Digital news outlet 404 Media was subpoenaed by the state of Texas on Oct. 22, 2024, in connection with an ongoing lawsuit against Google in Midland County’s district court, according to court filings reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Google in 2022 on the state’s behalf, alleging that the company captured the biometric data of millions of its users in Texas without obtaining consent.
The subpoena to 404 Media seeks communications and documents from investigative journalist Joseph Cox’s article on a leak from Google, including a copy of an internal Google database obtained by the outlet “which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues.”
In an announcement, 404 Media’s founders wrote, “Paxton’s subpoena seeks to turn 404 Media into an arm of law enforcement, which is not our role and which we have no interest in doing or becoming.”
They added that attorneys representing the outlet “vociferously objected” to the subpoena on Dec. 6. The court filing, reviewed by the Tracker, argues the news organization is protected from having to disclose the information by the First Amendment, as well as laws in California — where the outlet is based — and Texas.
404 Media’s founders, who declined to comment further when reached by the Tracker, wrote that the subpoena undermines a free and independent press and demonstrates an alarming trend.
“It also highlights the fact that the alarm bells that have been raised about legal attacks on journalists in a second Trump administration are not theoretical; politicians already feel emboldened to use the legal system to target journalists,” they wrote. “Paxton’s subpoena highlights the urgency of passing the PRESS Act, a federal shield law that has already passed the House and which has bipartisan support but which Democrats in the Senate have dragged their feet on for inexplicable and indefensible reasons.”
Paxton had previously sought records from Media Matters for America using a “civil investigative demand” — a type of administrative subpoena — in 2023 as part of a probe his office launched to investigate “potential fraudulent activity” by the media company. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction forbidding Paxton from pursuing Media Matters’ reporting materials.
Google claims to have overcome a key challenge in quantum error correction with the arrival of a new chip capable of solving problems in five minutes that would otherwise take a supercomputer ten septillion years to calculate. The tech giant unveiled the powerful quantum chip, dubbed Willow, on Tuesday, marking a significant milestone in its…
The Albanese government has been roundly criticised for “rushing” the legislation for social media ban for under-16s through Parliament, with tech giants and digital rights groups denouncing the move. Academics have also condemned the ban for “presenting an intolerable risk to children’s online safety”, while the Human Rights Commissioner has expressed “serious reservations” about the…
Tech companies are turning to nuclear to fulfill the skyrocketing energy needs of artificial intelligence, with major corporations like Amazon, Google and Microsoft announcing plans to invest in nuclear power. But the speed at which energy needs are growing may not align with the construction or revitalization of nuclear infrastructure, says Alex de Vries, who researches the unintended consequences of AI and cryptocurrencies. There may be a “mismatch between the needs of tech companies today” and the future, while nuclear power continues to carry the same safety risks that led to its phasing out in the first place.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Science is about making the world clearer and more understandable. By classifying the world into observable, repeatable, verifiable phenomena we move towards a shared sense of reality rather than an individual, subjective one. A cornerstone of contemporary science is how well any research stands up to the rigour of peers questioning and responding to it….
AI-generated papers performed below the student average in an Australian law exam late last year, casting doubts on claims by one of the technology’s commercial pioneers, new research has found. Another study conducted in 2023 found OpenAI’s GPT-4 to score higher than 90 per cent of human test takers on a simulated version of the…
Thousands of laptops will be supplied to South Australian public schools under a new $20 million deal with HP Inc, despite the state government hyping a trial of locally made Chromebooks earlier this year. In January, Google and Adelaide-based gaming PC manufacturer Allied Corporation unveiled a deal to assemble Chromebooks in Australia for the first…
Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.
In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.
In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.
And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.
Welcome to the age of technocensorship.
On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.
This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.
Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.
The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.
The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.
Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.
In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.
Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.
Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.
Watch and learn.
We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.
Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.
Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.
Eventually, as Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.
