According to various reports, Google and Amazon workers took to the streets to protest against Israel’s Project Nimbus. Read the entire article to learn more about the news piece.
Project Nimbus
As the workers proceeded out of their offices to head back home to New York, they were astonished to see a huge crowd chanting “No justice, no peace, tech workers are in the streets!”Project Nimbus is neither Google’s first or last attempt to try and become a military contractor,” Google software engineer Gabrel Schubiner said during the rally in New York. “Please help us in keeping Google from becoming complicit in apartheid.”“As we have stated many times, the contract is for workloads running on our commercial platform by Israeli government ministries such as finance, healthcare, transportation, and education,” the spokesperson said. “Today’s protest group is misrepresenting the contract—our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” “There is no way for Amazon and Google to justify a contract with a government that has violated numerous human rights and continues to oppress Palestinian lives,” Bathool Syed, an Amazon worker, told Gizmodo.
About the protestors
The protestors were basically joined by various human rights activists. Except for the protestors, even various shareholders are pressurizing Google and Amazon. Kiran Aziz, head of investments at KLP said “The human rights situation is worsening with the Israeli government shutting down NGOs, expanding illegal settlements, and increasing the killings of civilians including Palestinian children in the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Aziz said. “Google and Amazon should be aware of the risks and perform due diligence. KLP is writing to both of these corporations to demand transparency and to rescind Project Nimbus on the basis of the clear risks of violating basic human rights.”
About Project Nimbus
According to multiple reports, Israel is planning to carry out Project Nimbus by getting access to object tracking, facial recognition etc. Many human rights organisation are now coming forward and criticizing Israel’s action , the most prominent ones being Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. “We believe that the technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere, including all of our users,” the workers wrote. “As workers who keep these companies running, we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values.” are lines from a letter that the workers from Google and Amazon signed and it got posted in The Guardian.
