TECH IS NOT NEUTRAL

Open Letter to Silicon Valley

Right now companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are building tools that actually intensify injustice. We wrote this letter urging these companies to take action for Black lives now:

TO:

Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and George Floyd are only four of the Black people senselessly killed by police in the recent months.

Protests against police brutality have come to the streets and to city, state, and the federal government with the demand to defund the police. 

In response to the tragic and unacceptable loss of Black lives, your companies have all made statements in support of The Movement for Black Lives¹ However, statements only go so far. Your actions, not your words, have the power to make real change in our communities—and yours. And so far, your actions have supported police surveillance of our communities, enabled unfair and brutal policing, and encouraged people to call the police on their Black neighbors. 

As CEOs and founders, you are responsible for ensuring that your tech innovations are governed with values that protect vulnerable communities—not enable more harm by police departments. And yet this is what you have been doing:

• More than 1,300 police departments around the country have contracts with Amazon’s Ring, a home security system². Ring’s accompanying app, Neighbors, transforms communities of people into digitally gated compounds of faceless users. Ring encourages a culture that condones and promotes surveillance and turns community members into vigilantes.

• Amazon also plays a critical role in Immigrant and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) inhumane deportation machine. Since local police serve as a feeder into this country’s broken immigration system, undocumented Black immigrants are disproportionately more vulnerable to deportation³. Your web hosting platform powers the databases and “management” systems used to cruely track, detain, and then deport immigrants⁴. 

• Similar to Neighbors, Nextdoor is a neighborhood app it says is meant to build community. But instead, you censor Black neighbors and delete posts that support Black Lives Matter. Nextdoor thrives on latent white supremacy with features that allow white users to call the police on their Black neighbors and perpetuate dangerous and racist narratives about people of color. For years, people have been calling on Nextdoor to do something about the racism that occurs on its platform⁵. Your app’s “Forward to Police” feature was recently turned off but other features that allow communication with police are still in place, including direct messages and your Public Agencies app⁶.

• Microsoft and Google employees have demanded that you cut all contracts and projects with police departments, such as the New York Police Department’s Domain Awareness System, a digital surveillance network, and to stop selling tech to police^{7 8 9}. Providing surveillance technology to police departments only allows racial profiling, false arrests, and physical harm to people color become faster. 

Your commitment to security for your users must extend beyond preventing fraud and stopping hackers to protecting your users from the harm caused by the police.

We would like to see this value clearly outlined and implemented in your companies. If you truly support Black lives, then stop working hand-in-hand with police departments. Here is what each of your companies can do right now to make an immediate and tangible difference:

• Amazon: End all Ring partnerships with local police and cut ties with ICE. 
• Nextdoor: Cut all communication with police from your Nextdoor app and end partnership with local police departments through the Nextdoor Agencies app.
• Microsoft and Google: Cancel all contracts with police departments and stop selling technology to police.

We urge you to take action and refuse to be complicit in police-driven racial violence.

Signed:

We’re Building a Future Where Tech Works for All

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