The Israeli government has funded multiple ad campaigns to attack and delegitimize Gaza’s main humanitarian aid agency under Google searches for the agency, new reporting finds — the latest instance of how the Israeli government spreads its propaganda online within the U.S. According to an investigation by Wired, since January at least, Israel has bought ads attacking the UN Relief and Works…
The occasion sparked much in the way of visionary language and speculative musings. This month, one of the world’s most conspicuous and dominant behemoths of Silicon Valley was found to be operating an illegal monopoly in internet search and advertising markets, thereby breaching the Sherman Act which renders monopolisation, attempted monopolisation and conspiracy to monopolise unlawful.
In a Memorandum Opinion ruling running into 286 pages, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found that Google acted as a monopoly in its “general search” and “general search text advertising” markets and had breached Section 2 of the Sherman Act by making exclusive dealing agreements with various vendors (Apple, Samsung, Verizon and so forth).
In doing so, Google’s search engine was given exclusive default status on various platforms and devices, notably web browsers, wireless carriers and smartphone manufacturers. “These partners agree to install Google as the search engine that is delivered to the user right out of the box at key search access points.” Through its “revenue share” operation, involving the payment of billions of dollars to its partners, “Google not only receives default placement at the key search access points, but its partners also agree not to preload any other general search engine on the device.” Such a distribution system had forced Google’s competitors to seek other means of reaching users.
The decision offers a chronology of how such monopoly developed. Initially, Google most likely reached the high summit of market supremacy through legal means, making its search product enviably singular. The problem here was Google’s conduct in seeking to maintain that supremacy in the market, thereby foreclosing it to competitors.
The memorandum ruling is also valuable for revealing the tactical and strategic approach of the company in preserving its dominance, not to mention showing full self-awareness of that fact. Were such partners as Apple to develop their own search engine as the default in Safari, for instance, a fortune would be at stake.
The company also showed a sketchy practice to preserving evidence, indulgently destructive in the practice of deleting chat messages after 24 hours, unless the default setting was turned to “history on”. According to arguments of the DOJ and the regulators, doing so revealed knowledge that Google’s practices “were likely in violation of the antitrust laws and wanted to make proving that impossible.” In Judge Mehta’s words, “Any company that puts the onus on its employees to identify and preserve relevant evidence does so at its own peril. Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky with the next one.”
Other practices included an extensive, overly indulgent misuse of attorney-client privilege by filling email communications with gratuitous references to the company’s in-house legal team. Directions were also issued to employees to avoid using “certain antitrust buzzwords in their communications.” A March 2011 presentation, “Antitrust Basics for Search Team,” was blatant in instructing employees to avoid any reference to “markets”, “market share” or “dominance,” not to mention “scale” and “network effects”. Best also avoid, according to the presentation, any “metaphors to wars or sports, winning or losing.”
The exclusionary conduct engineered through Google’s agreements was found by the Court to have had “three primary anticompetitive effects”: market foreclosure, preventing rivals from achieving scale and diminishing the incentives of any rivals, including nascent challengers, to invest and innovate in general search.
Causation of such harm could be “inferred” in this case if the anticompetitive conduct in question reasonably appeared “capable of making a significant contribution to … maintaining monopoly power”. There was no need for “but-for proof,” something that made the task of the US Department of Justice that much easier. It followed that the company’s “distribution agreements are exclusionary contracts that violate Section 2 because they ensure that half of all GSE [general search engine] users in the United States will receive Google as the preload default on all Apple and Android devices, as well as cause anticompetitive harm.”
The saga is set to become even lengthier, given that no remedies have yet been identified. These, as Robert Milne and Edward Thrasher of White & Case explain, can vary in terms of severity and effect, ranging from prohibiting Google from entering into the exclusive agreements to privilege the default status of its search engine, to requiring the company to share data and relevant code with other competitors in the search market, to the more drastic breaking up of the company.
Google has announced that it will appeal the decision, and the commentary about how it could do so is already mushrooming. Geoffrey A. Manne, president of the International Center for Law and Economics, is one, offering a detailed overview about where Judge Mehta is said to have misread or misunderstood such concepts as proof of anticompetitive conduct.
