Project Shield, Google’s effort to protect attacks on news and human rights websites is going public. When released a couple years ago, Project Shield was limited to a team of testers. Now, it will be opened up to the world’s news sources in order to prevent censorship. Privacy is all the rage these days, with companies like Apple, Facebook and Yahoo fighting pressure from the government. The Beastie Boys said it best. You have got to fight for your right to party. Except change party to privacy. Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue but you get the point.’
GOOGLE’S NEW TOOL TO DEFEND JUSTICE
Project Shield already sounds like some group in a Marvel movie its purpose is perhaps just as important to the world. There are people out there who want to silence the truth and prevent justice. To shut down a news website, all it would take is a simple and inexpensive denial of service attack (DDoS). These attacks are easy to carry out and can quickly take a website offline. Google’s Project Shield detects and filters these attacks and will hopefully eliminate DDoS as an effective censorship method.
BIG PROTECTION FOR THE LITTLE MAN
It’s not just major media sources like CNN or Al Jazeera that will benefit from Project field. Even Google is looking out for the little man. Since Google is free to use even the tiniest of new productions will be able to use Project Field to continue publishing their work. This is not only a victory for journalism, but for the internet on the whole. Google is making the internet what it should be, a free and open marketplace to share information without censorship.
WILL YAHOO JOIN?
Yahoo may not be the leader in search engines, but they have every right to be concerned about the internet. Yahoo is a major player in delivering news, so it would make sense that their reputation is as honest as possible. Yahoo doesn’t have anything like Project Shield, but they certainly play their part in the battle. Just last September, Yahoo denied Indian law enforcement when they tried to remove content from the site. According to them, government attempts at censorship is fairly common, though they continue to block their requests.
