This is a longer, more in-depth version of what @avilewis posted from mstdn.ca, which he posted on FB. I get it. I was on mstdn.ca too, and the character limit was my biggest gripe... But now I'm on beige.party so I can post the whole damn thing for ya'lls, links and all. ;)
'This post has been on my mind for a few days now, so I’m going to say something about it.
The Minister of AI having an "ongoing engagement" with the government of Israel on technology and AI is deeply concerning. No, it’s just plain wrong. It makes Canada vulnerable to international legal consequences, and it takes Canada far down the wrong path.
The post itself radiates the same kind of defiant impunity we’ve seen from both Israel and the Trump administration when it comes to flouting international law.
Here’s the case:
The ICJ has found that there is a plausible genocide going on in Gaza, committed by Israel.
Israel has been using AI to mass target Palestinians for years. It has used the genocide in Gaza to accelerate this technique, ramping up the speed of AI targeting to create what Israeli journalists called a “mass assassination factory”.
This is not new. Israel has long used its apartheid system, built on top of an almost 60-year illegal occupation, as a laboratory for technologies of social control, violence and dispossession. And it has then turned those cruel and immoral technologies into a major export industry - including selling phone hacking tech to bad actors all over the world.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/2684-the-palestine-laboratory
Canada should not be exploring deeper collaboration with Israel around these tools and technologies: quite the opposite. We should be doing everything we can - diplomatically and economically - to rein in their sale and use around the world. Just as we should be using every tool we have to rein in Israel’s impunity and ongoing genocide.
Providing cover and normalization for Israel as an exporter of these technologies is not just wrong, it’s dangerous for Canada. Israel is a country still in the act of committing an ongoing genocide. Almost 500 people have been killed by Israel since the so-called “ceasefire” started.
Talking AI and other tech tools with Israel opens Canada up to international censure, isolation and even indictment.
And it offers a stark contrast with the kind of story the Prime Minister is telling about Canada these days.
Many Canadians were proud to hear Mark Carney pledge that Canada would help forge a new international order that would be "fairer" than the last.
This sure isn't it.
We can't lecture the world about shredding the international rules-based order and then pal around with the people who have been shredding it before our very eyes for the last 2 years - not to mention all the decades of occupation and apartheid that preceded this horrific moment.'
- Avi Lewis