Invariably, scribblers in the tech industry have seized the opportunity to wonder what the alternatives to a post-Google world – or one where the company is stripped of its monopolistic ascendancy – might look like. Natasha Lomas in Techcrunchwrites dreamily that a web lacking Google’s acquisitive, data-pinching domination, let alone existence, “is absolutely bigger than mere utility.” This presented a chance “for different models of service delivery – ones that prioritize the interests of web users and the public infosphere – to achieve scale and thrive.”
Broadly speaking, the Google decision can be said to nest in a range of recent efforts and undertakings by government regulators to conserve competition in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital markets, a point made by the July 23, 2024 “Joint Statement on Competition in Generative AI Foundation Models and AI Products” from the US Department of Justice, the US Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission, and the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority.
The regulators are mindful of potential attempts by firms “to restrict key inputs for the development of AI technologies,” entrench or extend existing market power in digital markets “in adjacent AI markets or across ecosystems, taking advantage of feedback and network effects to increase barriers to entry and harm competition,” create instances of monopsony power and develop and wield AI “in ways that harm consumers, entrepreneurs, or other market participants.”
Such talk is hardly novel. It peppers and haunts the incipient stages of the web’s existence: misty visions of the informed cybersphere; communities of engaged digital citizens rowdily if respectfully engaged in civil discourse. All of this done in defiance of policing measures and the suspicious eye of the authoritarian State. Eventually, techno utopianism is as faulty as any other variant of the unrealised idyll. The honey, milk and fruit always seem better on that side of the river, till the journey is made.
Janine Jackson interviewed the American Economic Liberties Project’s Lee Hepner about the Google monopoly for the August 9, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” So ruled district court Judge Amit Mehta in United States v. Google, being called a “landmark” antitrust case that will affect not just Google, but potentially all tech giants in the current landscape. The point was, Google pays billions every year to companies like Apple and Samsung that distribute search engines, to ensure that it’s the only search engine anyone would see, by making sure it’s the preset default on devices.
If your supermarket only had one brand of milk on the shelf, even if it had some others in the back, you would recognize that as unfair. But for many of us, the internet is still a mystery miracle, and we’re not used to bringing the same sorts of questions to bear. If it did nothing else, this ruling changes that.
So what happened? Lee Hepner is an antitrust lawyer and senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project. He joins us now by phone; welcome to CounterSpin, Lee Hepner.
Lee Hepner: Thanks so much for having me.
JJ: The Sherman Antitrust Act sounds like a history lesson. It’s from 1890, but it’s living, meaningful law. How or why exactly did the judge determine that Google was in violation of it?
LH: You said it right there. This law that dates back to the 19th century, that used to be used against railroad barons, has now been applied to this new tech industry. It’s really proof of the durability of one of the foundational laws for ensuring fair markets and competition across our economy.
And Google is ripe for being addressed by this law. The judge found that Google was essentially without competition in the market for search engines, and truth be told, I mean, 80% of overall searches are conducted via Google; on mobile devices, that’s 95%. And Google is able to profit extraordinarily off of not having competition, and by blocking out rivals who threatened to create new and innovative products that actually benefit consumers and move this technology forward. So that was really at the crux of the judge’s decision in this case.
JJ: So it isn’t just that Googleis the default search engine; it’s that they are doing things, including paying money, to maintain that, and to prevent other companies from being that.
LH: That’s exactly right, and the judge really eloquently, in his opinion, describes how Google maintains its power through that circular system. It pays for exclusive agreements across Apple, Samsung, Mozilla, other device manufacturers, and by virtue of those exclusive agreements, it achieves scale that it then sells to advertisers for extraordinary revenue, and then it reinvests that revenue back at the beginning, in securing those exclusive agreements. So you really see how this is a self-reinforcing monopoly that Google has been able to maintain through anti-competitive conduct.
JJ: And we know it’s not by accident, if anyone were to believe that. There are internal messages, I just read in a piece by Matt Stoller, where Google is saying, “Inertia is the path of least resistance.” They know what they’re doing.
