When a company makes a promise, the public should be able to rely on it. Today, nearly every person in the U.S. is a customer of either Amazon or Google—and many of us are customers of both technology giants. Both of these companies have made public promises that they will ensure their technologies are not being used to facilitate human rights violations. These promises are not just corporate platitudes; they’re commitments to every customer and to society at large.
It’s a reasonable thing to ask if these promises are being kept. And it’s especially important since Amazon and Google have been increasingly implicated by reports that their technologies, specifically their joint cloud computing initiative called Project Nimbus, are being used to facilitate mass surveillance and human rights violations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. This was the basis of our public call in August 2024 for the companies to come clean about their involvement.
But we didn’t just make a public call. We sent letters directly to the Global Head of Public Policy at Amazon and to Google’s Global Head of Human Rights in late September. We detailed what these companies have promised and asked them to tell us by November 1, 2024 how they were complying. We hoped that they could clear up the confusion, or at least explain where we, or the reporting we were relying on, were wrong.
But instead, they failed to respond. This is unfortunate, since it leads us to question how serious they were in their promises. And it should lead you to question that too.
Project Nimbus: Technology at the Expense of Human Rights
Project Nimbus provides advanced cloud and AI capabilities to the Israeli government, tools that an increasing number of credible reports suggest are being used to target civilians under pervasive surveillance in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is more than a technical collaboration—it’s a human rights crisis in the making as evidenced by data-driven targeting programs like Project Lavender and Where’s Daddy, which have reportedly led to detentions, killings, and the systematic oppression of journalists, healthcare workers, aid workers, and ordinary families.
Transparency is not a luxury when human rights are at risk—it’s an ethical and legal obligation.
The consequences are serious. Vulnerable communities in Gaza and the West Bank suffer violations of their human rights, including their rights to privacy, freedom of movement, and free association, all of which can be fostered and furthered by pervasive surveillance. These documented violations underscore the ethical responsibility of Amazon and Google, whose technologies are at the heart of this surveillance scheme.
Amazon and Google’s Promises
Amazon and Google have made public commitments to align with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and their own AI ethics frameworks. These frameworks are supposed to ensure that their technologies do not contribute to harm. But their silence on these pressing concerns speaks volumes, undermining trust in their supposed dedication to these principles and casting doubt on their sincerity.
Unanswered Letters, Unanswered Accountability
When we sent letters to Amazon and Google, it was with direct, actionable questions about their involvement in Project Nimbus. We asked for transparency about their contracts, clients, and risk assessments. We called for evidence that due diligence had been conducted and demanded explanations of the steps taken to prevent their technologies from facilitating abuse.
Our core demands were straightforward and tied directly to the company’s commitments:
- Disclose the scope of their involvement in Project Nimbus.
- Provide evidence of risk assessments tied to this project.
- Explain how they are addressing credible reports of misuse.
Despite these reasonable and urgent requests, which are tied directly to the companies’ stated legal and ethical commitments, both companies have remained silent, and their silence isn’t just an insufficient response—it’s an alarming one.
Why Transparency Cannot Wait
Transparency is not a luxury when human rights are at risk—it’s an ethical and legal obligation. For both of these companies, it’s an obligation they have promised to the rest of us. For global companies that wield immense power, silence in the face of abuse is inexcusable.
The Fight for Accountability
EFF is making these letters public to highlight the human rights obligations Amazon and Google have undertaken and to raise reasonable questions they should answer in light of public reports about the misuse of their technologies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We aren’t the first ones to raise concerns, but, having raised these questions publicly, and now having given the companies a chance to clarify, we are increasingly concerned about their complicity.
Google and Amazon have promised all of us—their customers and noncustomers alike—that they would take steps to ensure that their technologies support a future where technology empowers rather than oppresses. It’s increasingly clear that those promises are being ignored, if not entirely broken. EFF will continue to push for transparency and accountability.
This post was originally published on here
