The renegades who first came to international prominence in 1998, when they unleashed BackOrifice, a backdoor exploit for Windows, have suddenly become the most unlikely of heroes.

The Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) has declared war on Google for collaborating with Chinese censors: “The cDc hereby commands that you print up t-shirts with this graphic and wear them with pride. Join our global campaign against Google’s appeasement policy with China.”

The graphic is a hack of Google’s logo that reads:

[Goolag: Exporting censorship, one<br /> search at a time. Cult of the Dead Cow]”></center><br /> A Boing Boing contributor then refined the message by <a href=combining the hacked Google logo with a Yahoo logo wherein the first O is a Soviet-style red hammer and syckle. The finished graphic reads:
[Goolag Maybe, Yahoo!<br /> Definitely. Boing Boing]”></center><br /> The Yahoo bit refers to news reports that Yahoo’s Chinese-based operations have cooperated with Chinese authorities in ways that resulted in long jail sentences for Chinese citizens.</p> <p> China <a href=defends its practice, and claims Yahoo’s help had nothing to do with the convictions.

cDc has been joined in its crusade by Students for a Free Tibet, which staged anti-Google Valentine’s Day protests that spanned the globe.

China’s censorship has stuck in cDc’s craw for some time. In 2002, cDc contributor Carrie Carolin summed up the problems search engines were encountering with Chinese censors “hijacking outbound requests to visit Google.com and Altavista and replacing them with shoddy Chinese search portals.”

At that time, Altavista countered by creating a variety of domain names to help Chinese surfers circumvent censors. That strategy died when China gained control of its own name space, along with all in-country domain names.

Times have changed since 2002. Today’s search engine geniuses have rationalized their way around the Great Wall blocking them from Chinese wallets.

Rather than bravely standing by those who have lost jobs, been jailed and/or died to defend freedom of information for centuries, the New Age search community seems to have chosen another well-worn path: Collaboration.

After all, this is a money deal. Supporters of this psuedo-Realpolitik view say it’s not the tech firms’ fault they do Bad Things. It’s the Bush administration’s. They need to make more laws.

Interestingly, after decades of somnambulance, the State Department is stirring under the selfsame Bush administration’s prodding. And the House of Representatives is right behind them.

RedState.com reports that, at today’s House International Relations Subcommittee on Global Human Rights meeting, Google tried the ole lipstick the pig gambit:

Many, if not most, of you here know that one of Google’s corporate mantras is “Don’t be evil.” Some critics - and even a few of our friends - think that phrase arrogant, or naive, or both. It’s not. It’s an admonition that reminds us to consider the moral and ethical implications of every single business decision we make.

Google’s right about one thing… “Don’t be evil” isn’t “arrogant, or naive, or both.” It’s self-serving and hypocritical.

While the Cisco, Yahoo, and Microsoft comments weren’t as disgusting on paper, they can be summed up with, “We want the US government to yammer this thing to death. The longer they talk, the more we make. Just don’t pass any laws that keep us from collaborating with jackboots to keep their citizens in bondage.”

Or at least, that’s what it sounds like to us.

Email Battles Backgrounder: