Google employees implore leaders to stop working with the United States BCP, ICE



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On Monday, more than 1,000 Google employees signed a petition asking company executives to declare that they would not work with US immigration and border agencies, citing bad news. treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

The petition asks Google to remove any existing or potential infrastructure, funding or technical resources related to customs and border protection, or CBP, and immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE.

"Google's principles on artificial intelligence state that Google will not build technologies whose purpose is contrary to the widely accepted principles of international law and human rights," reads the petition. "In all interpretation, CBP and ICE violate international human rights law seriously."

Google did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

The petition, which appeared on Thursday, is the latest example of retaliation by increasingly virulent employees against Google executives who have struggled to reconcile a values-based culture with commercial contracts. lucrative. This comes one year after employee protests led the company to abandon its draft contract with the government for a project called Maven, which uses artificial intelligence to identify video images and could be used to improve targeting. drone strikes. Months later, Google abandoned the JEDI $ 10 billion auction race, citing a conflict with its artificial intelligence values.

Google, along with Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, already provides an existing cloud infrastructure to CBP, according to a website published by the agency. The US government has announced that it is preparing a new long-term cloud computing contract for a strategy called Cloud Smart, which aims to modernize its existing systems from 2020. This includes an IT infrastructure to "streamline the work of CBP", according to the publication.

The petition argues that agencies are responsible for mistreating asylum seekers, separating children from their parents and illegally detaining refugees. It also highlights the year 2017, when Google co – founder and president of the Alphabet, Sergey Brin, joined the protesters to oppose the order of the day. President Donald Trump's immigration.

"By working with CBP, ICE or the Refugee Resettlement Office (ORR), Google would trade its integrity for a little profit and join a shameful lineage," the petition says. "In January 2017, thousands of Googlers, including our executives, united to protest against Ban Ban's Trump administration.It was the right thing to do and we are proud to be working in a place that reflects these values. "

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