Bay Area Tech Workers Challenge Corporate Complicity in Immigration Attacks

IN THIS DOSSIER

(1) Bay Area Tech Workers Challenge Corporate Complicity in Immigration Attacks

2) ALL OUT OCTOBER 14 in NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION: End Corporate Profiteering Off Detention and Deportation! Close the Camps Now!

3) How does Salesforce profit from and enable the detention/deportation machine?

4) How does Google profit from and enable the detention/deportation machine?

5) How does Amazon profit from and enable the detention/deportation machine?

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(1) Bay Area Tech Workers Challenge Corporate Complicity in Immigration Attacks

By Millie Phillips

“Close the Camps, Reunite the Families, Never Again is Now.” These and many other chants defending immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are heard at almost daily actions in San Francisco called by community organizations, unions, and faith groups, including regular lunchtime protests at the San Francisco Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office as well as marches over the past two months.

While most protests focus on the federal government, on October 14, Indigenous Peoples Day, the “Tour of Shame” march, organized in response to the call for a day of action by the National Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps, focused on exposing and shaming corporate complicity with immigration policy. San Francisco, the U.S. West Coast financial center, is home to many corporate offices, among them tech industry giants like Google, Amazon, and Salesforce, the targets of this action.

Employees of these companies are organizing, even without union protection, to protest their employers’ complicity. A fact sheet about Salesforce circulated by “Tour of Shame” organizers cites a June letter to CEO Marc Benioff signed by more than 650 Salesforce workers exposing its contracts with Customs and Border Protection (CBP):

“We are particularly concerned about the use of Service Cloud to manage border activities… Given the inhumane separation of children from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that … Salesforce should reexamine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices.”

Salesforce is also developing custom software for CBP. Benioff argues that these products are not used to separate families, as if they could be isolated from CBP’s actions.

In addition, some 1,500 Google workers signed a letter demanding that Google not do business with ICE, CBP, the US Citizen and immigrations Services (USCIS), which processes asylum claims, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) “until they stop engaging in human rights abuses. … We have only to look to IBM’s role working with the Nazis during the Holocaust to understand the role that technology can play in automating mass atrocity.”

Currently, Google has given CBP a free trial of Anthos, its new hybrid cloud software, and it has contracted cloud services to USCIS, whose director demanded no asylum to anyone who might need public services.

Amazon hosts Palantir on its cloud service to the tune of $600,000 a month. Palantir has a $38 million contract with ICE, and litigation has revealed that its software products are used directly to manage aspects of the arrest and deportation of immigrants and the breaking up of their families. Amazon also markets its dangerous facial recognition software to police departments, who could use it to identify immigrants to turn over to ICE. Some 500 Amazon workers have written a protest letter.

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2) ALL OUT OCTOBER 14 IN S.F.: End Corporate Profiteering Off Detention and Deportation! Close the Camps Now!

Monday October 14 (Indigenous People’s Day) @2 PM in San Francisco

Rincon Park (Embarcadero @ Folsom, SF:

https://www.facebook.com/events/360055594879186/

There is a growing crisis at our border. The Trump administration is ripping kids away from families and holding more migrants every day in concentration camps — without adequate food or water and in unsanitary conditions. People are quite literally dying. The time for mass pressure to close the camps is now.

Meanwhile, San Francisco, supposedly a sanctuary city, throws out the welcome mat for corporations that profit from the deportation state. Corporations in San Francisco have hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agencies directly responsible for terrorizing immigrant communities.

That’s why Bay Area communities will be taking a stand and joining the Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps’ National Day of Action in telling a number of multi-billion dollar corporations to stop profiteering from the oppression of immigrant communities. Join us!

Partial List of endorsers includes Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps-Bay Area; Never Again-Bay Area; IfNotNow; SF Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines; Anakbayan SF; Committee to Close the Camps and Free the Children; Unitarian Universalists-Human Rights Committee, Socialist Organizer, Party of Socialism and Liberation

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3) No Salesforce Tech for ICE!

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is speaking today on “Business as the Greatest Platform for Change” posing as the leader of a “socially responsible” and financially successful company. Yet by continuing to support, enable and profit from the war on immigrants by providing software and technical services to CBP (Customs & Border Protection), Benioff and Salesforce are conducting business as usual.

Stand with Salesforce employees,customers, immigrants & their supporters. Demand that Salesforce terminate its contract with CBP immediately.Here are the facts:

How does Salesforce profit from and enable the detention/deportation machine?

In March 2018 Salesforce signed a contract with CBP to build custom software for hiring purposes. Additionally CBP uses some Salesforce cloud tools, specifically Salesforce Analytics, Community Cloud and Service Cloud, to “manage border activities” i.e.  “drive efficiencies around how U.S. border activities are managed. The value and term of the contract have not been publicly disclosed. It is reported to be a multi-million dollar contract.

What has been the response from employees?

In June 2018 more Salesforce employees signed a letter in protest to CEO Marc Benioff signed by more than 650 people.

“We are particularly concerned about the use of Service Cloud to manage border activities,” the employees’ letter reads. “Given the inhumane separation of children from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that our core value of Equality is at stake and that Salesforce should reexamine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices.”

What has been the response from Salesforce customers?

32 organizations that are Salesforce customers or potential customers have signed an open letter  to Benioff urging him to drop the contract with CBP.

“We are absolutely appalled that Salesforce is providing assistance to government agencies that are violating human rights and is refusing to drop the contract with Customs and Border Protection. We have seen that Salesforce has spoken out against the government’s inhumane practice of separating and detaining children. However, as long as Salesforce keeps its contracts with Customs and Border Protection, they are still enabling the agency to violate human rights.

If every tech company that has any kind of contract with these immigration agencies, immediately cut their contracts, it would make a huge impact and create enormous political pressure for these human rights abuses to end.

