Digital Apartheid in Gaza: Big Tech Must Reveal Their Roles in Tech Used in Human Rights Abuses

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

Since the start of the Israeli military response to Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack, U.S.-based 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 response. 

We agree. Without greater transparency, the public cannot tell whether these companies are complying with human rights standards—both 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 platforms.  

Google's 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.” 

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.” 

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 Abuses  

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 unit—responsible for providing data processing for the military—confirmed 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 presentation. 

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 $1.2 billion joint contract