A number of Amazon employees have demanded the company stop providing cloud services to data-analytics firm Palantir and other contractors that work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying that they “refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights.”
“Along with much of the world we watched in horror recently as U.S. authorities tore children away from their parents,” the employees wrote in a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos obtained by The Hill. “We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights.”
The employees went on to call the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all immigrants who cross the border illegally “immoral,” and to say that they are “deeply concerned” by Amazon’s indirect part in the policy.
Also included in the letter was a request that Amazon stop selling facial-recognition technology to law enforcement.
“We already know that in the midst of historic militarization of police, renewed targeting of Black activists, and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human rights abuses — this will be another powerful tool for the surveillance state, and ultimately serve to harm the most marginalized,” the employees wrote.
Google and Microsoft employees have launched similar protests objecting to their companies’ collaboration with the Pentagon and ICE, respectively.