February 2023 | Digital Rights Regional Briefs
Danae Tapia, Global Community Manager & Resident Hechicera
Welcome to the February release of our regional briefs!
Every month, our Community Leads from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and MENA, bring critical information about digital justice issues around the globe, current opportunities for digital rights defenders, insights into emerging issues, community news, regional developments, and more!
We have had good news this month! We are thrilled for the official release of Ola Bini after years of prosecution. We truly expect that this verdict will set a precedent for the safeguarding of online freedoms.
This month we have detected an increase in phishing operations in South and Southeast Asia. We also cover developments related to big tech - from Twitter’s decision to no longer offer free access to its API, to an interview with former Google employee Ariel Koren, who was fired for protesting Project Nimbus - a $1.2 billion agreement between Google and Amazon to supply artificial intelligence tools and other computing services to Israel and its military.
Have News or Updates to Share? Contact us if you know about individuals or groups working on issues that should be reported in our briefs. Your contribution helps us advance our goals of promoting fresh and critical viewpoints on digital justice issues. Ours is a field where crucial developments are taking place and we want to be part of exciting and innovative endeavors!
Danae
Global Community Manager
Asia Regional Brief
Africa Regional Brief
Latin America Regional Brief
MENA Regional Brief
Author: Mardiya Siba Yahaya
Mardiya Siba Yahaya is our Africa Community Lead. She is a feminist digital sociologist, researcher and community movement builder whose work extensively investigates the implications of technology surveillance and datafied societies on minoritized genders and communities in the global South. She has a Masters in Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand, and was awarded the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship in 2021. Mardiya recently participated in the fall 2022 research sprint hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society on “Digital IDs in Times of Crisis”.
Africa Regional Brief
Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders
Upendo is seeking a programs manager to support community engagement, organize program activities, and support the strategic direction of the organization.
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is calling for proposals from across the social and behavioral sciences, humanities, data sciences for a dissertation research grant competition as part of the Data Fluencies Project.
The Trust Project is hiring a Network Manager to lead training and build engagement, and manage network gatherings.
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in Africa
Critical Feminist Technology Interventions: Community-Centered Approaches for Framing, Designing, and Engaging with Algorithmic Systems
Mozilla Foundation and Kwanele are developing an A.I. chatbot to “support women and children report and successfully prosecute crimes involving gender based violence”. The framework model created for this project, based on large language models, serves as a reference point for public interest technology designers exploring radical alternatives to their design processes for just and inclusive outcomes.
The Challenge Being Addressed
The project creators share that reporting apps for gender based violence reproduce racial capitalism by extracting user data in non-transparent ways to sell to data brokers without the consent of the users. Meanwhile, app designers profit from issues of sexism, ableism, and racism without actually helping address these societal wrongs. Hence, to design just processes for inclusive outcomes, they asked “How do we disentangle the complexity of using AI-driven language technology in the context of anti-violence reporting?”
The Framework: A Participatory and Trusting Process
Mozilla Foundation and Kwanele used what they call the ‘Terms-we-serve-with framework’ (TwSw) to design a community engagement technique throughout the lifecycle of building their tool.
TwSw provides a point of departure from Terms of Services (ToS) which can often be opaque and exploitative to users. The ToS can also be seen as a contract that reproduces stark power dynamics with its ‘all or nothing’ approach. The TwSw framework hopes to return to a relational contract where users are involved in shaping what they agree to and how it is developed through a participatory and trusting process. The five-step-model is:
Co-constitution: an intersectional process of engaging stakeholders who are potentially target users of the gender based violence reporting app to ideate and engage with the processes of the AI system’s design, development, deployment, and continuous evaluation.
Speculative Friction: a process where they contextualize design justice and critical design techniques to understand ”frictions among stakeholders in the context of user experience and human-computer interaction”.
Complaint: an approach that allows the designers of the chat bot to actively document institutional and structural complaints of potential users with similar technologies.
Disclosure-centered mediation: where stakeholders engage in an iterative process to determine what needs to be disclosed, to whom, how, and when disclosure should be changed. According to Kwanele, this was their approach to enable learning and resolution when algorithmic harm happens.
Veto power: a process that engages stakeholders to “envision what is a sufficient level of human oversight over AI”. This also included discussions on identifying and mitigating biases in large language models, as well as challenges with types of data shared with the police.
