
Google CEO will testify before U.S. House panel in November - tareqak
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-congress/google-ceo-will-testify-before-u-s-house-panel-in-november-idUSKCN1M8275
======
math_and_stuff
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...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/408972-house-judiciary-
says-google-ceo-will-testify-later-this-year)

~~~
someonelse17
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.

~~~
math_and_stuff
I'm happy to see serious human rights concerns addressed in any and all
forums.

~~~
someonelse17
I don't see a unique human rights angel here, there are many companies doing
business with China and a number of other "iffy" governments, if congress was
truly alarmed by that they could sanction these companies.

This thing became about political retribution after google dropped maven.

~~~
math_and_stuff
To be clear, this isn't about doing business in China. It is about responding
to _14_ human rights organizations having serious concerns [0] about proactive
censorship and support for surveillance. And I agree that Google is far from
alone in crossing such ethical lines in Silicon Valley.

[0] [https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/28/open-letter-google-
repor...](https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/28/open-letter-google-reported-
plans-launch-censored-search-engine-china)

~~~
someonelse17
I'm not talking about Silicon Valley, I'm talking about all other industries
in all countries, most Silicon Valley companies are banned in China, stop
vilifying Silicon Valley.

I'm sure these organizations are great and are doing wonderful work but they
are not government entities and Google has no obligation to respond to them,
further more these are non profits, attaching themselves to a high profile
subject like Google gives them more exposure and potentially more donations.

~~~
justtopost
All your comments have at least two things in common.

1\. A seemingly willful disreguard for the facts. 2. Another striking
commonality that I can't aledge but a trip through your comments will bear
out. The topic always seems to be common. The timing of the account creation
is of course purely circumstantial. Draw your own conclusions, but to say that
you are constructively adding to discussion would be a reach.

~~~
dang
"Can't allege" is an oxymoron.

Please don't insinuate astroturfing in comment threads. If you think you're
seeing abuse, email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. We ban
accounts when we find evidence of abuse (I've banned that one), but just
dropping a comment in the thread makes it unlikely that we'll ever see it. It
also poisons discussion in the case where the insinuation wrong, which is far
more common.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
onepremise
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
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
I don’t get it. What could Pichai possibly gain from participating in this
kind of theatrics?

~~~
jasode
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress#Subpoenas)

~~~
tivert
> 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.

If Congress subpoenas someone, can they also compel them to testify under
oath, opening them up to charges of perjury?

~~~
QuotedForTruth
Yes of course. Just dont lie and you wont be open to charges of perjury. You
can still plead the 5th amendment right to remain silent though if they are
asking you something that implicates you in a crime.

~~~
slededit
Congress can offer immunity and compel testimony. This doesn't violate the
fifth since they can no longer be prosecuted based on what they say.

------
ToFab123
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
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
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
They don't care about bias, they just want the bias to be in their favor.

See: Fox news.

~~~
nil_pointer
Why does everyone on here always just call out Fox? Are you not aware that
CNN, MSNBC and others do this same thing?

~~~
josefresco
Fox News is in no way "the same" as CNN/MSNBC. It's straight up
GOP/conservative propaganda that in some cases dictates official policy.

~~~
nil_pointer
"My news source tells the truth, yours is propaganda". Try to not be so
partisan. They both push propaganda.

~~~
cycrutchfield
"Both sides are the same" false equivalencies are the argument of the
intellectually lazy.

~~~
josefresco
It's also a sign of of a "bad faith" argument typical with conservative
trolling. None of these trolls will point to actual news reporting, they
simply highlight editorial CNN/MSNBC content, completely ignoring actual, real
news like convictions and guilty pleas.

The news to conservatives seems biased, but only because conservatives are
breaking so many laws, and conventions.

------
staticautomatic
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-...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/22/chinas-mass-internment-
camps-have-no-clear-end-in-sight/)

~~~
trhownow929
To put that number in perspective, the US has 2.2 million African Americans in
“rehabilitation centres.”

~~~
staticautomatic
Then we can _also_ say fuck the US justice system specifically. There's no
reason to pretend they're somehow mutually exclusive.

~~~
yourbandsucks
Sure, but fairness would require a call for Google boycotting the US market in
this case. Or maybe some moderation on the "boycott China because fuck them"
stuff after sober reflection.

Not hearing either of those.

~~~
staticautomatic
Although being equitable can be a form a fairness, not all fair things are
equitable. In any event, I couldn't care less if it's unfair to China and I
don't think anyone else should, either. These are separate problems you're
deliberately conflating.

------
someonelse17
"to discuss concerns that the search engine giant is biased against
conservatives" ffs.

~~~
kozikow
Isn't it? It's hard to interpret
[https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-
googl...](https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-
leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/) otherwise.

~~~
Aunche
Just because a company's leadership dislikes Trump doesn't mean they'll ruin
the integrity of their product.

~~~
dx87
Maybe not intentionally, but as much as SV companies like to talk about
unconsious biases causing discrimination, it never gets applied to supposedly
neutral companies like Google that are currently being sued for how they
discriminate against conservatives and white males. If their internal culture
is constantly promoting liberal political ideals, would it really suprise you
if the developers subconsciously create their products in a way that
suppresses ideas they don't agree with? The same thing happened with Twitter
where they were preventing only Republican Congress people from showing up on
the news feed. They claimed to be neutral, yet somehow managed to implement an
algorithm that affected 0 Democratic Congress people and a couple dozen
Republican Congress people. Hopefully "Oops, it was the algorithm
discriminating, not us" goes away as an excuse people accept.

~~~
Aunche
I wouldn't find it suprising if Google punished conservative fake news more
than liberal fake news. That said, I trust them infinitely more than the
government. That's a huge conflict of interest, and the government has never
been good at remaining impartial about anything. Just look at gerrymandering.

------
beager
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_
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.

