AFP
January 10, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — Google threatened Tuesday to shut down its operations in China after uncovering what it said were “highly sophisticated” cyberattacks aimed at Chinese human rights activists.

Google said China-based cyber spies struck the Internet giant and at least 20 other firms to track activities of activists around the world.

Google said it will no longer filter Internet search engine results in China and the online espionage has it reconsidering its business operations there.

“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,” Google chief legal officer David Drummond said in a blog post.

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.”    more …