This is part two of an ongoing series Part one on unjust content moderation is herenbsp

Since the start of the Israeli military response to Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack USbased companies like Google and Amazon have been under pressure to reveal more about the services they provide and the nature of their relationships with the Israeli forces engaging in the military responsenbsp

We agree Without greater transparency the public cannot tell whether these companies are complying with human rights standardsboth those set by the United Nations and those they have publicly set for themselves We know that this conflict has resulted in alleged war crimes and has involved massive ongoing surveillance of civilians and refugees living under what international law recognizes as an illegal occupation That kind of surveillance requires significant technical support and it seems unlikely that it could occur without any ongoing involvement by the companies providing the platformsnbspnbsp

Googles Human Rights statement claims that “In everything we do including launching new products and expanding our operations around the globe we are guided by internationally recognized human rights standards We are committed to respecting the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its implementing treaties as well as upholding the standards established in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and in the Global Network Initiative Principles (GNI Principles) Google goes further in the case of AI technologies promising not to design or deploy AI in technologies that are likely to facilitate injuries to people gather or use information for surveillance or be used in violation of human rights or even where the use is likely to cause overall harm”nbsp

Amazon states that it is Guided by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and that their “approach on human rights is informed by international standards we respect and support the Core Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights”nbsp

It is time for Google and Amazon to tell the truth about use of their technologies in Gaza so that everyone can see whether their human rights commitments were real or simply empty promises

Concerns about Google and Amazon Facilitating Human Rights Abusesnbspnbsp

The Israeli government has long procured surveillance technologies from corporations based in the United States Most recently an investigation in August by 972 and Local Call revealed that the Israeli military has been storing intelligence information on Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) cloud after the scale of data collected through mass surveillance on Palestinians in Gaza was too large for military servers alone The same article reported that the commander of Israel’s Center of Computing and Information Systems unitresponsible for providing data processing for the militaryconfirmed in an address to military and industry personnel that the Israeli army had been using cloud storage and AI services provided by civilian tech companies with the logos of AWS Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure appearing in the presentationnbsp

This is not the first time Google and Amazon have been involved in providing civilian tech services to the Israeli military nor is it the first time that questions have been raised about whether that technology is being used to facilitate human rights abuses In 2021 Google and Amazon Web Services signed a 12 billion joint contract with the Israeli military called Project Nimbus to provide cloud services and machine learning tools located within Israel In an official announcement for the partnership the Israeli Finance Ministry said that the project sought to “provide the government the defense establishment and others with an allencompassing cloud solution” Under the contract Google and Amazon reportedly cannot prevent particular agencies of the Israeli government including the military from using its servicesnbsp

Not much is known about the specifics of Nimbus Google has publicly stated that the project is not aimed at military uses the Israeli military publicly credits Nimbus with assisting the military in conducting the warnbspReports note that the project involves Google establishing a secure instance of the Google Cloud in Israel According to Google documents from 2022 Google’s Cloud services include object tracking AIenabled face recognition and detection and automated image categorization Google signed a new consulting deal with the Israeli Ministry of Defense based around the Nimbus platform in March 2024 so Google can’t claim it’s simply caught up in the changed circumstances since 2021nbsp

Alongside Project Nimbus an anonymous Israeli official reported that the Israeli military deploys face recognition dragnets across the Gaza Strip using two tools that have facial recognition/clustering capabilities one from Corsight which is a facial intelligence company and the other built into the platform offered through Google Photosnbsp

Clarity Needednbsp

Based on the sketchy information available there is clearly cause for concern and a need for the companies to clarify their rolesnbspnbsp

For instance Google Photos is a generalpurpose service and some of the pieces of Project Nimbus are nonspecific cloud computing platforms EFF has long maintained that the misuse of generalpurpose technologies alone should not be a basis for liability But as with Cisco’s development of a specific module of China’s Golden Shield aimed at identifying the Falun Gong (currently pending in litigation in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit) companies should not intentionally provide specific services that facilitate human rights abuses They must also not willfully blind themselves to how their technologies are being usednbsp

In short if their technologies are being used to facilitate human rights abuses whether in Gaza or elsewhere these tech companies need to publicly demonstrate how they are adhering to their own Human Rights and AI Principles which are based in international standardsnbsp

We (and the whole world) are waiting Google and Amazonnbsp