LH: Oh, absolutely. It’s a clear monopoly strategy. And, just to be clear, those are the communications that we were able to see. Google was also criticized by this judge for deleting untold number of records that were relevant to the litigation. And that was a big part of this case, too: what Googledidn’t say, because they were training employees to move communications to secret servers and auto-deleted chats. So even in the absence of a smoking gun, there was a very clear sense that Google was intentionally perpetuating an illegal scheme to maintain its market power.
JJ: It’s worth noting that this isn’t just a meta-issue, or inconsequential. There is an impact of the quality of searches. Not everyone’s just looking for “Thai restaurant near me.” It matters if searches are not the best that they could be, yeah?
Lee Hepner: “Google has maintained its monopoly position, not necessarily by having a superior product, but by blocking out rivals.”
LH: Yeah. We’ve all heard stories about Google search becoming worse over time. It’s harder to find that thing that you were looking for, because they’re not necessarily investing in the rank of search results, or they’re prioritizing paid ads that look like organic search results. So Google has maintained its monopoly position, not necessarily by having a superior product, but by blocking out rivals. And that’s just the core characteristic of monopolies that is as old as time, and we see across a lot of industries.
JJ: Yeah, I was just going to say, Google is not being punished for building a better mousetrap. And news media, I think, play a role here for the anthropomorphizing of, especially, tech companies as scrappy, as game changers: They’re not AT&T. We’ve been trained to think, these guys–and they are guys–break the rules, but on behalf of all of us. And that’s not what’s happening here.
LH: Sure, and it’s just a radically different industry than it was, say, in the early 2000s, after we broke up the last big monopoly, Microsoft. That was a quarter century ago since the last decision on a case brought by the government against a big monopoly.
And then we were seeing that kind of scrappy innovation. Google was a startup at that point, and I think that right there really lends to the potential of this case, and of this decision, to unlock a new era of innovation, where small tech innovators are able to have a chance at entering the market, and creating something new and cool that maybe we can’t imagine today, but wouldn’t be possible without breaking up Google‘s hold on this industry.
JJ: I was going to ask you, what do you think happens now? We can’t necessarily predict it, but in terms of the case, what do you think will happen as we look to the remedy stage of things?
LH: Just to be clear, this is a case that was bifurcated. We just concluded the liability phase, and now the judge has to decide what to do about it. And what’s good about this stage is that the court has broad latitude, and must be deferential to the government’s request for remedies after that really difficult finding of liability.
And there’s a lot of tools on the table. Certainly we can expect an end to some of the exclusive agreements that have tied up this market for Google. But we also might see structural remedies that deprive Google of some of its ill-gotten gains, and divest certain business lines, or allow other search engines to have access to properties like Google‘s web indexer, or even their large language model.
The future of search is really in artificial intelligence, and the ability of chatbots to really revolutionize how people get information off the internet. And so I think that we’re going to be really clued in to how this court crafts remedies that ensure that that next era of AI innovation is not being controlled by Google, or any other dominant player in this market.
JJ: And then, finally, do you see knock-on effects? It does seem like a paradigm shift in terms of antitrust and the way we think about big companies. Do you see knock-on effects on, not just tech companies, but other big businesses?
LH: I do. And I think that when you have a case of this magnitude, there is going to be a bit of a culture shift. So if I’m a big law firm advising my clients, I’m going to tell them, “Hey, if you are entering into these types of exclusive agreements that are intended to maintain your market power, maybe you shouldn’t do that anymore, because the court is looking at these agreements with fresh eyes, and they’re not passing muster.”
I also think this decision builds momentum behind some of the other cases that the government has brought. There are parallels to the case against Live Nation, which also uses Ticketmaster to enter into exclusive agreements with venues. There are other parallels to the case against Apple or Amazon, which also lock consumers into a single-product ecosystem. So there’s going to be knock-on effects outside of this case, outside of this industry, and also for other pending cases that we’re watching closely.