This design and engagement approach, centering on participatory action, enables both the project creators to create a reporting chatbot that does not reproduce harm against minority groups. Or when harm does happen, the process facilitates an accountability process that allows them to address issues.
What Happens When Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Generated Images Learn How to Create Accurate Human Fingers?
A.I. generated images are often posted online with misinforming captions suggesting they are photos of true moments or real humans.
For instance, a recent tweet posted with the caption “A wonderful picture of the elderly in Yemen” was later tagged as an A.I. generated image after users pointed it out. Another image was posted claiming that the photos were shot during a protest in France. However, due to A.I.’s inability to accurately create fingers, online users were able to identify that it was disinformation.
Others, however, are alarmed by the rise of disinformation and sexually violent deep fakes which in turn train A.I. to get better at generating images. How could we then accurately identify mis/disinformation?
These concerns demonstrate that our strategies to counter mis/disinformation are still limited in the face of emerging uses of A.I. technologies that are thriving to be ‘real’. Hence, requiring the collective effort of researchers, designers, and public interest policy makers and regulators to design robust, proactive and standardized approaches to identifying and addressing mis/disinformation.
Community News in Africa
Security Experts Needed to Help Designing Safer and More Secure Online CounterPublics for African Queer
The Queer African Network (QAN) welcomes cyber security collaborators to help them improve the safety of their platform. QAN is a social and professional mobile application designed to support queer people of African descent in building meaningful connections and accessing the resources they need to thrive. It features community groups, fundraising, tailored opportunity recommendations, interactive blogs, and a marketplace.
The co-founder of the organization, Nerima Makhondo, shared with Team CommUnity that queer people experiencing interpersonal and structural violence within their communities that often result in displacement and isolation. This violence also manifests online, with individuals not knowing who its safe to engage with.
The Coalition for Independent Technology Research Addresses How Twitter's New Application Programme Interface (API) Fees Threatens Public-Interest Research
On February 2 2023, Twitter's development team released a statement saying they will no longer support free access to their API, with basic access available at a fee. The Coalition for Independent Technology researchers call on Twitter to “to ensure that APIs for studying public content on the platform remain easily accessible for journalists, academics, and civil society.” They also call on policymakers “to demonstrate leadership and require reliable public-purpose data access for all to protect this vital infrastructure.”
Given that many public interest researchers, technologists, and institutions from the global South are under-resourced, Twitter's new policy threatens the advancement of critical interventions such as responses to minor safety, natural disasters, and online violence that rely on their API. Fees pose a first barrier. However, what is more concerning may be the additional multiple processes involved to access the data in the first place. This shows how centralized power of closed-source software companies allows them to revoke access to critical information and data.
Regional News in Africa
Image’s source: CharlesFred’s Flickr.
Tigray Is Slowly Returning Online
During the 2022 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) hosted in Ethiopia, activists and civil society actors pressured the Ethiopian government to end the 3-years long internet black out in Tigray.
In January, the major telecommunication company in Ethiopia and the government shared that they have repaired some of the damaged infrastructure, as part of their action to restore internet connectivity. Thus far, the internet black out enabled various human rights abuses to go undocumented. Throughout the period, Access Now researched and documented violations while campaigning to #KeepitOn. There is still much work to be done: ‘a full restoration’ of the internet is yet to be experienced by the Tigrayan population of over 6 million people.
Kenyan Court Ruled that Facebook Can be Sued within their Jurisdiction
In 2022, one of Facebook’s content moderators filed a lawsuit against the Meta subsidiary for ‘poor working conditions’, following the Time investigative piece looking at Facebook’s African Sweat Shop.
In their attempt to get the case dropped, Facebook argued that Kenyan courts have no jurisdiction to sue them as a foreign company not based in the country or conducting trade. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is also facing a lawsuit for inciting hate and violence in Ethiopia. The attempts by the company to stop the lawsuit demonstrates the main tactics private technology platform companies use to evade accountability in many African countries.
Image’s source: GPA Photo Archive’s Flickr.
How Meta is Preparing for Nigeria’s 2023 General Elections
Ahead of the upcoming Nigerian elections on February 25 2023, Meta released a report on their plans and policies to ‘preserve the integrityof general elections taking place in Nigeria’.
