About five employees in Big tech Google They were arrested last Tuesday, the 13th of this month, in the state of California, United States. The gunmen stormed the office of the company's CEO, Thomas Kurian, for approximately ten hours and demanded the termination of the service contract with Israel. The case was recorded by the activists themselves on the live streaming platform Twitch.
In the video, the building's security guard asks employees to leave the building voluntarily. If not, I will contact the authorities. Some time later, six police officers appeared at the scene to arrest the group.
+ Read more news from Mundo em Oeste
In a statement, the detained employees asked Google to cancel the Nimbus Project contract with Israel, worth $1.2 billion. “We didn't come to Google to work on killer technology,” the software engineer said. Programming Billy van der Laar. “By engaging in this project, leadership is betraying our trust, our AI principles, and our humanity.”
Project Nimbus is a partnership between Google and Amazon with the State of Israel. Under the agreement, Big technologies The companies provide cloud services to the Israeli military and government.
A protest occurred in front of Google's New York office at the same time
While activists stormed the Google CEO's office in California, another group of protesters – made up of employees and non-employees – blocked access to the company's employees on the other side of the United States, in New York. Activists also demanded the termination of the company's contract with Israel.
A company spokesperson said: “Physically preventing other employees from working and denying them access to our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate it and take necessary action.” “These employees have been placed on administrative leave, and their access to our system has been cut off. After several requests to leave the building were denied, authorities were forced to remove them to maintain office security.
The protest was also broadcast live on the profile There is no technology for apartheid (No Technology to Apartheid), an activist movement that “defends employees of technology companies against doing business with the State of Israel.”
Read more: “NASA confirms that house in Florida was attacked by space debris”
Gabriel de Souza is an intern at magazine the West In Sao Paulo. Under the supervision of Anderson Scardoelli