JJ: All right then; we’ll end on that note. We’ve been speaking with Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. They’re online at EconomicLiberties.us. Thank you so much, Lee Hepner, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
Australia’s competition watchdog has uncovered another secret deal for Google search engine exclusivity on Android devices, this time with the country’s third biggest telco TPG. TPG has agreed to scrap the agreement for a share of advertising revenue, signing a court-enforceable undertaking with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) late last week. It is…
This week on CounterSpin: You don’t hear the phrase “free market capitalism” so much anymore, but the idea still tacitly undergirds much of what you do hear about why products and services are the way they are. We all know about corruption and cronyism, but we still accept that the company that “wins,” that “corners the market,” does so because people simply prefer what they sell. The anti-monopoly ruling against Google challenges that idea of how things work. We’ll hear about it from Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay
Also on the show: A recent news report offered the familiar construction that the attacks of September 11, 2001, “plunged the US” into decades of war. Of course that’s not right; choices were made, unpopular choices, about how to respond to the attacks. Choices were made to not bring assailants to trial for the crime, but instead to detain people without charge and hold them indefinitely in a prison designed to be outside US law. None of it was inevitable. Now the Defense secretary has stepped in to overturn plea agreements that, while they wouldn’t have closed Guantánamo, would’ve brought some measure of closure to the cases against the alleged directors of the September 11 attacks. We’ll get an update from Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
On Tuesday, a US federal judge ruled Google has violated antitrust laws, saying the organisation is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. Google disputes the ruling. Its president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said “this decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t…
The Israeli military is using cloud storage and artificial intelligence services provided by U.S. tech titans for “direct participation and collaboration” in what many critics around the world call Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, according to an investigation published this week. Two Israeli publications — +972 Magazine and Local Call — on Sunday published a joint investigation revealing…
Apple, Meta and other tech giants have been ordered to report the steps they are taking to address child sexual abuse material on their platforms twice a year, in an escalation of Australia’s online safety compliance regime. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant issued legal notices to eight companies on Wednesday, requiring them to report their…
Google has abandoned plans to kill off pervasive user tracking technologies known as cookies after four years of effort on alternatives that sparked clashes with regulators and the advertising industry. In a major reversal announced on Tuesday morning, Google said it will continue to allow third-party cookies which track users across multiple sites and underpin…
Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the world has seen an incredible surge in investment, development and use of artificial intelligence applications. According to one estimate, the amount of computational power used for AI is doubling roughly every 100 days. The social and economic impacts of this boom have provoked reactions around the…
The competition regulator has uncovered deals between Google and Australia’s biggest telcos that saw the tech giant’s search services preinstalled on mobile phones in exchange for a cut of its digital ad revenue. Optus and Telstra held the deals with Google since at least 2017 but have provided the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)…
The competition regulator has uncovered deals between Google and Australia’s biggest telcos that saw the tech giant’s search services preinstalled on mobile phones in exchange for a cut of its digital ad revenue. Optus and Telstra held the deals with Google since at least 2017 but have provided the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)…
Palestinian American Moataz with 120+ family members killed in Gaza and other activists surrounded by police before getting ejected with flags at Congressional Baseball game in Washington DC/ Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
During last week’s Congressional Baseball Game, dozens of us in the crowd conveyed urgent messages to stop funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and to address the escalating climate crisis. We were met by hundreds of police from different jurisdictions who encircled us during the game, and at times followed us around. Activists with Climate Defiance announced their intention to disrupt the event in advance, and, once they stormed the field, they were plowed down by police officers and arrested.
In our seats, we stood with signs, flags, some just wearing kuffiyehs, chanting “Free Palestine” and “Genocide is not a game.” Despite the legality and common practice of cheering and displaying signs at baseball games, we were swiftly ejected by swarms of police officers.
The police officers, unsurprisingly, did nothing to address the egregious verbal abuse that was hurled at us. The verbal abuse included blatantly racist taunts and profanities. In one instance, an entire section of the crowd erupted in a “f*** you terrorists” chant and in another a “USA” chant echoed across the field in response. Meanwhile, others in the stadium freely displayed their political messages without facing any consequences.
Our aim was to deliver a clear message to members of Congress, who were indulging in a game amid multiple crises they are responsible for through funding and inaction.