Years of research has shown how social media sways elections, incites election mis/disinformation, and violence.During the 2022 Kenyan election, Tiktok, Twitter, and Facebook failed to stop election related misinformation and hate-inspired messaging.
High Internet Rates is Forcing Poorer South Africans to Stay Up at Night to Access the Internet
In South Africa, people in low income communities are forced to stay up at night to catch up on online courses, support their families with homework, and more, given that discounted Internet rates are available between midnight and 5am.
This is makes a public health and security issue within poorer populations in South Africa. Individuals report having increased migraines, and others report that it alerts thieves that a household has valuable devices, in a context where high crime exists. Similarly, low income households are unable to afford private security, thus making them vulnerable to threats caused by routine electricity cuts and high cost of daytime internet access.
How African Governments Enabled Global Private Technology Platform Operate Unregulated
For more than a decade, African governments have pushed to achieve a fourth industrial revolution by ‘leapfrogging’ from the details. In an attempt to create an ‘investor friendly’ environment, this entailed lenient regulations on private technology companies which include labour policies that enable exploitation.
Uber was one of the companies that took advantage of these ‘investor friendly’ regulatory leniencies while benefiting from the high unemployment in the countries they operate in. Uber promised to address the high unemployment rate through ‘inclusion and empowerment’, but the Guardian investigation found that Uber’s strategy was to exploit the unemployment levels by signing up workers, capturing the transport market, and cutting drivers’ pay. Despite the multiple platform worker strikes for fair pay, ride hailing apps like Uber continue to benefit from African governments and multinational corporations ‘digital development leapfrogging’ trope that predominantly erodes worker protection.
Interesting Podcast:
Author: Astha Rajvanshi
Astha Rajvanshi is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, where she writes on gender, marginalized communities, and human rights across India and South Asia. Recently, she was awarded the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award by New York University. As part of her reporting in India, she is currently examining tech surveillance and internet shutdowns. Previously, she was a Fellow for the Institute of Current World Affairs in Washington DC. She has also worked for the New York Times Magazine and Reuters in New York. She was born in New Delhi and raised in Sydney as a proud daughter of immigrants.
Asia Regional Brief
Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders in Asia
AccessNow is hiring a Policy Analyst (East Asia) who will be deeply involved in policy initiatives in the East Asian Region, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, as well as South Korea, Japan, and Mongolia.
EngageMedia is accepting applications for its Asia-Pacific Digital Rights Festival Fellowship, which will provide limited funding for selected participants to join the week-long event in Chiang Mai in May 2023. Apply by February 28.
ARTICLE 19’s Team Digital is looking for public interest advocates to join the 2023-2024 Internet of Rights (IoR) Fellowship. This is a 12-month fellowship, beginning in April 2023. Each fellow will work closely with their mentor—a designated member of A19’s Team Digital. All fellows follow one of three tracks: Censorship, Connectivity, or Datafication. Apply by March 3.
EngageMedia is hiring a Digital Rights Project Assistant to support the implementation of the organization's digital rights initiatives in the region, working closely with project leads on coordination and logistics, communications and outreach, and monitoring and reporting. Apply Apply by March 5.
DevTech is hiring Digital Democracy Country Analysts for Digital Democracy, a relatively new area of analysis, programming, and strategic direction for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which will respond to the growing challenge of digital repression and technology-enabled democratic backsliding. Apply now.
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in Asia
In Cambodia, Online Censorship Amplifies the Struggle for Press Freedoms
In February, the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen shut down Voice of Democracy (VOD), one of the country's last independent news publications. VOD was run by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM), which was established in 2007 to promote independent media, freedom of expression, access to information, and internet freedom. The publication is known for its critical reporting and investigative journalism.
In a Facebook post, Hun Sen posted that VOD had published a story that "hurt" his government's reputation before proceeding to cancel its license.
Clampdown on Press Freedom in Cambodia with Censorship Carried Out Rapidly
Many rights activists say the move comes as another blow to free speech and access to information in Cambodia, with the closure signaling the latest in a long-running clampdown on press freedoms.
In the lead up to the national elections in July, the move also has significant implications on digital rights and upholding democratic processes. As the strongman leader shut down the publication, internet service providers also began blocking the outlet's websites.
