Ex-staffer pressures Google over China project ahead of Senate hearing

Jack Poulson criticized plans for a censored Chinese search engine in a letter to lawmakers before the Wednesday meeting

After snubbing a hearing on election security earlier this month, Google will answer questions on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. If one former Google employee gets his way, those questions will tend more toward the company's plans to launch a censored search engine for China than toward the hearing's putative topic of consumer data privacy.

Jack Poulson, who worked as a senior research scientist for Google until his 31 August resignation over the China project, urged members of the Senate commerce, science and transportation committee to demand answers on the censorship scheme known as Project Dragonfly, in a letter sent to the senators on Monday.