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Hundreds of community members and workers in four cities protested against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract between Google, Amazon and the Israeli government and military.
“There can be no technology for war. There is no technology for apartheid,” Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, told demonstrators led by Amazon and Google technology workers.
While the cloud computing project has been hailed as a “game changer” for Israel, activists fear it will lead to data privacy issues, particularly when it is used by the Israeli military to further increase surveillance and data collection of Palestinians. Google’s own internal documents suggest that Project Nimbus, the Israeli government and military’s “facial recognition, automatic image classification; [and] “Item Tracking” workers believe it will serve to fuel Israeli apartheid. According to the report The intercept, Project Nimbus provides digital surveillance to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the Israeli Defense Forces, using advanced artificial intelligence technology.
Google is expanding its defense contracts despite protests from its employees. in the GuardGoogle employees said: “These contracts are part of a disturbing military system, lacking transparency and avoidance of control… We cannot see any other way because the products we build are used to deprive Palestinians of their basic rights and dispossess them.” They have attacked their homes and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Rallying around the slogan #NoTechForApartheid, tech workers led by ex-Googler Ariel Koren organized Collective Workers Against Nimbus to oppose the project. Koren, who left Google for retaliating against and silencing Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and anti-Zionist Jews, has publicly criticized Project Nimbus over concerns that the technology could be used to track and harm Palestinians.
Earlier this year, hundreds of employees signed an internal petition calling for Google to end its retaliation against Koren. In response to Koren’s resignation, 15 unnamed employees protested the project and told their stories about the alleged culture of fear and oppression they experienced working at Google.
In response to Coren’s forced layoffs, tech workers staged a national day of work, intensifying pressure on their companies to terminate their contracts. Protesting tech workers were joined by Jewish Voice for Peace, the Athena Coalition, the Adalah Justice Project, AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center, ACRE’s Action Center on Race and the Economy, and the Alphabet Workers Union.
In the year The workplace protest is the latest action by Google workers since the company announced the contract through 2021 amid the worst violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2014. The contract itself was signed the week of the Israeli attack. Palestinians have killed nearly 250 people in the Gaza Strip. The workers circulated petitions, spoke to the media and wrote an internal letter signed by more than 250 people asking Google CEO Sundar Pichai to issue a statement condemning Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people.
“There is no way Amazon and Google can justify a contract with a government that violates so many human rights and oppresses Palestinian life,” Amazon employee Batul Syed said in a press conference with Google and Amazon employees at Project Nimbus. . We are strong as workers and we are sending a clear message that we do not want our energy to cause violence.
Organizers hope the #NoTechforApartheid protests will pressure their companies to end the computer contracts and demand that Google’s executive team reject future defense contracts, provide relief to Palestinians, protect workers’ free speech, and confirm the companies’ demands. Commitment to human rights principles.
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