Digital rights activists say the censorship of VOD websites was carried out more rapidly and systematically than Cambodia's previous efforts at online bans. The government is also preparing to put in a National Internet Gateway and enact other policies to tighten online control.
In recent years, Cambodia has seen several independent news organizations shutting down, including the Cambodia Daily in 2017 and over 30 independent radio stations. Cambodia currently ranks 142nd out of 180 countries in the 2022 Press Freedom Index and is rated ‘partly free’ in the 2022 Freedom on the Net report.
How VOD’s Shutdown Impacts Digital Rights
Engage Media writes that VOD’s shutdown impacts digital rights in three ways:
By having a chilling effect on freedom of expression
By restricting access to information
By enabling digital authoritarianism that undermines democratic processes
Many activists have spoken up about the issue. The Overseas Press Club of Cambodia, along with 97 other media and civil society groups, issued a statement on the government's revocation of VOD’s license, calling it “a dark and disturbing day for Cambodia and for press freedoms.”
Amnesty International said the shutdown will have an “immediate chilling effect” on anyone asking questions of the Cambodian government, along with putting Cambodian people’s access to information at risk and is an attempt to wipe out dissent and critical voices.
Similarly, the Asia Democracy Network said the shutdown was part of a “continuous assault on fundamental freedoms” in Cambodia, calling on the international community to be more unified and resolute in addressing the situation. The deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch Phil Robertson said VOD “served as an important mainstay of independent investigative reporting and objective criticism for years” and that its closure is a “devastating blow to media freedom”.
What Can be Done to Support Cambodia
Those looking to find ways to support independent media around the world can raise awareness about what’s going on in Cambodia and support calls to reverse the VOD shutdown by following the #SaveVoD hashtag to amplify the latest news and updates. Many journalists in and outside Cambodia are protesting the shutdown and finding a way to talk about the issue in global publications.
Community News in Asia
The 4-point Digital Rights Agenda for Political Parties report by Asia Center will launch on February 24. Hear representatives from Thai political parties discuss this crucial issue and make a commitment to protect digital rights in Thailand. Register here.
Image’s source: EngageMedia.
Asia-Pacific Digital Rights Festival is Engage Media’s week-long event which will take place in Chiang Mai in May 2023. Take a look at the journey towards the Festival and what participants can expect .
Freedom House 2022 documented the 12th consecutive year of internet freedom in decline. Read more from @EmiliePradichit and @LetitiaVisan about how Digital Rights are muzzled by Southeast Asia’s authoritarian regimes here.
South and Southeast Asia are hotspots for phishing attacks, which have been on the rise as the pandemic accelerated the shift to digital life. Engage Media put together this resource where you can learn more about the common types of phishing and ways to enhance your digital security here.
Image’s source: Cinemata by EngageMedia.
How are digital rights managed in online games using NFTS and blockchain technology? You can find out more in this article by Asia Casino here.
Cinemata Visions’ second feature spotlights nine student films from the University of the Philippines Film Institute. The films were produced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines and explore challenges posed by one of the longest lockdowns in the world. Watch the full playlist on Cinemata here.
Regional News & Updates in Asia
Pakistan bans, then unblocks, Wikipedia amid digital freedom fight, Nikkei Asia
Experts discuss how the Pakistani Government's internet policy, which saw a short-lived ban on Wikipedia, could have profound economic effects on the country’s nascent economy.
Why internet growth has stalled in India, BBC News
An analysis on why internet growth appears to have stalled in India, which boasts the world's second largest mobile phone market. Growth in mobile internet subscribers has now slipped to single digits from scorching double digits between 2016 and 2020.
Kashmir Registers Highest Number of Internet Restrictions Globally, VoA
A new report by Surfshark, a virtual private network company headquartered in Lithuania, found that Residents in Indian-administered Kashmir experienced more internet shutdowns and restrictions than any other region in 2022, including Iran and Russia.
India’s Government Wants Total Control of the Internet, WIRED
This article about how India’s Modi administration keeps giving itself new powers, and how Big Tech keeps giving in.
The good old days will not be back for China's internet companies, Nikkei Asia
A report on how the Chinese government’s crackdown has still left regulators with enhanced powers against companies.
