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Rights groups urge Google to jettison Saudi cloud plans

Wednesday, 26 May 2021 9:43 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 26 May 2021 9:43 PM ]

Undated picture shows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (C), Google CEO Sundar Pichai (L), and co-founder Sergey Brin.

Dozens of human rights groups, including several internationally prominent ones, urge Google to abandon its plans to set up a cloud computing project in Saudi Arabia, saying Riyadh could use the service towards human rights abuses.

The groups, including London-based Amnesty International and New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch, made the appeal to the tech giant in a joint statement on Wednesday.

Last year, the company announced the plans to establish a "cloud region" in Saudi Arabia in partnership with the kingdom’s state oil company Aramco.

The right bodies, however, warned that the Saudi state could use the potentials that were offered by the project to invade dissidents’ privacy and spy on them.

"We fear that in partnering with the Saudi government, Google will become complicit in future human rights violations affecting people in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East region," the statement read.

"The Saudi government has demonstrated time and again a flagrant disregard for human rights, both through its own direct actions against human rights defenders and its spying on corporate digital platforms to do the same," the campaigners noted.

The kingdom has revised its so-called “anti-terrorism” law to include dissent. Ever since, it has been coming down hard on almost any instance of protest throughout the country, even within the royal family itself.

According to the groups, the kingdom tows an "extensive record of seeking to spy on its own citizens."

Back in 2019, US prosecutors announced that two former Twitter employees had used their access at the social media platform to gather private information about Saudi dissidents -- most likely at Riyadh’s behest, they reminded.

Dissidents have not been safe even abroad. Saudi diplomatic missions overseas have been trying to lure dissenting royals inside the buildings under various pretexts.

In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and former Washington Post columnist, was killed and dismembered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.