Open letter to Silicon Valley: we need more whistleblowers.
Tech workers
Open letter to Silicon Valley: we need more whistleblowers
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More than ever before, tech workers are pushing back against their employers as tech companies continue to accept government surveillance contracts and provide the technical foundation for the violation of human rights. At some of the biggest tech companies -- Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and Google -- tech employees are uncovering their company’s dangerous engagement with government agencies that are currently violating human rights. It’s time to let tech workers know: we support them and we are counting on them to push back from inside these companies. Add your name to the letter to tech workers to say: we need more whistleblowers.
Sponsored by
To:
Tech workers
From:
[Your Name]
Dear tech workers,
You are standing up to your bosses never before and it's amazing.
In just this year:
At Amazon, 450 employees sent a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos, demanding that he stop providing the company’s Rekognition face-identifying technology to law enforcement and other government agencies. The letter also called for Amazon to stop hosting Palantir’s website, a company that provides surveillance services to Immigration Customs Enforcement and police.
At Salesforce, after witnessing the family separation tragedy this summer, 650 employees signed a letter asking CEO Marc Benioff to cut their contract providing recruiting and hiring software to Customs and Border Protection.
At Microsoft, employees signed a petition to CEO Satya Nadella to get the company to stop offering cloud services to ICE. They also are urging their employers to drop their bid on the government’s JEDI project, a program that would make the US military more lethal.
At Google, employees have gone as far as quitting over Google’s AI project for the Pentagon and the censored search engine for the Chinese government. Even prospective employees started a petition that says they will take their talent elsewhere unless Google refrained from entering into future government contracts.
Workers just like you are making it known that the same tech companies we see or use everyday are building & selling biased surveillance services and other tech to make national and local government agencies have a faster, more efficient, high tech control of all of our lives. While corporate tries to keep these things under wraps, we will support you from the outside.
We are counting on on issues of unethical, inhumane uses of technology. Be a whistleblower. Don’t be silent.