In 2021, Google and Amazon signed a $1.2 billion contract to provide Israel’s government advanced cloud computing and AI services — tools that have facilitated Israel’s two-year onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
Details of the lucrative contract, known as Project Nimbus, were kept secret. A new investigation, in partnership with Local Call and The Guardian, can reveal that both Google and Amazon submitted to highly unorthodox “controls” that Israel inserted into the deal to allay concerns over the secrecy of its data.
Project Nimbus was designed to enable Israel to transfer vast quantities of data onto the cloud servers of the tech giants. But even two years before October 7, Israeli officials drafting the contract had already anticipated the potential for legal challenges against Google and Amazon regarding the use of their technology in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
According to leaked Israeli Finance Ministry documents obtained by The Guardian — including a finalized version of the contract — and sources familiar with the negotiations, the deal prohibits Google and Amazon from restricting Israel’s use of their products, even if it breaches their terms of service. The contract also obliges the two tech giants to secretly notify Israel if foreign courts order them to hand over data stored on their cloud platforms, in the event of claims that Israel has used the technology to violate the human rights of Palestinians — effectively sidestepping their legal obligations.
This arrangement stands in contrast to the case of Microsoft, which recently revoked the Israeli military’s access to parts of its Azure platform after +972, Local Call, and The Guardian revealed that it had stored a trove of intercepted Palestinian phone calls, in violation of its terms of service. Under Project Nimbus, however, Google and Amazon are forbidden from taking such action.
This investigation builds on a series of joint exposés revealing how major U.S.-based tech companies have become deeply entangled in Israel’s wars and mass surveillance apparatus.
https://www.972mag.com/project-nimbus-contract-google-amazon-israel/
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