While employees at some tech corporations are demanding their executives cancel government contracts on principle, workers at other companies are begging leadership to protect them from government raids and physical violence.
New bombshell reporting from Wired reveals that in the aftermath of the shooting of Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti, it came to light that at least one federal agent had tried to enter Google’s office in Cambridge, Massachusetts last fall.
In a response to internal concerns about what Google’s senior leadership was doing to keep its employees safe, the company’s head of security and risk operations reportedly said that an “officer arrived at reception without notice,” attempting to gain entry. Ultimately, the agent was “not granted entry because they did not have a warrant, and promptly left.”
Google didn’t respond to Wired‘s request for comment. According to the publication’s sources, the company’s core leadership, CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, have been internally tight-lipped about Pretti’s killing. That stands in notable contrast to DeepMind’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, who’s taken taken a pointedly vocal stand.
“This is absolutely shameful,” Dean wrote in response to a video of Pretti’s killing at the hands of six Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers over the weekend.
“Agents of a federal agency unnecessarily escalating, and then executing a defenseless citizen whose offense appears to be using his cell phone camera,” he continued. “Every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this.”
The excessive violence suffered by US citizens and non-citizens alike at the hands of ICE agents has put renewed urgency on calls to defund or abolish the agency, which was formed in 2003.
In response to the violence, more than 800 tech workers have signed onto an open letter calling on their companies to cut ties with ICE. At the time of writing, at least 100 of them referenced Google or its parent company, Alphabet, in their signature.
And with nationwide anti-ICE protests intensifying, silence is becoming an increasingly untenable position for tech giants like Google to maintain.
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