The “Dragonfly” project, a censored search engine project by Google, earned him a new uproar as protests were held Friday in front of several headquarters of the American giant, including Montreal and Toronto.
Protesters from a coalition of Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur and human rights groups called for the cancellation of this “controversial project” on the occasion of Freedom Day on the Internet.
Promising that this event was the first of a series of others to come, they say they fear for freedom of expression and security on the internet.
The Dragonfly project is a search engine designed by Google in collaboration with the Chinese authorities. In particular, it would ban Internet pages that displease Beijing.
According to organizers of the protests in Canada, the project “would comply with the strict laws of the ruling Chinese Communist Party on Internet censorship and limit research on prohibited or sensitive topics, including” human rights “. , “democracy”, “Tiananmen” and “Tibet”, it was said, by communiqué.
Dragonfly would also allow the Chinese authorities to monitor their fellow citizens by “linking users’ search history to their phone numbers.”
Google employees have already denounced this avenue taken by their employer last fall, calling on the company based in Mountain View, California, to abandon the Dragonfly project.