China plays catch-up to ChatGPT as hype builds around AI, Financial Times
China’s tech giants including Baidu, Alibaba and NetEase are racing to match the west’s recent developments in artificial intelligence, touting projects that they hope will achieve the same buzz created by the release of ChatGPT. But this report looks at how they are disadvantaged by lack of suitable data and computing power.
Author: Úrsula Schüler
Úrsula Schüler was born and raised in Chile, South America. She studied journalism in her home country and a Digital media marketing postgraduate program in Canada. She has more than seven years of experience working in newspapers and television channel websites, for whom reported two presidential and legislative elections in Chile. She has also done internal communication for universities, companies, and organizations. Spanish is her first language and years ago she was a student representative in high school and her university.
LATAM Regional Brief
Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders in LATAM
Derechos digitales is inviting organizations and activists without formal affiliation who work locally in Latin America on digital rights issues to pre-register and submit their applications to the Rapid Response Fund for the protection of digital rights in Latin America (FRR). Mozilla Festival is slated for March 20 2023. There will be sessions in Spanish.
RightsCon will be held on June 5-8 2023 in Costa Rica. Check their participant support initiativeshere.
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in LATAM
Peru Experiencing Dramatic Social Political Crisis
In the past few months, Peru has been experiencing a dramatic social political crisis. After the ousting and arrest of its former President, Pedro Castillo in December 2022, the country has seen its worst outbreak of violence in years. The country is currently being ruled by Dina Boluarte, the former vice president during the Castillo government. She took helm after Castillo’s arrest and responded to the high and frequent social demonstrations with brutal police and military repression.
Several organizations have been deploying initiatives in response to this crisis. Here, we highlight two of them and share their insights:
Habeas Corpus: Helping Peruvians with Arbitrary Detentions
Hiperderecho’s executive director, Dilmar Villena.
Habeas Corpus was born in 2020 within the framework of the protests carried out against Manuel Merino’s government.
The initiative sought to provide people with tools to deal with the arbitrary detentions that were being reported, explains Dilmar Villena, Hiperderecho’s executive director. Hiperderecho is a non-profit Peruvian organization dedicated to facilitating public understanding and promoting respect for rights and freedom in digital environments.
However, in 2022 and the beginning of 2023, Habeas Corpus is still helpful in Perú because it allows the simple and automated processing of filing a request for the release of someone who has been unjustly detained.
Villena states that in the context of social demonstrations, technologies are presented as a key point that allows the organization of protests and to access information about the state's actions. Villena says that “The use of different social networks allows a better and faster organization. In countries where there is a large concentration of media with a single editorial point of view (as is the case in Peru), it also allows access to information that would otherwise not be easily accessible”.
Interview with Contingente Peru on Mapping State Violence
Contingente Perú describe themselves as “a counter-cartography and geographies research initiative with people. This means mapping with people.” Contingente Perú’s view on justice is through action against the different structures of repression and oppression, be it exploitation, violence, cultural imperialism, among others.
They built an online map where people can see and inform where, when, and what type of state violence happened. People can anonymously report attacks attacks. The information is fact-checked, uploaded on the platform, and located for reference by a team of professionals.
What kind of tools do they use and how is their work organized?
Contingente Perú (CP): We mainly use free geographic information system software to produce cartography. In the specific case of the interactive maps of protests and violence, we worked with the free software OpenStreetmaps. To collect the data, we use collaborative and free software such as Sheets, which allows us to work simultaneously, since the members of the group are in different parts of the country and abroad (we have a colleague who is doing her doctorate in France).
The work is organized according to the schedules of the members, and according to how the events unfold. Usually when more situations arise or the facts escalate in severity, we meet more frequently. In any case, we are always in touch through applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
What are the main challenges you face in Peru, from the point of view of digital rights?
Mayimbú, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
CP: One of the main challenges is related to the publication and arrival of the materials, and the possibility of reaching people outside of academic circles, the general public. The algorithm of the social networks where we publish keeps the information hidden from the vast majority of people, according to their personal preferences. In many cases, the real information does not reach them.
On the other hand, the context has become increasingly dangerous for freedom of expression. The Ministry of the Interior has enabled an email to report crimes for "terrorism", according to the history of what is considered terrorism for the state. There are things as basic as owning a book, sharing information that "promotes" the demonstrations, and any other type of material that they consider to be "advocacy for terrorism." These are clearly actions that aim at reducing the generalized expression of rejection of the current government and its de facto powers.
