China’s Great Firewall, as the world’s most sophisticated Internet censorship system is known, is facing a new challenge as Google begins to automatically encrypt searches there as part of its global expansion of privacy technology.
The development is the latest — and perhaps most unexpected — consequence of Edward Snowden’s release last year of National Security Agency documents detailing the extent of government surveillance of the Internet. Google and other technology companies responded with major new investments in encryption worldwide, complicating relations between the companies and governments long accustomed to having the ability to quietly monitor the Web.
Googling the words “Dalai Lama” or “Tiananmen Square” from China long has produced the computer equivalent of a blank stare, as that nation’s government has blocked Web sites that it deemed politically sensitive. But censors spying...
