"Clouds gather over Google’s Saudi deal", 2 Feb 2021

Ten days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, Abdullah Alaoudh was at his home in Washington, D.C. catching up with emails, when a warning banner flashed up on his screen. “Google may have detected government-backed attackers trying to steal your password,” read the text, advising him to tighten his online security.

... Alaoudh is a leading figure in a US-based group advocating for democracy and human rights in the Arab world. Known as DAWN, it was founded by the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, before government agents murdered him in 2018. Since then, it has been pressing the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to account for his suspected role in the killing.

Alaoudh says that he knows of five other dissidents who received an identical Google warning at the same time, suggesting a coordinated attack.

There was an extra twist to this suspected cyber-attack, though, with the warning coming from Google. Days earlier, Alaoudh had learned of a deal the tech giant had signed to provide cloud computing services in Saudi Arabia, which he and other dissidents fear will vastly increase the government’s ability to target its opponents and control local digital activity.

The agreement with a subsidiary of Aramco, the state-controlled oil company, has had little publicity... But, as the news has begun to filter out more widely this year, Saudi exiles who have fled Bin Salman’s repression have reacted with fury.

“Google is helping to whitewash MBS’s reputation, after the murder of Khashoggi,” said Lina al-Hathloul, whose sister Loujain captured international attention with her videos posted on Google-owned YouTube, protesting against a ban on women driving.

... Hathloul accused Google of putting itself in position to help the Saudi authorities stifle dissent on a wider scale.

... Google has released little information about its Saudi plans, but one client does get a namecheck: Noon, a joint UAE-Saudi e-commerce venture, seen as the main regional rival to Amazon.

... Google’s own principles include commitments not to employ AI “technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms,” or “whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

How those principles can be upheld working with a Saudi government that has shown it is willing to kill its critics remains unclear. Google did not respond to a request for comment for this article.