The world’s largest online retailer and cloud storage provider. It is the main provider of cloud infrastructure and services for the Israeli government and military, US immigration authorities, and US prisons and police.
Amazon.com is one of the largest companies in the world, headquartered in Seattle, that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital media streaming, and artificial intelligence. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s largest provider of cloud storage services, controlling almost one-third of the global market.
Amazon’s government-facing cloud infrastructure service, AWS GovCloud, is the largest cloud provider for the U.S. government. As of 2024, it serves 7,500 government agencies.
Powering the Israeli Military and Violations of Palestinian Rights
Since 2021, AWS, alongside Google Cloud Platform, has developed the main cloud infrastructure platform for the Israeli government. Dubbed Project Nimbus, this is one of the largest technology projects in Israel’s history.
The Nimbus Project serves all branches and units of the Israeli government, including the Israeli military, which played a leading role in designing the tender for the contract and selecting the winning bids.
Initially, the Nimbus public cloud infrastructure was not designed to serve the military’s combat-facing or classified intelligence systems. For that purpose, the military has its own private internal cloud system, which connects all its branches—Army, Air Force, Navy, Intelligence—“from the command centers to the combat troops.” Among many systems, this internal cloud hosts the military’s massive “target bank,” with tens of thousands of targets that get updated in real time. Internally referred to as the Operational Cloud, it was developed in-house by the military’s information technology (IT) unit—the Center of Computing and Information Systems (MAMRAM)—using IBM’s OpenShift platform. The unit describes its Operational Cloud as “a weapon for all intents and purposes.”
While Nimbus was not initially designed for this purpose, the Israeli military started using its infrastructure to support and augment the capabilities of its Operational Cloud during its 2023–2024 war on the Gaza Strip. In late October 2023, preparations for the large-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip required unprecedented computing power, and the Operational Cloud became overloaded. MAMRAM took several steps to address this problem, including using “the public cloud providers, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft,” as the commander of the IT unit revealed in July 2024.
Of these three companies, the Israeli military’s relationship with Amazon is the closest, according to +972 Magazine. AWS “provides Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate with a server farm which is used to store masses of intelligence information,” which allows the military “to have ‘endless storage’ for holding intelligence on almost ‘everyone’ in Gaza,” +972 Magazine reported. This information has reportedly “helped on rare occasions to confirm aerial assassination strikes in Gaza — strikes that would have also killed and harmed Palestinian civilians.”
This potentially implicates Amazon, along with Google and Microsoft, in the mass killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them unarmed civilians, using multiple AI systems (The Gospel, Lavender, and Where's Daddy?) that the military developed to generate targets and hit them at unprecedented scale with minimal human intervention.
More Information About the Nimbus Cloud Platform
Amazon and Google were selected for the Nimbus Project in April 2021 and are splitting the $1.2 billion contract. As part of the contract, the two companies have also committed to “reciprocal procurement and industrial cooperation in Israel at the rate of 20% of the contract value.” In August 2023, Amazon announced that it would be investing $7.2 billion through 2037 to set up a cloud-based regional data center in Israel.
In a separate tender, Israel contracted consulting firm Somekh Chaikin-KPMG, an affiliate of the Anglo-Dutch multinational KPMG, to establish a government cloud migration strategy. Dozens of other Israeli companies are involved in multiple projects to gradually migrate the government’s databases and systems to the Nimbus platform.
Knowing from the start that this project is controversial and would draw negative public attention to the companies involved in it, the Israeli government built clauses into the contract to prevent these companies from withdrawing. A lawyer for the Israeli government said the tender was designed to prevent the companies from shutting down services altogether or “denying services to particular government entities.”
Other government entities that use Nimbus and directly administer Israel’s policies of apartheid and persecution include the Israeli Security Agency (Shabak/"Shin Bet"), Police, Prison Service, and land and water authorities. Israel’s two large state-owned weapons manufacturers, Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael, are also Nimbus users.
The list of Nimbus users also includes the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization, which works to expand Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights. Israeli cities and local governments also have access to the Nimbus platform, meaning that it could directly serve Israel’s illegal settlements.
In October 2021, a few months after Amazon and Google won the tender, hundreds of employees published a joint statement calling on the two companies to pull out of the project. The statement read, in part, “We envision a future where technology brings people together and makes life better for everyone. To build that brighter future, the companies we work for need to stop contracting with any and all militarized organizations in the US and beyond.”
