Google engineer calls for a walkout over China censorship and raises $200K strike fund in hours
Liz Fong-Jones is a Site Reliability Engineer for Google's cloud division; she took to Twitter after reading today's story in The Intercept in which ex-Google security engineer Yonatan Zunger and three current, unnamed Google Security and Privacy staff describe how they were sidelined and deceived in the rush to ship Project Dragonfly, Google's secret, censored, surveilling Chinese search engine.
Fong-Jones was aghast that Google management was bypassing the Security and Privacy team and called for a walkout if Project Dragonfly shipped without signoff from Security and Privacy. She offered to match the first $100,000 in donations towards a strike-fund to support Googlers who walked off should the day come; hours later, her Google colleagues had put up another $100K.
Fong-Jones works for a Google division whose CEO had to resign in disgrace after an employee uprising over a contract to supply AI tools for the Pentagon's drone program.
Fong-Jones called on the Tech Workers Coalition to form a special-purpose 501(c)5 nonprofit to receive and administer the strike fund.
As usual, I do not speak for my employer, nor do I vouch for the authenticity of any of this.
- Liz Fong-Jones (@lizthegrey) November 29, 2018
However, I do want to say that @yonatanzunger has been my counterpart on the other side of the negotiating table dozens of times, and I believe his ethical backbone is ironclad. https://t.co/YiFOpqncAF