Three prominent technology scholars published an open letter Monday, which has now received over 900 signatures, condemning Google’s collaboration with the Pentagon’s illegal “targeted killing” program.
The academics published their letter in support of over 3,100 Google employees who issued their own open letter last month protesting the company’s participation in a Pentagon program called Project Maven, designed to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to analyze footage collected by US military drones.
The US drone murder program is based on “extrajudicial killing that is not accountable either to US or international law,” Lucy Suchman, one of the co-authors of the statement, told the World Socialist Web Site Thursday.
Dr. Lilly Irani, another co-author, who supported the World Socialist Web Site’sopen letter opposing Google’s censorship of the Internet, said that the issue of Google’s integration into the military-intelligence apparatus was closely linked to the company’s role in “muting political opposition through its ‘search quality’ policies.”
Update on Julian Assange
On Friday, Ecuador announced that it has removed all additional security measures at its embassy in London implemented to protect Assange. The move follows indications that Ecuador is in discussions with the UK to force Assange out of the embassy.
