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Google CEO will testify before U.S. House panel in November

133 points| tareqak | 7 years ago |reuters.com

103 comments

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[+] math_and_stuff|7 years ago|reply
Hopefully he will testify about Project Dragonfly as well. Human rights concerns should not get lost in the noise of partisan politics.

EDIT: Also, here is a slightly better stub article with an actual quote from Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/408972-house-judiciary...

[+] bla2|7 years ago|reply
Why would the US House care about Google's business practices in China?

I think Dragonfly is horrible, but why would the House care?

[+] abenedic|7 years ago|reply
Not really a comment on the topic, but I feel like name pollution is becoming a bigger and bigger deal recently. With Dropbox's Naultilus and DragonflyBSD and Google's Dragonfly, and like a hundred other examples, things can only get more and more confusing. Imagine talking to a Mathematician about a meager function, the word has two senses(common and mathematical). Things cannot improve the way we are heading.
[+] someonelse17|7 years ago|reply
Convening a hearing on a specific subject (silly as it as in this case) then making it an open season for all other grievances is another despicable aspect of these hearings.
[+] izacus|7 years ago|reply
What exactly would an international corporation like Google gain if they'd start being a tool of American external politics and propaganda? Besides being kicked out of their other markets (EU, India, Russia) Trump considers enemies right now?
[+] onepremise|7 years ago|reply
Honestly, Google should have seen it coming. They are literally dangling themselves out in front of the GOP, not that they don't deserve it. Building a mass surveillance system as described sucks for civil liberties anywhere. However, if they go after Google, they better go after the NSA's mass surveillance setup as it's not much different.
[+] freeflight|7 years ago|reply
None of those will happen anyway because having companies like Google and Facebook based in the US is way too much of an intelligence advantage.

As long as they willingly cooperate with US intelligence interests, which they do, that long they will be able to do whatever they want.

It's a win-win situation for the US government: Have Google, Facebook and co. do the dirty work and get the bad rep, while US government looks like the good guy for occasionally poking at them, never demanding any real change, but still getting all the data.

[+] cirgue|7 years ago|reply
I don’t get it. What could Pichai possibly gain from participating in this kind of theatrics?
[+] jasode|7 years ago|reply
I wasn't the one that downvoted you because there's a common misunderstanding that appearing before Congress is an optional invitation and therefore the people choosing to do it must be mentally insane or stupid since there's nothing to gain from it.

The reason people testify before Congress is because they ultimately have no choice. Congress has this nuclear option called a "subpoena"[1] to force you to appear.

Now, with prominent people like CEOs and baseball celebrities, it never escalates to the point of issuing a formal subpoena and having Federal marshalls arrest and forcibly drag them into Congressional chambers.

Instead what happens is that Congress members "ask nicely" for somebody to testify (e.g. Sundar Pichai) and then the CEO gets with his lawyers and then coordinates with Congress on a reasonable date to appear. Of course, the CEO can try some stalling tactics (e.g. talk to some Congress members "off the record", etc) to buy some time... but ultimately, he's going to have to face Congress sooner or later. The more promptly the requested witness willingly appears before Congress, the better it is for public perception.

It's better if the CEO shows cooperation with Congress. The totally opposite tactic is for the CEO to show up and refuse to answer any questions by constantly pleading the 5th Amendment through the entire proceeding. That would look really really bad.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress#Subpoenas

[+] dmitrygr|7 years ago|reply
Not appearing to be giving the finger to congress, as it looked when he failed to show up to the last set of hearings? Pissing off congress is rarely a good idea.
[+] jameskegel|7 years ago|reply
Maybe he's paying one forward for favorable outcome regarding antitrust investigations. Cases like this don't appear overnight, and they take just as long to adjudicate.
[+] ToFab123|7 years ago|reply
I hope there is an "Snowden" inside Google that one day (soon) will expose how much Google knows about us. I hope he has a cousin working at Facebook too.
[+] calgoo|7 years ago|reply
Im just going to say that the phrase: " biased against conservatives" sounds oxymoron. The "conservatives" that I keep hearing about on the "conservative" news sources, are IMO organizations that try to hinder and destroy any effort at evolving as humans. So, at what point can a company like google say: "Fuck those people" officially?
[+] badsoftwaredev|7 years ago|reply
I'm so glad an accused rapist will join the supreme court without an FBI investigation, while republicans are trying to bully google out of censoring the horrible shit said by the right.
[+] davidw|7 years ago|reply
They don't care about bias, they just want the bias to be in their favor.

See: Fox news.

[+] nil_pointer|7 years ago|reply
Why does everyone on here always just call out Fox? Are you not aware that CNN, MSNBC and others do this same thing?
[+] adventured|7 years ago|reply
They care about the bias precisely because it's not in their favor, as all politicians would.
[+] staticautomatic|7 years ago|reply
China has "disappeared" more than a million people recently as part of what is fundamentally an ethnic cleansing program. So, yeah, fuck China specifically.

See https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/22/chinas-mass-internment-...

[+] trhownow929|7 years ago|reply
To put that number in perspective, the US has 2.2 million African Americans in “rehabilitation centres.”
[+] yourbandsucks|7 years ago|reply
You sure you're not bringing in a little nationalist bias there?

Even if you want to constrain the subject to specifically "dealing with central asian muslim separatists over the last couple decades".. seems a little tough for an American to argue with a straight face.

I appreciate the candor, though, so thanks. Nice to know the mental place this is coming from.

[+] beager|7 years ago|reply
Assuming that the testimony would be to a bipartisan group and presuming the polling is correct and the House flips to Dem control, could this be pushed back to 2019 and the GOP’s larger focus on political bias by Google de-emphasized? Wondering if that’s part of the play here.
[+] s73v3r_|7 years ago|reply
If the House flips, that won't take effect til January. So the hearing will probably continue as scheduled, just with a Lame Duck Congress. Whether that means they'll be more blustery or less would remain to be seen.