Microsoft hypocrisy the tip of the iceberg
This piece was originally published on Patreon.
Tech giant Microsoft condemned Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department for splitting thousands of children from their families at the US border.
CEO, Satya Nadella described the policy as ‘abhorrent’. The company released a statement denying its technology was being used to separate families, but Microsoft still has not committed to ending its multi-million dollar contract with ICE.
More than 10,000 children have been ripped from their families at the US border, thrown into caged detention centres, where they are reportedly banned from even talking to one another.
“As a company, Microsoft is dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border,” the company wrote on its website. “Family unification has been a fundamental tenet of American policy and law since the end of World War II. As a company Microsoft has worked for over 20 years to combine technology with the rule of law to ensure that children who are refugees and immigrants can remain with their parents. We need to continue to build on this noble tradition rather than change course now. We urge the administration to change its policy and Congress to pass legislation ensuring children are no longer separated from their families.”
The statement comes just days after it was condemned by its own employees for signing a $26.4 million dollar contract with ICE for the use of its Azure Cloud Service. Microsoft staff are calling on the company to end its contract with the agency.
The company denied its technology was being used for the express purpose of separating children from their families. “We are not aware of Azure or Azure services being used for this purpose,” the statement reads.
However, Microsoft failed to go so far as to announce it was severing ties with the agency.
On its own blog, Microsoft announced that its Azure Cloud service was being used to handle ICE’s ‘most sensitive unclassified data’ including the kind that supports its core agency functions.
Seeing as how these core functions include patrolling the streets, illegally demanding people present papers proving their citizenship, launching armed dawn-raids on families it claims are illegal immigrants and deporting them, and separating families from one another at the border, it takes some amazing hubris for Microsoft to try to make the distinction.
“This ATO is a critical next step in enabling ICE to deliver such services as cloud-based identity and access, serving both employees and citizens from applications hosted in the cloud,” Microsoft wrote on its blog.
“This can help employees make more informed decisions faster, with Azure Government enabling them to process data on edge devices or utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification. ICE’s decision to accelerate IT modernization using Azure Government will help them innovate faster while reducing the burden of legacy IT. The agency is currently implementing transformative technologies for homeland security and public safety, and we’re proud to support this work with our mission-critical cloud.”
Bloomberg reported on Monday that Microsoft had tried to scrub the online reference to its work for the agency, penned by Microsoft executive, Tom Keane. But the post was restored after the story broke.
Microsoft is being paid more than $26 million dollars to support a modern day gestapo. If it really wants to take the high moral ground, it can start by cancelling its contract with ICE and any agency that contributes to modern day fascism. This includes any work it may, or may not be doing for the CIA, NSA or the 17 agencies that make up America’s intelligence network. Not to mention MI6, MI5, and GCHQ in the UK or ASIO in Australia, (just to name a few).
The recent revelations over Microsoft’s involvement with US intelligence and immigration is just the tip of the iceberg, (pun intended). Not withstanding, tearing migrant children from their parents was an Obama-era practice as well, just not one so obvious and distasteful as involving camps, cages and jails.
Microsoft is not the only company currently working with ICE. The Verge recently revealed that it also has contracts with Dell, Motorola and HP whose values range from $15 million to $76 million.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Google was building Artificial Intelligence technology for the Pentagon, dubbed ‘Project Maven,’ which allowed the military to analyse drone footage faster so as to more accurately assassinate people on foreign soil.
After pushback from staff (and some high-profile reporting on the contract), the tech giant decided against renewing the contract which was estimated to be worth at least $70 million in its first year of operation alone.
In 2016, Obama era counter-terrorism officials traveled to California to woo tech executives from companies including Apple, Facebook and Twitter in a bid to combat the “growing threat of terrorists and other malicious actors using technology, including encrypted technology.”
Government and intelligence contracts are some of the tech world’s most lucrative agreements. (There’s probably a reason Google scrubbed ‘Don’t Be Evil’ from its company values). But it is this reporter’s opinion that tech giants should not allow themselves within a ten city block of any kind of contract that aids in the persecution or surveillance of others, be it at the border, or on domestic or foreign soil.
Unfortunately, these kinds of contracts are tech companies’ bread and butter. More often than not profit always wins out over principle.
If these companies really believe their technology can be used to improve the world’s problems, then their actions should match their rhetoric.
Supporting education, infrastructure and healthcare, or providing IT services for the public sector is one thing. Helping administrations control elections, oppress people seeking asylum from violence and persecution, wage foreign wars, or extrajudicial assassinations is quite another.
If Microsoft truly finds ICE’s practices abhorrent, it cannot condemn it while continuing to take money from the agency. Not if it wants its objections taken seriously. Money talks louder than words.
Thank you for reading. I couldn’t afford to continue my research, or write this book, were it not for the support of my generous sponsors. Support independent journalism, sponsor me on Patreon, starting at $3 a month, or throw some money at my PayPal.
