with an influential cleric. But either way, in the end, Turkey has always had authoritarian governments succeeded by military coups and more authoritarian rule.

That would be regrettable, but it only partially addresses the threat that the Internet, or rather networking in general, poses to oppressive regimes around the world (which is to say, the vast majority of governments around the world). A balkanization of the Internet would reduce that threat considerably, and especially with regard to outside influences of course, but would not come close to eliminating it.

The threat I'm talking about is just people talking to each other, and coordinating their actions. The only way to totally stop that is to basically ban computing devices at all, or at least ban their networking Battlestar Galactica style, and at that point you're condemning yourself to a 70s-ish economy in the best case, which means you're not going to compete with other nations in trade nor in military strength. Kind of defeats the purpose of having an oppressive regime in the first place, which is mainly about controlling and enslaving your people while playing at "realpolitik" pissing contests on the international stage.

I look at the Internet as basically a return to the status quo, after a century where national governments could monopolize the mass media and thus monopolize speech. Those days are over, and not even a balkanization of the Internet will bring them back. Oppressive regimes increasingly will have to choose between going full DPRK, or trying their hand on a more even playing field (compared to 50 years ago). So far they have unanimously chosen the latter, and there is every reason to think they will continue to do so.

"In collaboration with: movements.org" - in Assange's article[1] about his meeting with Eric Schmidt he mentions:

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Gen Next also backs an NGO, launched by Cohen toward the end of his State Department tenure, for bringing internet-based global “pro-democracy activists” into the US foreign relations patronage network. The group originated as the “Alliance of Youth Movements” with an inaugural summit in New York City in 2008 funded by the State Department and encrusted with the logos of corporate sponsors.

[...]

In 2011, the Alliance of Youth Movements rebranded as “Movements.org.” In 2012 Movements.org became a division of “Advancing Human Rights,” a new NGO set up by Robert L. Bernstein after he resigned from Human Rights Watch (which he had originally founded) because he felt it should not cover Israeli and US human rights abuses. Advancing Human Rights aims to right Human Rights Watch’s wrong by focusing exclusively on “dictatorships.” Cohen stated that the merger of his Movements.org outfit with Advancing Human Rights was “irresistible,” pointing to the latter’s “phenomenal network of cyberactivists in the Middle East and North Africa.” He then joined the Advancing Human Rights board, which also includes Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in occupied Afghanistan. In its present guise, Movements.org continues to receive funding from Gen Next, as well as from Google, MSNBC, and PR giant Edelman, which represents General Electric, Boeing, and Shell, among others.

---

Fascinating stuff - a glimpse into the murky world of international politics for someone like me who generally has no idea.

[1] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

> If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

I hear this all the time but it's message is a bit off. I'll quote this page http://powazek.com/posts/3229

1) Assumption: This is new or unique to the internet

2) Assumption: You’re either the product or the customer

3) My Favorite - Assumption: Companies you pay treat you better (Comcast Anyone?)

This particular incident? No. It's the fact that they're doing this kind of thing at all is the problem. People have been worrying for years about the filter bubble that Google put you in; could you imagine if they tried to skew the US election? This document provides some evidence that they've certainly been thinking along those lines.

I would. Encouraging a 5-year destructive war is evil. And they were encouraging sectarian islamists authoritarians to go to war against inclusive secular authoritarians.

Syria was never a great place. But when the American led coalition really put its attempts at starting a revolution into high gear in 2009, starting training dissidents directly in 2011, then arming them in 2012, it really turned into a hellhole.

Now with 500,000+ dead, millions displaced, why is no one being held accountable? Shouldn't Google face consequences for what had to be an association and coordination with the US coalition?

I mean if this isn't what utter and complete failure looks like, I don't know what is.

[EDIT] Downvotes for this? The only way this could be downvoted is if people think the dates are wrong. Which they might be, and we probably won't know for a long time for sure. But the wikileaks US embassy cable docs sure paint this timeline as correct. And giving money to dissident groups, followed by helping them coordinate, then after hostilities broke out, arming them, hardly takes a stretch of the imagination.

Nothing. But some people can't control their urge to cry wolf.

A multinational corporation has decided to map defections in a civil war in order to encourage people to defect from the government. An evil government, sure-- but it's a company weighing in on one side of a war. It isn't within their mandate.

Manipulation here means that manipulation elsewhere is possible.