The Washington Post reports:

For years, Google tasked Ross LaJeunesse with executing its plan to protect human rights in China, after Google announced a decade ago it would stop censoring search results there to safeguard security and free speech.

LaJeunesse took the mission to heart: He later devised a human rights program to formalize Google’s principles supporting free expression and privacy. He began lobbying for it internally in 2017 — around the time when the tech giant was exploring a return to China, in a stark reversal of its 2010 move that made its search engine unavailable there.

Now, the 50 year-old is alleging that Google pushed him out for it in April.

“I didn’t change. Google changed,” LaJeunesse, who was Google’s global head of international relations in Washington, D.C., told The Washington Post. “Don’t be evil” used to top the company’s mission statement. “Now when I think about ‘Don’t be evil,’ it’s been relegated to a footnote in the company’s statements.”

Within Google, China was seen as a booming market that represented concerns about the ways technology could be used to suppress free expression or enable surveillance. LaJeunesse modeled his human rights program on the way Google approached privacy and security issues, designing the team of employees, in functions like supply chain, policy, and ethics and compliance, to help Google integrate, coordinate and prioritize human rights risk assessment.

But his mentor Kent Walker, Google’s powerful chief lawyer and head of policy, bristled at the idea, according to interviews with LaJeunesse and emails and documents viewed by The Post. Walker raised the concern that a formal commitment to human rights could increase Google’s liability, LaJeunesse said. [Continue reading…]

“I was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s why I left,” by Ross LaJeunesse.