[News] Microsoft, IBM, Cisco And Dell Enable Surveillance And Control In Palestine

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/microsoft-ibm-cisco-and-dell-enable-surveillance-and-control-in-palestine/>
Microsoft, IBM, Cisco And Dell Enable Surveillance And Control In Palestine
By Jessica Buxbaum, MintPress News - June 24, 2023
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In September, Israel installed an AI-powered gun
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-smart-shooter-palestinians-lab-rats-ai-powered-gun/282129/>
at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. Now,
that same technology has been deployed
<https://twitter.com/JalalAK_jojo/status/1661353393762205697> at the
entrance of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Across occupied East
Jerusalem, you can find surveillance cameras strategically placed on street
corners. And throughout the West Bank, Palestinians’ encounters with
Israeli soldiers often include not only violence but face-scanning apps
<https://www.mei.edu/publications/nowhere-hide-impact-israels-digital-surveillance-regime-palestinians>
designed to capture their personal data.

Technology has become integral to our modern lives, but for Palestinians,
Big Tech has also become another way Israel enacts control.

Who Profits, an Israeli research center documenting the private sector’s
links to Israeli occupation, released a report
<https://whoprofits.org/dynamic-report/the-role-of-big-tech-in-the-israeli-occupation-economy/>
in May on multinational tech companies’ role in facilitating Israel’s human
rights violations. The impact of each company ranges, with some overseeing
a major project while others provide equipment to a system already in place.

Who Profits wrote in its analysis:

Regardless of scale, the work of these companies bolsters the capacity of
an already highly technological and data-oriented Israeli occupation
economy and its capacity to dispossess, repress, control and subject
Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line to pervasive surveillance.”

While countless Israeli and international companies are involved in the
Israeli occupation, Who Profits highlighted four American tech corporations
in its report: Microsoft, IBM, Cisco Systems, and Dell Technologies.
Big Tech’s Role

According to Who Profits <https://www.whoprofits.org/company/microsoft/>,
multinational tech firm Microsoft – one of the world’s largest IT companies
– has a long history of collaboration with the Israeli military and tech
industry.

The “Al Munaseq” (the coordinator in Arabic) application runs on Microsoft
Azure, the company’s platform for cloud computing services. It was
developed by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and is used to manage permits for
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza when entering 1948-occupied
Palestine or modern-day Israel. The app can access a permit holder’s
phone’s IP address, camera, files, and location.

Microsoft has immersed itself in the Israeli military’s ties to the
education sector. The company currently offers AI courses for officers in
the “military fighting methods and innovation” unit. It also recently
launched free cybersecurity training courses for veterans and is partnering
with the military on a program helping female high school students enter
high-tech units in the military.

The company’s main business alliance is with the Israeli military, yet it
also provides services to the settlements and government. Its applications
are used by students and teachers in Ma’ale Adumim settlement schools.
Microsoft also works with Ariel University, the only Israeli college
located in a settlement, to provide free use of its applications and email
services. Ariel University is also a recognized college of Microsoft,
offering a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate course to students.

Microsoft Israel, the corporation’s local subsidiary, is currently
contracted with the Israel Police to provide cloud services for six months
from January and to provide licensing for Microsoft products until December
2025.

This year, after much delay, Microsoft plans to open its first cloud data
center in the Modi’in Technology Park
<https://dgtlinfra.com/microsoft-azure-data-center-locations/>, located
between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The corporation is estimated to spend
$1-1.5 billion on the data center.

IT and computer firm IBM <https://www.whoprofits.org/company/7236-2/> works
with Israel’s Population, Immigration, and Borders Authority to operate the
Eitan System for the government’s Population Registry database. This
computer system stores the personal information of Palestinian and Syrian
people living under Israeli occupation. The data stored is often used to
implement Israel’s discriminatory policies.

IBM’s Israeli subsidiaries — Red Hat Israel and IBM Israel — collaborate
extensively with the IDF. Red Hat provides edge computing and
software-based storage data centers to several Israeli military units and
is involved in joint projects in the Computer Service and Cyber Defense
divisions. In 2020, IBM Israel became the main IT provider for three new
military regional logistics centers.

The American multinational works with the military and Education Ministry
to boost high schoolers’ interests in technology, with the goal of
improving Israel’s defense and hi-tech capabilities. Often this means its
staff lecture at schools alongside military officers. The company has also
participated in events at Ariel University.

IBM has also partnered with the Israel Police, providing computer and
software equipment since 1975. More recently, in 2018, the company set up a
cyber research center in Be’er Sheva, a city in the Naqab desert, next to a
military telecommunication base and Computer Service Directorate campus.
The center and its location are part of the Defense Ministry’s plan to
transition Cyber Unit officers into the high-tech industry after they
finish their service.

Tech giant Cisco Systems <https://www.whoprofits.org/company/cisco-systems/>
has also launched tech hubs in the Naqab, with two located in the
Palestinian Bedouin towns of Hura and Ar’arat al-Naqab. These hubs, along
with IBM’s cyber center, are part of Israel’s efforts to settle the Naqab
with Jewish Israelis while pushing out the native Bedouin community. As
part of plans to Judaize the area, the Israeli military built its biggest
information and communication technology underground data center in the
desert, complete with Cisco Systems’ computing, communication,
cybersecurity, and load-balancing systems in place.

Additionally, Cisco Systems has opened three other tech hubs on occupied
land in the Syrian Golan Heights and West Bank and plans to open another
five in these occupied territories.

This year, electronics giant Dell Technologies
<https://www.whoprofits.org/company/dell-technologies/> won a more than
$150 million tender from the Defense Ministry to provide the military with
servers, maintenance services, and other equipment. In 2021, Dell’s Israeli
subsidiary, VMware Israel, secured a contract to supply the Israeli Police
with its products from August 2021 to January 2027.

VMware’s virtual services help run the Israel Police’s system of
surveillance in East Jerusalem, known as the Mabat System. Around 400
security cameras have been installed across Jerusalem’s Old City, with the
video surveillance monitored 24/7 by a police command and control center.

Labeled the “startup nation,” Israel’s technological advancements have
attracted tech companies across the world. But as Big Tech becomes more and
more involved with Israel’s military and tech industries, the more they
actively collaborate with apartheid and the more Palestinians and Syrians
under occupation are digitally exploited.
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