Since October, they have allocated billions more to Israel, facilitating the genocide of over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza while also displacing and starving millions in Gaza.
The Israeli State has also used white phosphorus and other weapons from the United States to destroy the local environment, facilitating the death of the local habitat. Each U.S. bomb tested, manufactured, transferred, and dropped exacerbates the climate crisis, intertwining Palestine’s plight with climate justice.
Almost every congressperson who played that night voted to sanction the International Criminal Court after it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.
The annual Congressional Baseball game is sponsored by a long list of companies profiting off of the Israeli and U.S. atrocities in Palestine, including: Boeing, RTX (formerly Raytheon), Caterpillar, Chevron, Amazon, Google.
The baseball event is technically a fundraiser for groups like the Boys and Girls Club, Nationals Philanthropies, and the Washington Literacy Center. It is paradoxical that Congress raises trivial amounts for education while channeling billions of tax dollars into weapons shipments used to indiscriminately murder Palestinians.
Activists across the U.S are demanding an end to all aid to Israel and a reinvestment of those funds into our community needs such as housing, healthcare, and education.
It’s not a coincidence that while arms dealers are reaping historic highs in stock prices and earnings, members of Congress are lining their pockets with massive blood-soaked checks from Israeli lobbying groups. Particularly AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Council.
While the majority of Americans want a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, our representatives use our tax to dollars to fuel their own profiteering from genocide.
More bombs were dropped in the first 100 days of the US-Israel genocide in Gaza than in all of World War II combined.
Our actions at the Congressional Baseball Game were driven by a profound sense of urgency and justice.
The systematic murder and starvation of Palestinians by Israel cannot continue with our silent complicity. We must persist in demanding accountability from our elected officials. We demand that funds from warfare be redirected to vital community needs.
We stand in solidarity with Palestinians and all others who are fighting for their lives and dignity. The struggle for justice in Palestine is not just their fight; it is a global cause that calls for our unwavering support and action.
Australian AI and machine learning startups can now apply for Google’s new accelerator program, offering free access to Google cloud and tailored advice. The AI First accelerator program opened on Monday and will support 8-15 seed and Series A stage Australian startups over 10-weeks without an equity investment from Google. The Google for Startups Accelerator:…
Artificial intelligence could add $280 billion of economic, cyber and environmental benefits to Australia in 2030 according to Google, which has unveiled its analysis as the Albanese government considers new regulation for the technology. The latest forecast adds to a crowded field of potential AI benefits, with figures varying by hundreds of billions of dollars…
Saudi Arabia is set to host the United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum in Riyadh at the end of this year, from the 15th to the 19th of December. The United Nations’ division was created as a multistakeholder platform facilitating the discussion of public policy issues pertaining to the internet, in December, the program will be shaped along four main themes:
Harnessing innovation and balancing risks in the digital space
Enhancing the digital contribution to peace, development, and sustainability
Advancing human rights and inclusion in the digital age
Improving digital governance for the Internet We Want
However, there is an underlying hypocrisy in the hosting of this event by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as the country is notorious for its lack of respect for basic international human rights, scoring 8 out of 100 in the 2023 Freedom House report – classified as “not free”. Indeed, its absolute monarchy restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s 2030 Vision aims to increase the country’s sustainability and green initiatives, along with increasing the government’s non-oil revenue, amongst many other goals. These initiatives have been heavily criticized, projects such as NEOM have been under scrutiny for greenwashing, but also as seen as “delusional”. Therefore, at least two out of four of the main themes of the Internet Governance Forum go against Saudi Arabia’s reality, being a country that is not advancing human rights and inclusion, neither contributing to peace and sustainability; presenting a true example of whitewashing by hosting the Forum.
