By Simon Jessop
LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) – A group of Alphabet shareholders are pressing the company to explain how it governs and controls the use of its technology and cloud services by governments for surveillance after the tech giant rejected calls for greater disclosure.
In a letter to Alphabet, seen by Reuters, the group asked for a meeting with management after the Google owner opposed a shareholder resolution seeking a report on how it oversees the related risks.
“Cloud-based services are a growing segment, and it’s getting more and more militarized,” said Marcela Pinilla, director of sustainable investing at Zevin Asset Management, which wrote the letter signed by 42 organizations and 14 individuals managing a combined $1.15 trillion in assets.
“We don’t see that they have strict controls over intervention in high-risk contexts. That’s very risky for them if they don’t have oversight of how their infrastructure is being used.”
The letter’s signatories together own about $2.2 billion of Alphabet’s shares, Pinilla said.
Alphabet did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
When urging shareholders to vote against the resolution, it said it had a “robust, multi-layered framework for data privacy and security” and that existing disclosures “already provide meaningful transparency around government access to data”.
It added that it maintains “rigorous oversight” of related risks and that a second report would be “duplicative and an ineffective use of our resources”.
The letter is part of a broader push by investors on data privacy and artificial intelligence governance at companies including Microsoft, Amazon and Apple, as cloud and AI services become more embedded in government and military operations.
The investors said they want to understand how Alphabet assesses and mitigates the risk of misuse of its technology and services, and how it ensures government contracts give it the authority to intervene or cancel agreements if risks escalate.
A resolution calling for data on the company’s human rights due diligence secured an estimated 11.9% of independent votes last year but just 4.5% of total votes, partly due to the voting power of insiders such as founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
MASS SURVEILLANCE CONCERNS
The letter cited concerns around Google’s provision of services to U.S. immigration authorities, its role in Project Nimbus – a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with Israel – and its operations in Saudi Arabia.
