Archiv: Amazon Inc. / Amazon Web Services (monopolies)


11.07.2025 - 22:37 [ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) / Büro des Hohen Kommissars für Menschenrechte ]

From economy of occupation to economy of genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese

(June 30, 2025)

In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 investigates the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and Governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide. The complicity exposed by the report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including# its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility – each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.

02.07.2025 - 03:26 [ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) / Büro des Hohen Kommissars für Menschenrechte ]

From economy of occupation to economy of genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese

In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 investigates the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and Governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide. The complicity exposed by the report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including# its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility – each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.

02.07.2025 - 03:14 [ Al Jazeera ]

UN report lists companies complicit in Israel’s ‘genocide’: Who are they?

Are private companies liable under international law?

According to Albanese’s report, yes. Corporate entities are under an obligation to avoid violating human rights through direct action or in their business partnerships.

States have the primary responsibility to ensure that corporate entities respect human rights and must prevent, investigate and punish abuses by private actors. However, corporations must respect human rights even if the state where they operate does not.

A company must therefore assess whether activities or relationships throughout its supply chain risk causing human rights violations or contributing to them, according to the report.

The failure to act in line with international law may result in criminal liability. Individual executives can be held criminally liable, including before international courts.

02.07.2025 - 03:08 [ Al Jazeera ]

‘Israel’s genocide continues because it is lucrative for many’

As we’ve been reporting, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has named more than 60 companies, including major arms manufacturers and technology firms, in a report alleging their involvement in supporting Israeli settlements and military actions in Gaza, which she called a “genocidal campaign”.

Albanese compiled the report based on more than 200 submissions from states, human rights defenders, companies, and academics.

“While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, this report shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many,” Albanese wrote. She accused corporate entities of being “financially bound to Israel’s apartheid and militarism.”

04.04.2025 - 19:39 [ Anadolu ]

Israel’s AI use in Gaza potentially normalizes civilian killings, obscures blame, exposes Big Tech complicity: Expert

Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip – aided by tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon – is fueling concerns over the normalization of mass civilian casualties and raising serious questions about the complicity of these firms in potential war crimes, according to a leading AI expert.

Multiple reports have confirmed that Israel has deployed AI models such as Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy? to conduct mass surveillance, identify targets, and direct strikes against tens of thousands of individuals in Gaza – often in their own homes – all with minimal human oversight.

17.04.2024 - 08:05 [ UnicornRiot.ninja ]

Amazon Blocked, Wells Fargo Windows Smashed on Day of Action for Palestine in Minnesota

Pro-Palestine activists blockaded an Amazon distribution center in the northwestern Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove as part of A15 Action, a global day of action against Israel’s war on Gaza. In a separate action in the Twin Cities, a Wells Fargo Bank branch in South Minneapolis was vandalized and had its windows broken.

12.04.2023 - 02:33 [ theAtlantic.com ]

The Details About the CIA‘s Deal With Amazon

(July 17, 2014)

This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

For the first time, agencies within the intelligence community will be able to order a variety of on-demand computing and analytic services from the CIA and National Security Agency

22.03.2023 - 20:51 [ theVerge.com ]

Amid layoffs and lost games, Amazon Luna comes to Canada, Germany, and the UK

Remember: Google Stadia is dead as a doornail, and Amazon Luna, the company’s rival cloud gaming service, wasn’t doing much better.

22.03.2023 - 20:25 [ Reuters ]

Amazon has rolled out contactless tech to 200 locations including Panera cafes

On Wednesday the U.S. cafe chain Panera Bread unveiled Amazon One devices, which let customers scan their palms to pay, for two locations in greater St. Louis. Kumar said the deployment would expand to 10 to 20 Panera cafes in coming months.

A palm swipe would also let Panera pull up restaurant goers‘ rewards accounts and order histories, the companies said.

Kumar declined to state the deal‘s value but described the business model as selling software and devices as a service.

22.03.2023 - 19:35 [ Politico.com ]

The privacy loophole in your doorbell

(07.03.2023)

Larkin, now incensed that police were requesting footage from inside his home for an investigation that didn’t even involve him, wanted to fight the warrant. He estimated that a lawyer would have been too expensive, and he only had about seven days to challenge it before Ring would comply. He still doesn’t understand how a judge could have signed off on a warrant asking for footage from a camera inside his home, when the investigation was on his neighbor.

“That says to me that the cops can go in and subpoena anybody, no matter how weak their evidence is,” he said.