Community News in LATAM
Ecuadorian court declares digital rights activist Ola Bini innocent
At the end of January, the Ecuadorian justice system declared Ola Bini innocent, who had been charged for hacking a computer. The Swedish programmer faced 3 years and 9 months of long justice hearings and irregularities in the Latin American country. Ola Bini is currently the technical leader in Centro de Autonomía Digital, an organization based in Quito, Ecuador, which researches, improves and creates easy-to-use tools and techniques that strengthen people's digital sovereignty.
Datávoros analyzed apps from companies and the Mexican government
Check at datavoros.org what type of user data is collected by applications from companies and the government of Mexico. Also, find out whether or not they protect your collected information.
InternetBolivia.org warns about messages on social networks with false job offers
The organization alerted the community about the circulation of messages on social networks with fake job offers from large online companies. InternetBolivia.org warned that they are scams and steal people’s data.
Latin America Meetup hosted by Team CommUNITYa
The Latin America Meetup hosted by Team CommUnity (TCU) was held on the 15th of February. You can read the notes of the meetup here.
Regional News and Updates in LATAM
Brazil government wants to impose obligations for Big Techs to reduce content related to the coup attempt
Image’s source: Ricardo Stuckert, CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The coup attempt that shocked Brazil’s capital on January 8th has been followed with several news reports. Lula’s minister of Justice proposed a new law at the end of January for holding platformw accountable. Just days after the violent anti-democratic attacks in Brazil, Global Witness found out that Facebook approved publication ads that called on people to take up arms and storm government buildings, made explicit death threats against Lula supporters and their children, and described the election as stolen.
El Salvador's government obtained three new spyware tools in 2020 from Israeli intermediate
Official documents and emails reveal that El Salvador’s National Civil Police acquired equipment and software to spy on citizens in 2020 and that it opens the opportunity to do so outside of any judicial control. The supplier of these products is a company that belongs to an Israeli friend of the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
A judge in Colombia used ChatGPT AI tool to help resolve a case faster
A university professor shared his concerns about a judicial case where ChatGPT responses were used for making a decision. The AI tool did not provide case law references and even fabricated a judicial sentence.
Venezuela
More than 400 civil society organizations reject Maduro’s bill that tries to suppress the right of association.
...
Author: Islam al Khatib
Islam al Khatib is a Palestinian feminist born and raised in Beirut. She researches feminism(s), hegemonies in the 'technocene', ecologies, and grief. Her work focuses on the methods and the processes with which we produce knowledge. She has a Masters in Gender, Media and Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also worked as the Students' Union Welfare and Liberation officer. She is a member of Wiki Gender.
MENA Regional Brief
Current Opportunities for Digital Rights Defenders in MENA
IJNET’s training for journalists in the Arab Gulf, Deadline: March
The training , which is set to begin in April, is aimed at young journalists with less than seven years of experience. It seeks to build their skills in writing news and journalistic reports, dealing with sources, fact-checking, and paying attention to ethical standards in journalism. Target countries: Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
TIMEP Nonresident Fellowship, Deadline: 28 February 2023
The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) is now accepting applications for its Nonresident Fellowship Program, which invests in individuals whose work advances the transparent, accountable, and just societies that TIMEP is dedicated to fostering. Issues include digital and cyberspace, social movements, climate change.
Emerging Topics on Digital Justice in MENA
Google violating labor rights to defend techno-militarism
I spoke with Ariel Koren, a former marketing manager for Google's educational products who had worked for the company for seven years before resigning in protest. Koren spent more than a year organizing against Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion agreement between Google and Amazon to supply artificial intelligence tools and other computing services to Israel and its military.
Google has a history of retaliating against employees who attempt to protest any type of misconduct at the company. Claire Stapleton and Meredith Whittaker resigned in 2019 after claiming they faced retaliation for organizing a worker walkout in 2018 to protest the company's sexual misconduct policies. In this interview, we look at what techno-militarism means and its relevance to the region, and the ways in which Google continues to violate labor rights in defense of techno-militarism.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?
I am a former Google worker who was ousted from Google for protesting illegal actions by the company and the company’s contracts with Israel known as Project Nimbus. Project Nimbus is a $1.2 billion Google and Amazon contract with the Israeli military and government that will fuel apartheid and harm against Palestinians.