Project Nimbus is not Amazon’s first involvement in human rights violations as part of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The company’s online retail platform and its Whole Foods brick-and-mortar stores carry many products that are manufactured in Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. This includes Dead Sea cosmetics made by Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories, tahini products made by Ahdut/Achva, mounting systems made by Barkan, and many more.
In 2019, Amazon started offering free shipping to Israel, including to its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The company did not offer a comparable service in the occupied Palestinian territory, including towns and villages located very close to illegal settlements. In March 2020, Amazon reversed its policy and started offering free delivery to customers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Immigrant Surveillance Systems
Amazon’s government cloud platform AWS GovCloud is used to host many of the databases and systems used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its agencies Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to track, monitor, and deport immigrants.
CBP relies heavily on AWS and has 62% of its systems on Amazon’s servers as of January 2023, according to an agency solicitation document. This “includes 73 application components determined to be High Value Assets and critical to the ongoing success of CBP’s mission.” Without continued access to AWS, the document states, “DHS and CBP would experience catastrophic, nation-wide outage impacts.”
Since Amazon typically does not contract directly with these agencies, but rather through third-party providers, it is difficult to identify all DHS systems that are stored on AWS. Notable examples of DHS systems known to be hosted on AWS GovCloud include:
- Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART): DHS’s central biometric database in development, which has been hosted on AWS since its inception. Designed to replace a similar system named IDENT, HART can store, match, process, and share biometric and biographic information on hundreds of millions of people, significantly expanding the use of facial recognition and storage capacity of IDENT. In 2020, DHS broadened the types of biometrics it can require from immigrants and nearly doubled the number of people required to submit biometric information. HART also sources this information from and shares it with other federal agencies, local law enforcement, and some foreign governments. The contract for HART was initially held by Northrop Grumman and now by Peraton.
- Investigative Case Management (ICM): This Palantir-designed ICE system was migrated to AWS in 2018 by Booz Allen Hamilton. The system stores immigrants’ data from multiple sources, including family relationships, immigration history, employment history, biometric identification, license plate numbers, social media profiles, and contact information. ICE has used ICM to target and deport individuals during the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. The system was used in 2017 to track down the parents and other relatives of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S.–Mexico border in what turned out to be a precursor to the Trump administration’s family separation policy.
- ATLAS: A USCIS database used to target immigrants after they receive citizenship for the purpose of revoking it. The system pulls information from immigration case files in search of “fraud patterns in immigration benefit filings…either pre- or post-adjudication,” meaning that those with citizenship continue to be monitored potentially indefinitely.
- Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS): A database that ICE accesses through ICM to build cases for prosecution.
- Customer Profile Management Service (CPMS): A USCIS database containing biometric and biographic information on immigrants applying for residency. CPMS interfaces with FBI databases to run background checks on applicants. DHS can retain data collected in the system for 100 years after a person’s date of birth.
- Refugee Case Processing and Security Vetting: A USCIS system that runs background checks on refugees and includes data from other agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, allowing “users to input, monitor, update, and communicate refugee case statuses and decisions.”
- Repository for Analytics in a Virtualized Environment (RAVEn): This system draws on information from platforms including the commercial phone surveillance platform Pen-Link, ICE’s Immigration Bond Management System, and DHS’s main biometrics database HART (see above). RAVEn runs advanced analytics using artificial intelligence and big data on multiple databases across DHS to make complex connections and patterns in order to better target individuals and groups of interest in DHS investigations.
- CBP One: A mobile application used by asylum seekers and visa requesters, and for other CBP services. Although photos are not directly stored in AWS GovCloud, biographic data may be stored in the system for up to a year. CBP One came under scrutiny after asylum seekers using the app accused it of being ineffective, prolonging waiting periods, and failing to include family members in interviews requested by a single person.
- Automated Real-time Identity Exchange System (ARIES): A system created to handle international fingerprint sharing between DHS, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) with foreign governments. ARIES supports other biometrics-based programs such as the International Biometric Information Sharing Program, which is used to exchange fingerprint data between the U.S. and “foreign partners.”
- BEI-e3Border Enforcement Secondary Tool (BEST): A system that acts as the CBP portal to ICE’s Enforcement Integrated Database (EID) and DHS’s biometric database, IDENT, and is used to collect and transmit data to law enforcement agencies. EID contains biometric and other information collected by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations agents and is shared with CBP, other federal agencies, and Mexico’s government.
