One project called out in the resolution is HART, a database of biographical and biometric information AWS hosts for the US Department of Homeland Security that includes information on 270 million people, including juveniles. A report released in May by Just Futures Law, a legal campaign group led by women of color, found that HART assists federal authorities in targeting immigrants. The same month, more than 40 civil rights organizations wrote to AWS CEO Adam Selipsky asking the company to drop the project, saying HART will “supercharge surveillance and deportations” and increase the risk of human rights violations. Investor pressure led Microsoft to agree last year to conduct a human rights impact assessment of government contracts that Microsoft spokesperson Michelle Micor told WIRED is due out in early 2023. Outside of the tech industry, IASJ negotiated racial equity audits at Tyson Foods and Dow Chemical Company in December 2021 and March 2022, respectively. But designating certain business practices as taboo doesn’t always change a company’s trajectory. Following protests against an AI contract with the US Department of Defense, Google in 2018 adopted AI ethics principles that forbid working on weapons or tech that goes against “widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.” Yet the company has since increased its defense work, both in the US and elsewhere, for instance with the Israel contract. A Google spokesperson told WIRED this year that although “not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads,” that deal supplies Google technology to the Israeli military.
