US to serve formal demarche to China over hacking of Google

The government of the United States has said it will serve a formal demarche to the government of China over China’s alleged involvement in cyber-attacks against Google, Adobe Systems and several other companies.

The internet search engine Google has accused China of attempts to “limit free speech on the Web” and threatened to stop cooperating with China’s internet censorship and also consider closing down its operations in China.

However, Google has denied media reports that it had decided to shut down immediately its Chinese search engine Google.cn and close its office in China.

Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary, said China “needs to explain” about internet freedom in that country. He said the United States government will issue a formal demarche to the government of China on this issue, most likely early next week.

Philip Crowley, spokesman of the United States State Department, told a news conference in Washington that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already spoken to China’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Wang on the Google issue. Crowley added that he could not confirm whether or not the subject of the hacking of Google was on the agenda of the talks between Hillary Clinton and Wang.

Google had said on January 11, 2010, that it will stop censoring results on its search engine in China, as required by the Chinese government, owing to what Google describes as “’highly sophisticated” attacks on its website as well as on the e-mail accounts of human-rights activists.

In a statement, David Drummond, chief legal officer of Google, said the attempts made by China during the last one year to limit free speech further on the Web has prompted Google to decide to review the feasibility of the company’s business operations in China.

Drummond stressed that Google will no longer agree to the Chinese government’s censoring of Google’s search results in China.

In a disclosure that is rare for a major company of its kind, Google had, on January 11, 2010, revealed that its “corporate infrastructure” had been hacked and its intellectual property had been stolen.

Google further announced that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human-rights activists in the United States, Europe and China were hacked.

According to Google, the cyber-attacks targeted about 20 other companies in the fields of finance, technology and chemicals.

Some media reports said that Yahoo Incorporated, Google’s rival in the United States, had noticed that China-based hackers had targeted it before Google made public the attacks on it. Yahoo, however, has not yet officially confirmed these reports.

Google had reportedly sought help from other companies to draw attention to the cyber-attacks, but was unhappy when those companies were unwilling to oblige.