What has been the response from Benioff and Salesforce management?

Benioff denies any wrongdoing. “Salesforce always will be true to our core values. We don’t work with CBP regarding separation of families. CBP is a customer & follows our TOS. We don’t have an agreement with ICE. I’m Proud of the Men & Women who protect & serve our country every day & I’m Proud of our Ohana.”

In addition, Benioff pledged $1 million to help families affected by Trump’s immigration policies.RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services ) rejected a $250,000 donation from Salesforce.

“At the height of the family separation crisis over the summer, Benioff contacted a leading not-for-profit group to discuss the growing opposition to his firm’s contract – and then backed out of a call at the last minute, saying …“I am sorry I’m actually scuba diving right now,” Benioff wrote to Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of  Raices on 23 July, the day of their scheduled call.

“When it comes to supporting oppressive, inhumane, and illegal policies, we want to be clear: the only right action is to stop,” wrote Jonathan Ryan, executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (Raices), in an email to Salesforce published on Twitter.”

“The software and technical services you provide to CBP form part of the foundation that helps CBP and ICE operate efficiently…While you justified continuing your contract with CBP by claiming that Salesforce software ‘isn’t working with CBP regarding the separation of families at the border’, this is not enough.”

“Your software provides an operational backbone for the agency, and thus does directly support CBP in implementing its inhumane and immoral policies. There is no way around this, and there is no room for hair splitting when children are being brutally torn away from parents, when a mother attempts suicide in an effort to get her children released, and when an 18 month old baby is separated from their mother in detention.”

“Pledging us a small portion of the money you make from CBP contracts will not distract us from your continuing support of this agency,” Ryan continued. “We will not be a beneficiary of your effort to buy your way out of ethical responsibility.”

At last September’s Dreamforce conference in SF – several groups including Fight for the Future, Color of Change, Demand Progress, Defending Rights and Dissent, Mijente, Presente.org, RAICES and Sum of Us joined in protest against Salesforce.

For more information: immigration@dsasf.org

Labor Donated

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4) How does Google profit from and enable the detention/deportation machine?

In 2017, Google signed a nearly $750,000 contract ($748,844) with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the bureaucratic counterpart to CBP and ICE. This contract is a Google Cloud service being provided to the agency.

USCIS is known for processing asylum claims and its acting director Ken Cuccinelli suggested changing the plaque on the Statue of Liberty to “give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

Google has also given a free trial of its new hybrid cloud software, Anthos, to CBP. With one employee claiming that Google “pushed through an exception” to allow CBP to test the software.What has been the response from employees?

Before this contract was public knowledge, google employees signed a public letter demanding that Google make a public pledge to not take any contracts from ICE, CBP, or ORR. It sits at 1495 Google employee signatures. This letter also came at a time where CBP is preparing to announce a new contract for a long term cloud project called “Cloud Smart”.

The letter states that “ We demand that Google publicly commit not to support CBP, ICE, or ORR with any infrastructure, funding, or engineering resources, directly or indirectly, until they stop engaging in human rights abuses.”

“We have only to look to IBM’s role working with the Nazis during the Holocaust to understand the role that technology can play in automating mass atrocity.”

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5) How does Amazon profit from and enable the detention/deportation machine?

Amazon hosts Palantir on their cloud service, Amazon Web Services. Including Palantir’s service, Investigative Case Management. Which has been referred to as “Mission Critical” by ICE. According to the report by the Intercept, Palantir is paying Amazon approximately $600,000 a month to host their service.

“In addition to powering ICM, AWS hosts several of DHS’s other major immigration-related databases and operations, including all the core data systems for USCIS and biometric data for 230 million individuals, including fingerprints, face records, and iris scans, which are playing a growing role in immigration enforcement around the country.” – MIT Technology Review

Amazon also offers a facial recognition service, called Rekognition. Which it actively markets to local law enforcement. While this is not known to be explicitly marketed to CBP/ICE, if it is used in a non-sanctuary city, it could be utilized by the police in cooperation with their department.

What has been the employee response?

Amazon employees have circulated an internal letter campaign titled “We Won’t Build It”, demanding that Amazon:

Stop selling facial recognition services to law enforcementStop providing infrastructure to Palantir and any other Amazon partners who enable ICE. Implement strong transparency and accountability measures, that include enumerating which law enforcement agencies and companies supporting law enforcement agencies are using Amazon services, and how.

The letter also states,

“In the face of this immoral U.S. policy, and the U.S.’s increasingly inhumane treatment of refugees and immigrants beyond this specific policy, we are deeply concerned that Amazon is implicated, providing infrastructure and services that enable ICE and DHS.

“Technology like ours is playing an increasingly critical role across many sectors of society. What is clear to us is that our development and sales practices have yet to acknowledge the obligation that comes with this. Focusing solely on shareholder value is a race to the bottom, and one that we will not participate in.

“We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights.”

The letter was last reported to be “some 500 [signatures]”.

Other Responses

Amazon Shareholders have also filed a shareholder resolution to halt the sale of Rekognition, citing concerns with civil liberties.

Amazon’s ResponseAWS VP Andy Jassy, has mostly punted the issue as one of lawmaker’s responsibility, saying “I strongly believe that just (because) technology could be misused, doesn’t mean we should ban it and condemn it,” and that “I understand why people worry about it. We have clear guidance to customers who may use it in such a way that it contrasts civil liberties. If you want more protection, which I think is reasonable, the government should regulate it.”

Jeff Bezos has yet to comment publicly on either issue but when asked about government contracts he said: “Sometimes one of the jobs of the senior leadership team is to make the right decision, even when it’s unpopular. And if big tech companies are going to turn their back on the US Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble.”