Report: Google, Amazon agreed to alert Israel on foreign court data requests

Google and Amazon agreed to extraordinary terms in their $1.2bn Project Nimbus contract with Israel, alerting it when legal requests for data were made, a new investigative report has revealed. 

The 2021 deal, covering cloud and AI services for Israel’s government, military, and security agencies, includes clauses forbidding the companies from limiting how Israel uses their products, even if it breaches their own terms of service, leaked Israeli Finance Ministry documents obtained by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian show. 

The contract also compelled Google and Amazon to secretly alert Israel if a foreign court demanded access to its data, sidestepping gag orders that normally bar such disclosure.

According to the investigation, the alert was done through a covert “winking mechanism” where coded payments that correspond to the country’s dialling code, were made if data was requested by a foreign court. 

The deal allowed Israel to not only evade legal oversight but also use the companies’ technology without restriction.

The revelations exposes the complicity of global tech giants in reinforcing Israel’s digital and military control over Palestinian lives.