While details of the contracts remain intentionally obscure, we know that Google will help construct data centers and provide cloud infrastructure to Israeli government agencies, including Israel’s military, and apartheid ministries like the Israel Land Authority, which furthers the expansion of segregated settlements and land theft.
Recent reporting based on internal Google materials confirms that Project Nimbus hands over artificial intelligence technology, including facial detection, automatic image categorization, object tracking, and even sentiment analysis (used to detect whether someone is lying or not) — that the Israeli government and military will likely apply to violate human rights.
Techno-militarism as a concept is one that is becoming more and more introduced to everyday language. In the case of your work, how would you define it?
Techno-militarism describes big tech's increasing role in the military industrial complex. It describes big tech companies’ drive to leverage modern technologies of surveillance and AI as well as scalable and resilient networks to support the global trends of universal surveillance, automated and heavily militarized borders, invasive population control, and state violence.
Techno-militarism is seen in the revolving door between military brass and big tech as well as the increase in partnerships and contracts signed with militaries and militarized policing agencies. Techno-militarism presages the dystopian future where the central repositories of data about global populations coexist on the same infrastructure as the tools of their surveillance and control. The networks that grew by leveraging and selling users’ data have moved into selling the infrastructure of their oppression.
To quote Lau Barrios, Campaign Manager at MPower Change and co-organizer of the No Tech For Apartheid Campaign: “tech companies are the new war profiteers seeking lucrative military contracts and providing militaries and militarized policing agencies with the tools they need to enact state violence.”
Your case with Google is a clear case of violating labor rights by retaliating against people who are against Google pursuing military contracts. Could you tell us a bit about that in the framework of labor rights maybe?
Google ousted me from my role in an act of blatant retaliation after I had escalated issues of workplace harassment and discrimination, organized against the company’s culture of repressing Palestinian and allied voices, and spoken out publicly about Project Nimbus.
Since I resigned in September, and in response to pressure from Google workers’ direct action, Google finally admitted the truth that they spent the year prior attempting to hide from the public: that the Israeli military will indeed have access to Google technology under Project Nimbus.
Google’s admission, immediately following my resignation and our direct actions in which hundreds of workers protested Project Nimbus outside of the Google offices, is testament that collective organizing works.
As Alex Hanna, former Google worker and current research director of the Distributed AI Research Institute said at our worker protests: “Tech workers are one of the last bulwarks against tech companies’ worst excesses.” Google knows this, and that is why they work so hard to intimidate us and squelch our voices.
Google’s $1.45 trillion market cap value rivals the GDP of countries like Canada, Australia, and South Korea.
It is terrifying to think of a world where a company this size, that wields enough power to essentially function like a large nation-state, can profit off of contracting with settler colonial apartheid entities and militaries with essentially no power to regulate how the tools they hand over to these militaries get used.
And yet, this is our reality; the only way to ensure that tech workers can hold companies like Google accountable is to ensure that workers are protected in their right to speak publicly about working conditions. Unfortunately, Google is attempting to eschew accountability through intimidating workers, retaliating, bullying workers into NDAs, union-busting, and other tactics designed to insulate the company from any sort of real accountability to its own publicly stated values and to the law.
Sometimes, when certain cases get picked up by the media (even if limited), some of the political rhetoric or the values carried by the people initiating the action falls within the cracks. Is there anything you would like to use this interview as an opportunity to highlight?
Image’s source: Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA)’s Twitter.
I am no longer employed at Google, but in the past three months, the worker-led movement has continued to grow as my former colleagues at Google – and worker activists at Amazon– are escalating the fight against the $1.2 billion dollar contracts collectively known as Project Nimbus.
In response to our organizing, Google has systematically retaliated against, intimidated, and silenced Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, anti-zionist Jewish, and other allied workers speaking out against the company’s military contracts.
Our Palestinian coworkers report being reprimanded by Human Resources or even denied promotions for simply wearing traditional Palestinian clothing in company photos or sharing articles about current events in Gaza.
Clearly Google’s act of retaliation was intended to scare and silence tech workers standing up for Palestinian rights, but the movement of Google and Amazon workers against Project Nimbus has grown stronger than ever.