Trying to expand its services to DHS beyond cloud storage, Amazon pitched its facial recognition software, known as Rekognition, to ICE in 2018. There is no evidence, however, that ICE uses Rekognition. See “Police Surveillance” below for more information about Rekognition.
Amazon Air, ICE Deportations, and Israel Aerospace Industries
Amazon owns a 19.5% stake in Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), an airline holding company that provides deportation flights for ICE. ATSG’s cargo airline, Air Transport International, is one of two airlines that comprise the bulk of Amazon’s air fleet (“Amazon Air”) since it was established in 2016.
ATSG’s passenger charter airline, Omni Air International, is the sole provider of “special high-risk charter” deportation flights for ICE, as no other company can provide these services on ICE’s schedule. These are flights that involve deporting people who “fail to comply” with ICE’s orders or other “high-profile” deportations. ICE does not contract Omni Air directly for deportation flights, but through an intermediary broker company called Classic Air Charter, which arranges most ICE air deportations.
For years, ATSG has been relying on Israeli state-owned arms manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to convert its Boeing 767 aircraft from a passenger to cargo configuration. Since being contracted for this work in 2010, IAI converted more than 150 planes for ATSG by 2024, including Amazon Air's fleet. ATSG further contracted IAI in 2024 for engine maintenance.
ATSG reports having a “long-standing strategic customer relationship” with Amazon, which accounted for 34% of ATSG's 2023 revenue. Amazon acquired its minority stake in ATSG in 2020 and has the option to increase its share to 40%. In 2024, the companies extended their agreement at least until 2029 and expanded it to include more planes.
Prison Surveillance
Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts multiple products that are used to surveil people incarcerated in the U.S. Similar to its business with DHS, Amazon does not generally provide these products directly to prison authorities, but rather through third-party providers, making it difficult to identify the full extent of its involvement in the prison industry. Below are just two known examples out of likely many more.
LEO Technologies, a high-tech surveillance company that develops applications specifically for prisons and police departments, uses AWS for its Versus phone monitoring system. Versus automates prison phone monitoring so that prison guards can receive near real-time alerts about what people who are incarcerated discuss, without having to manually listen to hours of calls. The company operates in at least 26 prisons in 11 states. It uses AWS cloud computing to transcribe recorded calls and then analyzes the text for specific keywords. Beginning in 2020, LEO Technologies started claiming that Versus can help detect COVID-19 within prisons, a practice that has been criticized by the ACLU.
JailCore, a company that develops prison management systems, uses AWS to store detailed information about the daily activities of people who are incarcerated, including when they use the restroom, shower, eat, receive visits and packages, and participate in recreational activities. JailCore’s data stored on AWS was found in 2020 to be unsecured, having leaked 36,077 people’s records in several U.S. states.
Police Surveillance: Ring and Rekognition
Amazon’s subsidiary Ring makes “smart” doorbells with video/motion cameras and allows police to access and use the footage it collects. In 2018, three months after Amazon acquired Ring, it launched the Neighbors app, which allows users to report crimes and upload footage captured by their Ring devices. Ring has a designated Law Enforcement Neighbors Portal that allows police departments to request, obtain, view, and download Ring footage without a warrant and to store that footage indefinitely. This tool is tailored to police processes, allowing police, for example, to organize videos according to investigation case numbers.
Ring brands itself as a law enforcement company and has been aggressively marketing its technology for police use. In 2016, before Ring was acquired by Amazon, the company’s CEO boasted that it is “officially declaring war” on “dirtbag criminals.” Ring hosts annual parties at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference and has trained police departments on obtaining video footage without a warrant. Police departments sign agreements with Ring that give them free access to the Neighbors Portal in return for encouraging the communities they police to use Ring devices and the Neighbors app. Ring also offered its users product discounts if they reported “suspicious activity” to the police. In one instance, the El Monte Police Department in California promised people free Ring devices in exchange for testifying in criminal cases.
It is unknown which and how many police departments in the U.S. use Rekognition, and even Amazon claimed that it does not know or keep track of this information. However, it is known that the number of U.S. police departments that use Ring’s Neighbors Portal reached more than 2,500 by September 2023, including some of the largest cities in the U.S., such as Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Francisco, and San Jose. Prior to 2019, only 60 police departments used Ring.