22.03.2023 - 19:05 [ Netzpolitik.org ]

Amazon Ring: Selbst Wohnzimmer-Aufnahmen sind nicht vor Polizei sicher

(09.03.2023)

Michael Larkin erzählt Politico, dass er sich gegen die Herausgabe seiner privaten Aufnahmen wehren wollte. Schließlich sollte sie für eine Ermittlung genutzt werden, in der er nicht einmal Verdächtiger war. Doch Larkin konnte sich keinen Anwalt leisten. Das Unternehmen schickte deshalb nach der kurzen Einspruchsfrist von sieben Tagen alle auf ihren Servern gespeicherten Aufnahmen an die Polizei. Zum Glück hatte Larkin die Kameras in seinem Haus so eingestellt, dass sie nur im Falle eines Einbruchs filmen. Dennoch wurde auch jede Menge Material, das Larkin selbst zeigt, an die Polizei verschickt.

„Das ist das, was mich am meisten aufregt – die Tatsache, dass ein Richter das einfach so absegnet“, sagt Larkin gegenüber Politico. „Er gibt einfach Material von mir heraus, ohne dass ich in irgendeiner Form an dem Fall beteiligt bin.“

05.03.2023 - 14:32 [ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / Twitter ]

When I opposed this Amazon project coming to New York bc it was a scam of public funds, the whole power establishment came after us. Billboards went up in Times Sq denouncing me. Powerful pols promised revenge. Op-Eds & CEOs insulted my intelligence. In the end, we were right.

05.03.2023 - 14:21 [ Salon.com ]

Amazon‘s labor exploitation is a return to the 1920s — and unions are our best hope out

(14.06.2021)

Amazon claims to be innovative, but its strategies of market dominance and labor exploitation are as old as capitalism itself, and were perfected by predecessors like Standard Oil, General Motors, US Steel, AT&T, Walmart and Microsoft. My union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, views this as history repeating itself.

The Roaring ‘20s were great for those at the top, but meant massive exploitation of workers. As we embark further into the 2020s, the Teamsters will make sure that Amazon cannot repeat a history where workers suffered acutely to make ends meet and were frequently injured or even killed on the job while company executives stuffed their pockets with the profits.

05.03.2023 - 14:19 [ CNBC ]

How companies like Amazon, Nike and FedEx avoid paying federal taxes

(14.04.2022)

The 55 corporations cited by ITEP would have paid a collective total of $8.5 billion. Instead, they received $3.5 billion in tax rebates, collectively draining $12 billion from the U.S. government, according to the institute.

05.03.2023 - 14:17 [ theGuardian.com ]

Amazon had sales income of €44bn in Europe in 2020 but paid no corporation tax

(4, May 2021)

Accounts for Amazon EU Sarl, through which it sells products to hundreds of millions of households in the UK and across Europe, show that despite collecting record income, the Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss and therefore paid no tax. (…)

The Luxembourg unit – which handles sales for the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden – employs just 5,262 staff meaning that the income per employ amounts to €8.4m.

05.03.2023 - 14:07 [ Macrotrends.net ]

Amazon Income Taxes 2010-2022 | AMZN

Amazon annual income taxes for 2022 were $3.217B, a 167.15% decline from 2021.
Amazon annual income taxes for 2021 were $4.791B, a 67.34% increase from 2020.
Amazon annual income taxes for 2020 were $2.863B, a 20.6% increase from 2019.

05.03.2023 - 14:03 [ macrotrends.net ]

Amazon Gross Profit 2010-2022 | AMZN

Amazon annual gross profit for 2022 was $225.152B, a 14.01% increase from 2021.
Amazon annual gross profit for 2021 was $197.478B, a 29.28% increase from 2020.
Amazon annual gross profit for 2020 was $152.757B, a 32.85% increase from 2019.

10.07.2022 - 22:10 [ Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism ]

Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism – Membership

Founding Members:

YouTube
Twitter
Microsoft
facebook

General Members:

zoom
tumblr
WordPress.com
JustPaste
airbnb
mailchimp
Discord
Instagram
WhatsApp
Pinterest
amazon
Dropbox
MEGA
Linkedin
YouTube
Twitter
Microsoft
facebook

30.06.2022 - 08:09 [ CNET.com ]

Ex-Amazon Cloud Worker Found Guilty in Capital One Hack: The huge hack affected more than 100 million US customers.

(June 18, 2022)

„She wanted data, she wanted money, and she wanted to brag,“ Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Friedman said in closing arguments, according to the release. The Justice Department didn‘t identify the other organizations affected by Thompson‘s activity.

30.06.2022 - 07:54 [ support.mozilla.org ]

Firefox is making connections to cloudfront.net and locprod.prod.mozaws.net on startup

(27.07.2020)

No replies

(…)

Why does make Firefox makes those connections?
What is transmitted?
And How can I disable them?

