Google employees detained

It has been reported that 9 Google employees were detained at the company's offices in New York and California after protesting the $1.2 billion "Project Nimbus" contract signed between the firm and Israel.

According to a report by The Washington Post, Google employees went to offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, to protest the "Project Nimbus" contract, which includes providing advanced artificial intelligence technology to Israel.

The employees, who held a sit-in at the office for hours, chanted slogans such as "Google, you can't hide," "We accuse you of genocide," and "You are funding genocide," stating that they would continue their actions until Google withdraws from the $1.2 billion contract.

The 9 employees who continued their protest after police arrived at the offices following a report and warned them that they would be detained if they did not leave the premises were taken into custody.

Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson argued that the action was a "violation of their policies," stating that the detained employees' access to Google systems had been cut off and that these individuals had been placed on administrative leave.

In addition to the sit-in at the office, the contract was also protested in front of offices in New York and the cities of Sunnyvale and Seattle in California.

Footage of the sit-in and the moments the employees were detained spread on social media.

At the demonstration held in front of the New York office, a speaker who identified as Jewish stated that they were holding the sit-in to call for an end to Project Nimbus, adding that they were participating in the action "as a descendant of Holocaust survivors."

It is stated that Amazon employees also participated in these protests.

WHAT IS PROJECT NIMBUS?

Project Nimbus consists of a cloud and machine learning system that enables data storage, collection, analysis, pattern and feature identification from data, and the prediction of potential data and patterns using this collected information.

The contract for the $1.2 billion project, called Project Nimbus, was signed between Israel and the companies Google and Amazon in April 2021.

In a statement regarding this agreement on April 21, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Finance announced that Google and Amazon had won Project Nimbus, a massive government tender that would allow Israel to establish its own local cloud storage server centers with an investment of approximately $1.2 billion.

The system in question has the capability to collect all data from all databases and resources provided by Israel and its military, including live observation sources such as street and drone cameras.

"MANY EMPLOYEES DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE PART OF THE CONTRACT"

Zelda Montes, a software engineer working at YouTube, stated that Google did not consult its employees regarding the project, saying, "Many employees don't even know they are part of this contract. There are about 180,000 employees at Google, but only a very small fraction of these people know that there is such a contract with the Israeli government."

Pointing out that information is limited due to the "confidentiality" of the project, Montes said, "We don't think our labor should be used in ways we don't know about."

Montes spoke as follows regarding her discomfort with being involved in the agreement made with Israel:

"I think it's very irresponsible to try to portray a contract that is political by nature as if it were neutral, because you are signing a contract with a government, and that is a political thing. Why are we signing a contract with the Israeli government, which is currently being investigated by the highest court in the world?"