How Google is helping the Castro regime turn the internet into a Trojan Horse against Cubans

How Google's technology is empowering Castro's secret police

Photo credit: Fox News/Marta Dhanis

The reality that Google's deal with the Castro regime and how it benefits the dictatorship while harming Cubans has made it into a major news story. Marta Dhanis, a news correspondent, who visited Cuba to see first hand if there has been an improvement in internet access found that it continues to be "extremely limited."  She dug a little deeper into the cliched feel good news about Google's partnering up with the Cuban dictatorship and talked to Cubans inside the island and the result is the article titled "Google entering Cuba is 'Trojan Horse' that could reinforce regime, residents say." In the article the perspective from an academic points to something far more sinister:

“We call the internet a ‘Trojan Horse.’ The success of this government has been possible thanks to the people’s lack of information,” said a 57-year-old retired professor who requested anonymity for fear of retribution by the communist regime. “I would have a patrol car at my door tomorrow to monitor my life,” he said. On the other hand, he and others contend, this Trojan Horse is also providing the communist regime with technology that will empower the secret police with detailed reports of the users’ searches and profiles, right down to their location.

We have documented on this blog how Google in Cuba has collaborated with the Cuban intelligence services and how the Castro regime's tech monopoly ETESCA is blocking the e-mails of the Ladies in White. This has led to a coalition of Cubans to condemn Google at a gathering in Puerto Rico in 2016, But what is being prepared with this deepening of relations between Google and the Castro regime is a nightmarish scenario that we have already seen played out in China where dissidents were rounded up, some jailed, and some tortured with the aid of American technology companies like Yahoo.

In 2006 Amnesty International released a report exposing the practices of American tech companies including Google titled "UNDERMINING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN CHINA. THE ROLE OF YAHOO!, MICROSOFT AND GOOGLE."  In the report Amnesty International stated that  "Google has come closest to acknowledging publicly that its practices are at odds with its principles."

Tragically, a decade later the pattern is repeating itself in Cuba.

Camera and microphone erected by political police outside Cuban machete victim's current residence

Welcome to the Panopticon

Spy camera in Cuba (not one mentioned by Sirley)

Received word today from Sirley Avila Leon, who was the victim of a crippling machete attack on May 24, 2015, that the Castro regime has taken a keen interest in her: "They put a camera with a microphone two meters from the front of my mother's house on the telephone pole."

Sirley Avila Leon returned home to Cuba a week ago on September 7, 2016 after six months receiving medical care and initially her phone was unable to reach contacts outside, but she was finally able to speak with folks the following day.

The news Sirley gave was and remains worrying. She returned home to find it occupied by strangers with the approval of the Cuban dictatorship. Sirley is staying at her mother's house in Las Tunas.

Ominously, Osmany Carrión, the man who brutally attacked her in that appears to have been engineered by the political police has been bragging to neighbors and Sirley's family that he will finish the job he started.

This latest episode only underscores the need for continued vigilance regarding the plight of Sirley Avila Leon. This woman, who was an elected delegate of the municipal peoples assembly in her community made the 'mistake' of fighting to keep a school open for young children that earned her the enmity of the dictatorship while at the same time endearing her with the voters.

This reality is what has led the dictatorship to carry out a systematic effort to destroy her.