On September 8, hundreds of tech workers and community allies took direct action in front of Google and Amazon offices in four cities against this harmful project. Growing numbers of tech workers have gone public with their organizing in opposition to Project Nimbus; and every day, we receive new emails and text messages from Google and Amazon workers – and company shareholders – interested in joining the effort to ensure these companies stop profiting off the systematic Israeli apartheid violence against Palestinians.
How can digital rights defenders and the digital rights community, particularly in the MENA, support you?
You can sign our petition and write directly to Google and Amazon executives at notechforapartheid.com.
You can read and amplify the stories of Palestinian Google workers at bit.ly/google-voices.
Additionally: while many folks have learned about Google’s retaliatory behavior against me, most do not know that the same week I went public about the retaliation, Google escalated their retaliatory behavior and let go of the contracted workers whom I had hired on my team.
Having lost their livelihoods due to Google’s retaliation, many of them are now planning/aspiring to work at Respond Crisis Translation, which is a grassroots org that we founded 3 years ago. Respond is the only full-service language access collective in the U.S. It provides around-the-clock life-critical trauma-informed interpretation and translation services to asylum seekers, refugees, and thousands of other individuals experiencing crisis.
Over 20,000 asylum seekers reach out to receive urgent support from Respond each month and over 380 system-impacted translators and interpreters now earn a full living from their work with Respond. Respond’s paid interpreters are based in Afghanistan, Haiti, Central America, Ukraine, and in refugee camps across Europe and they rely on this income for their livelihood. Google’s retaliation has not only cost several workers their livelihoods but also diminished our capacity to fundraise to ensure that we can sustain our critical work.
We are seeking to raise funds urgently to ensure that these workers can earn a living and also enable Respond to keep supporting hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, refugees, and individuals experiencing language violence in detention centers, carceral immigration systems, medical and psychological systems, housing systems, and countless other systems where language is violently weaponized to impede freedom of mobility and access. We would be so grateful for anyone who can contribute!
Community News in MENA
On February 6, a catastrophic and destructive Mw 7.8 earthquake struck southern and central Turkey, as well as northern and western Syria. This catastrophic incident resulted in the deaths and displacement of thousands of people and the loss is devastating to our community.
Team CommUNITY has compiled a list of initiatives and fundraisers, verified by trusted community members, that you can contribute to. We also list non-monetary ways you can help.
In times like these, it's critical to check in with colleagues and community members, and to remind them that they need to rest in order to continue doing important work like setting up fundraisers and donation collection points all over the world.
Community members have expressed deep grief as the countries affected by this disaster have not known peace for over a decade, such as Syria. Crises continue to affect the most vulnerable. This is why it is critical to highlight the need for collective action as well as practical and material solidarity.
Regional News and Updates in MENA
Misinformation, temporary Twitter blocks following the earthquake in Turkey and Syria
Following the devastating earthquake, waves of misinformation in the form of Whatsapp broadcasts, Tiktoks, and flyers circulated online in the MENA region.
People in Lebanon received false reports stating earthquake was going to hit the country next. In response, people left their homes and stayed in their cars in open spaces. The spread of misinformation was worsened when people began fleeing their homes in Tripoli after feeling aftershocks on February 8, as did fake reports from “experts” predicting an earthquake in Lebanon or giving tsunami warnings.
Under the guise of combating misinformation, Turkish authorities blocked Twitter for 12 hours. In a statement to Reuters, a government official said that there were untrue claims, slander, insults and posts with fraudulent purposes circulating on Twitter. However, many critics and digital rights defenders view this as an attempt to silence any evidence provided against the Turkish government’s failure in providing urgent rescue services. Despite the fact that authorities did not issue a public statement regarding the block, Elon Musk tweeted a few hours after the initial block that he had been informed by Turkish officials that access would be restored.
Enkaz Dinleme Uygulaması (Debris Listening Application)
ITU MIAM (Istanbul Technical University) engineers created a debris listening web application that does not require an internet connection. It can only trace human voices, works without an internet connection, and has microphone, recording, muting, and listening features.
The application works on Android and Apple. However, the recordings on the web application are not saved anywhere except on the device using it. The application is able to distinguish human voices due to frequency adjustment. The main goal is to enable everyone to trace people under debris so that rescue efforts can be maximized. For more information, click here.