30.06.2022 - 07:49 [ FossBytes.com ]

Amazon Disables NSO Group CloudFront Accounts To Prevent “Pegasus” PR Crisis

(July 19, 2021)

While this was unearthed in 2020 itself, Amazon declined to take any action or even comment on the story. Now, Pegasus is linked to human rights abuse around the world. So Amazon has shut down the CloudFront accounts linked to NSO Group. For the uninitiated, CloudFront is a content delivery network by Amazon.

30.06.2022 - 07:45 [ theAtlantic.com ]

The Details About the CIA‘s Deal With Amazon

(July 17, 2014)

This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

For the first time, agencies within the intelligence community will be able to order a variety of on-demand computing and analytic services from the CIA and National Security Agency

08.06.2022 - 06:10 [ Interfax.com.ua ]

EU excludes cloud services from 6th sanctions package for unknown reasons – Podoliak

„At first, the EU Council announces the blockage of Russia from EU cloud services in the Sixth Sanction Package. Then, the EU Council edits the message, removing these references. No clarifications or explanations from the officials,“ Podoliak said on Twitter.

„We must increase the sanctions pressure, not decrease,“ the adviser to the head of the President‘s Office said.

06.06.2022 - 18:53 [ Tom Hacohen / Nitter,net ]

TLS 1.3 is nearing its 4th birthday, and @awscloud still doesn‘t support it in ALB. @AWSSecurityInfo, what‘s up?

30.04.2022 - 17:25 [ addons.mozilla.org ]

Cloud Firewall

Block connections to pages and web resources hosted in major cloud services if the user wishes to do so. Supports blocking Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Cloudflare.

01.04.2022 - 06:05 [ ReclaimTheNet.org ]

Lawsuit accusing tech giants of spying is allowed to proceed

(September 14, 2022)

In the legal battles with a focus on listening devices like “smart speakers,” etc, that are currently active in the US, Google and Amazon are not spared either. Reports, including by Reuters, say that a number of filings allege that their devices and apps are recording users’ conversations without their consent, and that Big Tech companies use this material to make money by giving it to advertisers, who can then more precisely target people based on knowledge of their behavior and interests.

01.02.2022 - 03:14 [ Haaretz ]

NSO Is an Arm of Israel‘s Government

In 2019 NSO agreed to reconnect the Pegasus system in Saudi Arabia, in the context of Netanyahu’s contacts regarding the Abraham Accords. Until the accords were announced, Israel gave NSO a permit to sell Pegasus to almost all of the countries that signed the agreements.

01.02.2022 - 03:00 [ New York Times ]

The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon

(Jan. 28, 2022)

The F.B.I. had bought a version of Pegasus, NSO’s premier spying tool. For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm had been selling its surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else — not a private company, not even a state intelligence service — could do: consistently and reliably crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone.

01.02.2022 - 02:28 [ New York Times ]

F.B.I. Secretly Bought Israeli Spyware and Explored Hacking U.S. Phones

(Jan. 28, 2022)

The Times found that sales of Pegasus played a critical role in securing the support of Arab nations in Israel’s campaign against Iran and negotiating the Abraham Accords, the 2020 diplomatic agreements, signed at a Trump White House ceremony, that normalized relations between Israel and some of its longtime Arab adversaries.

The U.S. had also moved to acquire Pegasus, The Times found. The F.B.I., in a deal never previously reported, bought the spyware in 2019, despite multiple reports that it had been used against activists and political opponents in other countries. It also spent two years discussing whether to deploy a newer product, called Phantom, inside the United States.

17.11.2021 - 18:12 [ Heise.de ]

Biotechnologie, Staat und Kapital

Dieser Markt ließe sich unermesslich steigern, sollte die Propaganda, dass die gesamte Menschheit (B. Gates) und in Deutschland fast die gesamte Bevölkerung (A. Merkel) geimpft werden solle und auch müsse, umgesetzt werden. Deshalb schätzt das Finanz- und Analyseunternehmen „Morningstar“ für 2021 zu erwartenden Umsatz von 67 Milliarden US-Dollar für Covid-19-Impfstoffe. Der Umsatz der Rüstungsindustrie umfasste 2019 166 Mrd. US-Dollar.

Zwei dieser Biotech-Unternehmen sollen näher betrachtet werden: Biontech und Curevac.

27.09.2021 - 23:49 [ France24 ]

Blue Origin unveils next flight, TMZ says Captain Kirk to be aboard

Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos, announced plans on Monday for its next flight and the news and entertainment website TMZ said it may include a celebrity astronaut — William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on „Star Trek.“