Google employees are going public with their call for the search engine to end work on a censored search engine for China.

The employees on Tuesday published an open letter that says the pending search product, known as Project Dragonfly, will help expand China's surveillance state. "We object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be," the letter reads.

Over 90 employees—many of them software engineers—signed the letter initially, and more have signed on since its release. It comes three months after 1,000 Google workers reportedly voiced opposition to the project internally and called on Google to be more transparent about its product plans.

"So far, our leadership's response has been unsatisfactory," Tuesday's letter reads. "Google is too powerful not to be held accountable. We deserve to know what we're building and we deserve a say in these significant decisions."

Google declined to comment on the letter. However, the company has downplayed Dragonfly as merely "exploratory" work.

"There's nothing imminent," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said earlier this month. "Anything we do here, we would consult with the US government… but there is nothing we are actually doing now."

Project Dragonfly is still a prototype, but will reportedly adhere to China's strict rules on online censorship by filtering out terms such as human rights, democracy, and peaceful protest. Any queries conducted using the product will also be linked to a person's phone number, enabling Chinese authorities to track the user's search history.

The Google employees claim Project Dragonfly will help China and other countries expand their surveillance powers. "Dragonfly in China would establish a dangerous precedent at a volatile political moment, one that would make it harder for Google to deny other countries similar concessions," the letter reads.

Tuesday's letter is the latest employee-led protest to occur at Google. Earlier this month, over 20,000 workers joined a company-wide walkout to oppose the tech giant's handling of workplace sexual misconduct. In April, employees also protested the company's work with the Pentagon on creating an AI system to analyze drone footage.

In response, Google ended its involvement on the Pentagon project, and has been trying to improve the way it handles workplace sexual harassment cases. But the efforts haven't satisfied everyone. According to the letter, the employees called 2018 a "year of disappointments" at the search giant. "This is why we're taking a stand," the document adds.

The letter joins Monday's open petition by the human rights group Amnesty International, which is calling on Google to cancel the censored search product.

Last week, the chairman of Google's company parent, Alphabet, also expressed skepticism about the search giant's plans for China. "Anybody who does business in China compromises some of their core values," said John Hennessy in an interview with Bloomberg.

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