The Importance of Transparency in Checkpoints

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There is a, and I have a big chapter in the book about this, a growing war on Palestinians pushed by social media companies. It means that Palestinian posts, videos, comments are routinely barred, censored, cut, deleted for no reason. And these kind of companies operate with impunity because so many other countries are keen to take their technology in their own space. So there's two issues here: One, if there's a human content problem, we're not talking about seeing someone who killed themselves; it doesn't mean necessarily a suicide bomber or something like that. Two, why speak a digital story, why be run by ghosts? This report essentially found, oh yes, there was an

Paris Marx is joined by Antony Loewenstein to discuss how the Israeli weapons industry tests new military technologies on occupied Palestinians before selling them internationally.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist who’s written for the New York Times and the Guardian. He’s the author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World. Follow Antony on Twitter at @antloewenstein.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Excerpts from Antony’s book have been published by In These Times, Declassified Australia, and Jamal Khashoggi-founded Democracy for the Arab World Now. Antony also wrote a good overview of the book for Middle East Eye.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and Yesh Din have called Israel’s actions apartheid.
Google and Amazon workers protested Project Nimbus. They also faced shareholder revolts over the project.
Airbnb lists properties in illegal Israeli settlements.
Red Wolf is deployed at checkpoints to scan Palestinians’ faces and add them to surveillance databases without their consent.
Facebook has been criticized for removing Palestinians’ posts.
The New York Times reported on Israel’s use of NSO Group surveillance tools for diplomatic leverage.
The Committee to Protect Journalists found Israel killed 20 journalists.