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Weekly Update 01 - 07 “September”

1.

Elon Musk considers banning Anti-Defamation League from X (English)

MEE

Elon Musk, owner of the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has questioned whether to ban the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in response to a trending hashtag against the group. "Perhaps we should run a poll on this?" Musk said on Saturday, responding to a far-right account discussing the hashtag #BanTheADL that was trending over the weekend. On Monday, Musk said of the ADL: "Because they are so aggressive in their demands to ban social media accounts for even minor infractions, [the ADL] are ironically the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform." The #BanTheADL began circulating on the social media platform after a meeting last Thursday between ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and X's new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

2.

Protestors Decry Google’s Israeli Military Contract at San Francisco Conference (English)

The San Francisco Standard

Protesters held signs, yelled chants, beat on drums and waved Palestinian flags in front of the Google Cloud Next Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday to protest the company’s surveillance contract with Israel. The protest, which blocked Howard Street just outside the Moscone Center’s main entrance, comes as Google celebrates its first year of profitability at its flagship cloud computing conference. According to Google software engineer Josh Marxen, Palestinian tech workers and colleagues from other marginalized groups have voiced concerns over the contract, named Project Nimbus, and its ability to facilitate advanced surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza since 2021.

3.

Why we should be worried about Twitter adopting products of Israel’s surveillance state (English)

The New Arab

Israel is a global leader in the field of surveillance technology and cyber-security products. While it has companies engaged in defence cyber technology, it is most known—and notorious—for its offensive technology and spyware offered by companies like NSO Group, Candiru, Circles, Paragon, Intellexa, Citrox and Cellebrite. Their products exploit weaknesses in security protocols of electronic devices to intercept voice, video, texts and emails. Intelligence agencies and law enforcement in both repressive regimes and democracies use them to track political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, and teachers.

4.

Israel helps other countries to spy on their own citizens (English)

MEMO

Israel has been accused of assisting various countries to conduct surveillance against their own citizens. Pakistan is a customer, and now it has been alleged that the Indian government is also buying surveillance tools from the occupation state. According to the Financial Times, the Indian government is buying sophisticated surveillance tools from Israeli tech companies such as Cognyte and Septier. These are being used to monitor the digital footprint and activities of Indian citizens. Septier’s products are capable of extracting voice messages, web surfing and emails of their targets. The surveillance system has apparently been deployed at subsea cable landing stations, enabling Indian security agencies to monitor the personal data and communications of its 1.4 billion citizens.