The Role of Big Tech in the Israeli Occupation Economy – whoprofits – May 2023

The operation of these companies is both enormous and diverse in scale. In some cases, a company is involved in the implementation of a major project for the Israeli military, while in others, companies provide software or equipment for the operation of a broader system. Regardless of scale, the work of these companies bolsters the capacity of an already highly technological and data-oriented Israeli occupation economy and its capacity to dispossess, repress, control and subject Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line to pervasive surveillance.

In this Dynamic Report, Who Profits centralizes the profiles of the Tech MNCs uploaded on its database of companies facilitating Israel’s violations of the human rights of occupied Palestinian and Syrian communities.

Incorporated companies: #Microsoft, #Cisco #Systems, #IBM, #Dell Technologies. Follow the links to see the companies’ full profiles.

#OccupationTechnology
#Report

Boycott AnyVision: Israel’s “field-tested” facial recognition surveillance company | BDS Movement – 2019

Human Rights Watch has called on Microsoft to review its investments in AnyVision given the “human rights risk associated with the investment in a company that’s providing [facial recognition] technology to an occupying power.” AnyVision violates Microsoft’s own principles on facial recognition because they provide technology used for unlawful surveillance. 

HPE, which supplies servers to Israel’s population control registry, a pillar of its apartheid system, uses AnyVision facial recognition technology in its servers. 

Spanish telecommunications transnational Telefónica and G4S also use AnyVision’s technology. The city of Nice, France, surveils citizens with AnyVision and entry to the London stadium was surveilled by AnyVision last summer.

#AnyVision #Microsoft #FacialRecognition #France #Nice #UK #Spain #Palestine #Apartheid #Technology

Israeli Occupation: How Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Dell Enable Surveillance and Control in Palestine – June 2023

In September, Israel installed an AI-powered gun at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. Now, that same technology has been deployed at the entrance of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Across occupied East Jerusalem, you can find surveillance cameras strategically placed on street corners. And throughout the West Bank, Palestinians’ encounters with Israeli soldiers often include not only violence but face-scanning apps designed to capture their personal data

Who Profits, an Israeli research center documenting the private sector’s links to Israeli occupation, released a report in May on multinational tech companies’ role in facilitating Israel’s human rights violations. The impact of each company ranges, with some overseeing a major project while others provide equipment to a system already in place.

#Apartheid #Technology #biometric #IBM #Cisco #Microsoft #Dell #AI

The Former Israeli Spies Working in Top Jobs at Google, Facebook and Microsoft – MintPress - June 2023

AMintPress study has found that hundreds of former agents of the notorious Israeli spying organization, Unit 8200, have attained positions of influence in many of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.

The Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Unit 8200 is infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population, amassing kompromat on individuals for the purposes of blackmail and extortion. Spying on the world’s rich and famous, Unit 8200 hit the headlines last year, after the Pegasus scandal broke. Former Unit 8200 officers designed and implemented software that spied on tens of thousands of politicians and likely aided in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

#NSO #Pegasus #Israel #Unit8200 #ProjectNimbus #Google #Meta #Facebook #Microsoft #Intel #spyware #surveillance

🇵🇸 Palestinians Say Microsoft Unfairly Closing Their Accounts | Slashdot

Ancient Slashdot reader Alain Williams writes: Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning -- cutting them off from crucial online services. They say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers -- and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza. Microsoft says they violated its terms of service -- a claim they dispute. He also said being cut off from Skype was a huge blow for his family. The internet is frequently disrupted or switched off there because of the Israeli military campaign - and standard international calls are very expensive. [...] With a paid Skype subscription, it is possible to call mobiles in Gaza cheaply -- and while the internet is down -- so it has become a lifeline to many Palestinians.

#Palestine #Microsoft #Skype #Censorship #email #OPT #Gaza