Focusing more on digital rights, there is concrete evidence that the country uses social media platforms to police political discourse, attack dissidents, and suppress influential voices. Authorities maintain extensive censorship and surveillance systems, supporting online networks of bots and accounts that spread pro-government messages and target perceived dissenters, particularly the infiltration of X, formerly known as Twitter, spreading propaganda in support of Saudi Arabia. The goal of these domestic manipulation operations is to fabricate an appearance of widespread support for the state and its leaders while silencing dissenting voices, thereby eroding the right to information and democratic principles. In fact, Saudi Arabia is the second country after China with the highest number of removed accounts by Twitter. Activists, journalists, government employees, and other professionals report a climate of fear, compelling many to self-censor or participate in pro-government discourse online. Those perceived to voice dissent online, including critics and activists, face severe repercussions such as harassment and arrest.
The overall lack of digital rights makes the kingdom an unsuitable host for the Internet Governance Forum, which relies on open dialogue and freedom of expression to address global internet governance issues effectively.
To add fuel to the fire, Saudi Arabia’s investments in technological projects only increase its opportunity to abuse even more of censorship and data surveillance. Indeed, the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia raises significant concerns about digital rights and privacy abuse due to its extensive surveillance infrastructure, which involves ubiquitous monitoring through cameras, sensors, and biometric data collection, leading to constant tracking of residents and visitors without their consent. The project aims to collect vast amounts of personal, financial, and health data, yet lacks robust data protection laws and clear regulations on data management, posing risks of misuse and unauthorized access.
Adding on to this, Tech Giant Google has installed a new Cloud Region in the Kingdom, Google Cloud services facilitate small to medium-sized businesses’ operations, so they don’t have to own their own data centers and servers. This project is a joint venture with Aramco, a Saudi state-owned oil company, which causes concern as it allows the state to access even more mass quantities of personal data: the collaboration between powerful tech companies and autocratic regimes such as Saudi Arabia facilitates the opportunity for further national digital repression.
The hosting of the Internet Governance Forum is a true example of whitewashing, illustrating the pure hypocrisy of the country’s blatant disregard for digital rights, let alone basic human rights, along with its deluded façade of protection of human and digital rights and peace promotion.
Google has rolled out its latest experimental search feature on Chrome, Firefox and the Google app browser to hundreds of millions of users. “AI Overviews” saves you clicking on links by using generative AI — the same technology that powers rival product ChatGPT — to provide summaries of the search results. Ask “how to keep…
Pro-Palestinian protesters today condemned Google for sacking protesting staff and demanded that the New Zealand government immediately “cut ties with Israeli genocide”.
Wearing Google logo masks and holding placards saying “Google complicit in genocide” and “Google drop Project Nimbus”, the protesters were targeting the global tech company for sacking more than two dozen employees following protests against its US$1.2 billion cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government.
The workers were terminated earlier this month after a company investigation ruled they had been involved in protests inside the tech giant’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California.
Nine demonstrators were arrested, according to the protest organisers of No Tech for Apartheid.
In Auckland, speakers condemned Google’s crackdown on company dissent and demanded that the New Zealand government take action in the wake of both the UN’s International Court of Justice, or World Court, and separate International Criminal Court rulings last week.
“On Friday, the ICJ made another determination — stop the military assault on Rafah, something that Israel ignores,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott said.
Earlier in the week, the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was also seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders.
‘Obvious Israel is committing genocide’
“That brings us to our politicians,” said Scott.
“It is obvious that Israel is committing genocide. We all know that Israel is committing genocide.
“It is obvious that the Israeli leadership is committing crimes against humanity.”
Scott said the New Zealand government — specifically Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters — “must now be under the spotlight in the court of public opinion here in Aotearoa”.
“They have done nothing but mouth platitudes about Israeli behaviour. They have done nothing of substance.
“They could cut ties with genocide.”
Bosnian support for the Palestinian protest rally . . . two days ago the UN General Assembly approved a resolution establishing July 11 as an international day in remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Two demands of government
Scott said the protests — happening every week in New Zealand now into eight months, but rarely reported on by media — had made a raft of calls, including the blocking of Rakon supplying parts for Israeli “bombs dropped on Gaza” and persuading the Superfund to divest from Israeli companies.
He said that today the protesters were calling for the government to do two things given the Israeli genocide:
End “working holiday” visas for young Israelis visiting Aotearoa, and
Expelling the Israeli ambassador and shut the embassy
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