Amazon appears to have significantly stepped up security at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Modern York on Wednesday, two weeks after a group of activists disrupted the AWS summit in Washington, D.C., to protest Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google. $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. The crackdown in Modern York scuppered plans by several activists to disrupt the keynote speech of Matt Wood, vice president of AI products at AWS.
Amazon only allowed approved attendees to attend the keynote. Activists who registered online to attend received emails before the conference informing them they would not be allowed to attend the keynote because of confined space.
In addition, the conference was heavily guarded by private security and Modern York Police Department and Modern York State Police personnel. Despite being barred from attending the speech, activists entered the building, where security confiscated posters and flyers during bag checks, which not all attendees were subjected to.
Amazon he said earlier that it respects “employees’ right to express themselves without fear of retaliation, intimidation, or harassment,” referring to the Project Nimbus protests. But the heightened security measures show the company is taking steps to thwart further dissent. Google, for its part, has slowed 50 employees following a high-profile protest in April over the company’s cloud computing deal with the Israeli government.
The activists behind the planned disruption of the keynote speech include all organizers from No Tech for Apartheid (NOTA), a coalition of tech workers, organizers from the Muslim grassroots group MPower Change, and members of the anti-Zionist Jewish group Jewish Voices for Peace. (NOTA was formed in 2021, shortly after Project Nimbus news The group planned the Google sit-in and other recent actions targeting Project Nimbus.
Those seeking to interrupt Wood’s speech include: Zelda Montesformer YouTube software engineer and Hasan Ibraheem, a former Google software engineer. Both were among 50 Google employees laid off this spring. Jamie Kowalski, a former Amazon software employee who worked at the company for six years, Ferras Hamad, a former Meta employee who was recently released after expressing concerns about anti-Palestinian censorshipand another tech worker who has not publicly disclosed his name were also planning a protest.
Five other NOTA activists stood just outside the AWS summit, behind a set of barricades, handing out informational flyers. They held huge banners that read, “Google and Amazon Employees Say: Dump Nimbus, End Occupation, No Tech for Apartheid” and “AWS-Powered Genocide” over a photo of a Gaza neighborhood reduced to rubble.
Photo: Caroline Haskins