The search engine with the name of the Dragonfly is designed for Android devices and will remove content deemed sensitive by China's Communist regime in power, such as information about political dissidents, freedom of speech, democracy, human rights humans, and peaceful protest, quoted from The Intercept.
“This is very problematic from a privacy point of view because it would allow far more detailed tracking and profiling of people’s behavior,” said Cynthia Wong, senior internet researcher with Human Rights Watch. “Linking searches to a phone number would make it much harder for people to avoid the kind of overreaching government surveillance that is pervasive in China.”
A source familiar with the project said that the prototype for Dragonfly linking search applications to the user phone number search, which means people can be easily tracked and any user seeking information banned by the Government can be interrogated or detention if security agencies obtain footage searches from Google. Google has not confirmed the existence of the Dragonfly, and most declined to comment about the report on the project.
Nearly 1,000 employees alleged to have signed an open letter asking the company to transparent about the project and to create an ethical review process.
Dragonfly also received harsh criticism from the former head of the giant technology Asia Pacific, who referred to it as "stupid steps ".
Jack Poulson who is a former senior research scientist of Google, is one of five senior employees who quit because of protesting the Dragonfly. Through reports from The Verge, Poulson and others have expressed concern about having only the user data that is hosted in China that the Government institution would be able to access it.
