Ex-Google policy chief dumps on the tech giant for dodging human rights

One thats intended to anticipate and deflect any critical questions he may face on the campaign trail, given his many years of service to Mountain View. Hence the inclusion of overt political messaging, such as lines like: No longer can massive tech companies like Google be permitted to operate relatively free from government oversight.

LaJeunesse claims that senior management actively evaded his attempts to push for it to adopt a company-wide Human Rights program that would, as he tells it, publicly commit Google to adhere to human rights principles found in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, provide a mechanism for product and engineering teams to seek internal review of product design elements, and formalize the use of Human Rights Impact Assessments for all major product launches and market entries.

The controversial project, code-named Dragonfly, was later shut down, per LaJeunesses telling, after Congress raised questions backing up the blogs overarching theme that only political scrutiny can put meaningful limits on powerful technologists.

At first, said human rights issues were better handled within the product teams, rather than starting a separate program. Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human rights, it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock price.

That commitment is unrelated to and unaffected by the reorganisation of our policy team, which was widely reported and which impacted many members of the team.

Its clearly a sign of the techlash times that an ex-Googler, whos now a senator-in-the-running, believes theres political capital to be made by publicly unloading on his former employer.