{"id":9444,"date":"2024-04-20T19:18:49","date_gmt":"2024-04-21T01:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/?p=9444"},"modified":"2024-04-20T19:18:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T01:18:52","slug":"google-workers-arrested-after-nine-hour-protest-in-cloud-chiefs-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/2024\/04\/20\/google-workers-arrested-after-nine-hour-protest-in-cloud-chiefs-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Google workers arrested after nine-hour protest in cloud chief’s office"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Nine Google workers were arrested on trespassing charges Tuesday night after staging a sit-in at the company\u2019s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, including a protest in Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

The arrests, which were livestreamed on Twitch by participants, follow rallies outside Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale and Seattle, which attracted hundreds of attendees, according to workers involved. The protests, led by the \u201cNo Tech for Apartheid\u201d organization, focused on Project Nimbus \u2014 Google and Amazon\u2019s joint $1.2 billion contract to provide the Israeli government and military with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other cloud infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Protesters in Sunnyvale sat in Kurian\u2019s office for more than nine hours until their arrests, writing demands on Kurian\u2019s whiteboard and wearing shirts that read \u201cGoogler against genocide.\u201d In New York, protesters sat in a three-floor common space. Five workers from Sunnyvale and four from New York were arrested.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn a personal level, I am opposed to Google taking any military contracts \u2014 no matter which government they\u2019re with or what exactly the contract is about,\u201d Cheyne Anderson, a Google Cloud software engineer based in Washington, told CNBC. \u201cAnd I hold that opinion because Google is an international company and no matter which military it\u2019s with, there are always going to be people on the receiving end… represented in Google\u2019s employee base and also our user base.\u201d Anderson had flown to Sunnyvale for the protest in Kurian\u2019s office and was one of the workers arrested Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoogle Cloud supports numerous governments around the world in countries where we operate, including the Israeli government, with our generally available cloud computing services,\u201d a Google spokesperson told CNBC, adding, \u201cThis work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The demonstrations show Google\u2019s increased pressure from workers who oppose military use of its AI and cloud technology. Last month, Google Cloud engineer Eddie Hatfield interrupted a keynote speech from the managing director of Google\u2019s Israel business stating, \u201cI refuse to build technology that powers genocide.\u201d Hatfield was subsequently fired. That same week, an internal Google employee message board was shut down after staffers posted comments about the company\u2019s Israeli military contracts. A spokesperson at the time described the posts as \u201cdivisive content that is disruptive to our workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Oct. 7,\u00a0Hamas carried out deadly attacks on Israel, killing 1,200 and taking more than 240 hostages.\u00a0 The following day, Israel declared war and began implementing a siege of Gaza, cutting off access to power, food, water and fuel. At least 33,899 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since that date, the enclave\u2019s Health Ministry\u00a0said Wednesday\u00a0in a statement on Telegram. In January at the U.N.\u2019s top court, Israel\u00a0rejected genocide charges\u00a0brought by South Africa.\u00a0https:\/\/nicaraguasurfhotel.com\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Israeli Ministry of Defense reportedly sought consulting services from Google to expand its access to Google Cloud services. Google Photos is one platform used by the Israeli government to conduct surveillance in Gaza, according to The New York Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what happened yesterday is evidence that Google\u2019s attempts to suppress all of the voices of opposition to this contract are not only not working but actually having the opposite effect,\u201d Ariel Koren, a former Google employee who resigned in 2022 after leading efforts to oppose the Project Nimbus contract, told CNBC. \u201cIt\u2019s really just creating more agitation, more anger and more commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York sit-in started at noon ET and ended around 9:30 p.m. ET. Security asked workers to remove their banner, which spanned two floors, about an hour into the protest, according to Hasan Ibraheem, a Google software engineer based in New York City and one of the arrested workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized, \u2019Oh, the place that I work at is very complicit and aiding in this genocide \u2014 I have a responsibility to act against it,\u2033\u201d Hasan Ibraheem, a Google software engineer based in New York City, told CNBC. Ibraheem added, \u201cThe fact that I am receiving money from Google and Israel is paying Google — I am receiving part of that money, and that weighed very heavily on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York workers were released from the police station after about four hours.<\/p>\n

The nine arrested workers in New York and Sunnyvale told CNBC that, during the protest, they were locked out of their work accounts and offices, placed on administrative leave, and told to wait to return to work until being contacted by HR.<\/p>\n

The workers were also protesting their labor conditions \u2014 namely \u201cthat the company stop the harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim Googlers \u2014 and that the company address the health and safety crisis workers, especially those in Google Cloud, are facing due to the potential impacts of their work,\u201d according to a release by the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cA small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a couple of our locations,\u201d a Google spokesperson told CNBC. \u201cPhysically impeding other employees\u2019 work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action. These employees were put on administrative leave and their access to our systems was cut. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nine Google workers were arrested on trespassing charges Tuesday night after staging a sit-in at the company\u2019s offices in New<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9445,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9444\/revisions\/9445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ticofac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}