MONTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA -- Google announced on Tuesday that it could soon shoot down its operation in China after a recent cyber attack sought to gain access to the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The company also said it will stop cooperating with Chinese censorship and it’s considering leaving the country altogether.
The announcement, posted on Tuesday by Google’s senior Vice President David Drummond, said the intrusion was a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” that aimed at Google’s corporate infrastructure and “resulted in the theft of intellectual property.”
“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered -combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web- have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China,” the company said.
Google said the primary goal of the attackers was to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human right activists, and although the cyber attack “did not achieve its objective,” at least two Gmail accounts “appear to have been accessed.”
The company said the attack also aimed at the Gmail accounts of “dozens of U.S.-, China and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China” as well as 20 other companies. Google said that as a consequence of the attacks it will stop cooperating with Chinese censorship and it could leave that country.
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn,” the company said in the statement. “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
It’s the first time Google has defied Chinese authorities, at least publicly, since it first opened business there in January 2006, when it was highly criticized by human right activists for agreeing with Chinese authorities to censor access to some information like the massacre of Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Here’s Google complete statement:
“A New Approach to China”
“Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.
”First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
”Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.
”Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S