Ring’s policies and law enforcement relationships jeopardize privacy, lack regulation, rely on fear-mongering, and enable increased policing, surveillance, and racial profiling, in what the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls a “digital porch-to-police pipeline.”
In 2023, users accused the Neighbors app of sharing messages with Los Angeles police without their consent. Although only messages classified by users as a crime were supposed to be sent to the police, messages between Neighbors employees and Los Angeles police revealed that several more categories landed in police inboxes.
Amazon has plans to equip Ring doorbells with facial recognition tools for police use. According to the ACLU, Amazon filed a patent application for a Ring doorbell with facial recognition software that police could use to match faces from doorbell video feeds with their internal photo databases. This system would implement “watch lists” that could alert police when certain individuals are captured by a doorbell camera. Until facial recognition is integrated into its doorbell, Ring will rely on workers from its Ukraine office to manually tag people and objects found in its video feeds. In 2020, Ring received over 1,800 police requests to access its video feeds but refused to disclose how many users’ footage was shared with police.
In addition to Ring, Amazon sells its facial recognition software, Rekognition, to law enforcement agencies. Using facial recognition and facial analysis technology, Rekognition can identify people in a crowd in real-time by pulling facial IDs from a single video frame; store this data for later use; and cross-reference it against databases.
In 2018, in response to mounting public, investor, and employee pressure, Amazon stated that it was “unwaveringly in support of our law enforcement, defense, and intelligence community,” even if it does not “know everything they’re actually utilizing the tool for.” However, amidst nationwide protests against police brutality, Amazon announced “a one-year moratorium on police use of [its] facial recognition technology” in 2020, except to “help rescue human trafficking victims and reunite missing children with their families.” Similarly, Ring stated that it “will neither sell nor offer facial recognition technology to law enforcement.” As detailed above, Ring does not yet have facial recognition capabilities.
In May 2021, Amazon announced that it would extend its moratorium “until further notice,” but Ring keeps signing new law enforcement agreements. In 2024, the DOJ disclosed that the FBI is starting to use Rekognition, but declined to disclose whether that includes any facial recognition capabilities.
Other Controversies
Amazon’s controversies are too numerous to list and include dismal working conditions, union busting, monopolistic behavior, tax avoidance, and fueling the climate crisis.
In October 2023, The Guardian reported that Amazon was hiring workers from Nepal via a Saudi labor supply company that was accused of holding individuals against their will and under inhumane conditions. Workers reported that in addition to being tricked into working, conditions in the Amazon warehouses were harsh, and they were forced to pay “recruiting fees” to the Saudi company. Individuals interviewed by The Guardian were fired without warning and forced to pay penalties for supposedly breaching their contract with the recruiting company. These practices are considered “markers for potential labor trafficking under U.S. law and [United Nations] standards,” according to The Guardian.
In September 2023, the U.S. The Federal Trade Commission and 17 U.S. states sued Amazon for violating antitrust laws, stating that the company overcharges consumers and sets unreasonable conditions for smaller businesses to compete against it.
In 2020, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) awarded Amazon a “secret” contract potentially worth “tens of billions of dollars” to continue providing cloud computing services to the agency. Although the nature and details of the contract remain classified, prior contracts have raised concerns about how much Amazon is willing to share with the CIA (i.e., customer data). Amazon has applauded the CIA’s willingness and commitment to extend its use of cloud computing, as the agency opened up a bidding process in 2019 to expand its initial $600 million cloud infrastructure developed entirely by AWS in 2013.
Amazon has introduced biometric technologies for commercial uses. For example, the company developed Amazon One, a palm print scanner for customers to make payments at Amazon stores. In 2021, Amazon announced that the technology would be used for concert entry at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, escalating concerns about how else the technology could be used in the future. Hundreds of artists and organizations called on Red Rocks to cancel contracts and the use of Amazon One.
- On March 10, 2022, organizers at Fight for the Future received confirmation from the staff at Denver Arts and Venues, the agency that manages concert venue Red Rocks Amphitheater, that Amazon's palm scanning technology will no longer be used at any of their venues. The decision followed a months-long campaign by activists, artists, and more than 35 human rights organizations, including AFSC, aimed at pressuring Red Rocks, its ticketing partner AXS, and AEG Worldwide to cancel all contracts and plans to use Amazon's palm scanning technology for event entry, and to ban all biometric surveillance at venues and events.