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Three items here – from The Electronic Intifada, PSC and Global Exchange – plus links about HP

Using biometric ID – here provided by Unipass – at Ben Gurion airport. Biometric scanners have been used in Israel since 2010.

The boycott of US information technology giant Hewlett-Packard has recently gained renewed interest, becoming the “hot new” target for Palestine solidarity campaigners in several countries.

An international week of action targeting HP will take place from 25 November to 3 December, a culmination of recent efforts around the world.

HP has long been criticized by the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign due to its role in Israeli violations of Palestinian rights. The company boasts of a “massive presence” in Israel, with more than 5,700 employees there, and is one of the Israeli military’s main information technology suppliers.

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation — now renamed the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights — and the Palestinian BDS National Committee recently hosted two webinars on the HP boycott.

The first, with approximately 120 participants from 18 countries, covered the reasons behind the campaign and included a talk with Caroline Hunter, who led the boycott of Polaroid due to its involvement in apartheid South Africa.

In 1970, Hunter, at the time a chemist with Polaroid, discovered use of the company’s instant photograph technology for the notorious passbooks used to control and limit movement of black South Africans. She was fired from her job over her activism to hold Polaroid to account.

The seven-year campaign, which was ultimately successful, initiated the anti-apartheid boycott and divestment movement in the United States and also served to educate the general public about South Africa.

The second webinar focused on how to implement HP boycott and divestment campaigns.

“Just as Polaroid was a critical boycott target in the apartheid era for providing imaging to South Africa’s notorious pass system, it’s time for the international community to come together to boycott HP companies for providing imaging to Israel’s notorious checkpoints today,” Anna Baltzer, an organizing director with the US Campaign, told The Electronic Intifada.

HP is deeply invested in Israel’s military and security infrastructure, supplying the IT systems for Israel’s defence ministry, supplying and managing the computer servers for the army and administering the IT infrastructure for the navy.

EDS Israel, now known as HP Enterprise Services Israel, developed, installed and services the Basel System, a biometric identification system.

First installed in 2004 at the Erez checkpoint in Gaza, the system now is operational at more than 20 Israeli checkpoints throughout the West Bank and around Gaza.

In addition to limiting Palestinian movement and enforcing a regime of segregation, the system collects biometric data as well as personal information on Palestinians.

The company provides printers and administers IT systems for the Israel Prison Service.

HP also maintains a development centre in the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit. It has provided data storage systems to the settlement of Ariel, and described it in an HP case study as the “capital of Samaria” — Israel’s term for the northern portion of the occupied West Bank — “in the heart of Israel.” The map in this case study depicts an Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with no reference to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A recent report by Public Knowledge Workshop, an Israeli transparency nonprofit, found that exclusive of Israel’s defence ministry, “HP has the largest number of contracts with the government exempt from tenders of any private sector entity.”

It is the technological underpinning of Israeli oppression that prompted an HP boycott campaign across all of historic Palestine.

The campaign Mutharkeen, or “movers,” was initiated by the Palestinian Youth Together for Change project, and has been raising awareness through presentations to community groups, students and universities in Gaza, the West Bank and present-day Israel.

The group is collecting signatures for a pledge that, according to its literature, defines the HP boycott as a “rejection of the geographical and moral fragmentation imposed on us by Zionist colonization, and the suppression of our collective Palestinian identity.”

The HP boycott is also a national focus for the campaign group BDS Italy, which is encouraging organizations to pledge to free their offices of the company’s products.

The Italian trade union Unione Sindacale di Base recently voted unanimously to endorse the BDS campaign and called all its offices and 250,000 members not to purchase HP products.

The Italian Forum of Water Movements, the nongovernmental organization Un ponte per and the COBAS trade union have made similar pledges.

The UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign has also chosen HP as a key boycott target. More than 18,000 people have signed a pledge not to buy HP products and this past June activists in over 20 locations participated in a national day of action to protest the company’s involvement in Israel’s rights abuses.

HP has previously yielded to external pressure. In 1989, due to mounting anti-apartheid campaigns, HP distanced itself from South Africa, saying it would sell off its local unit, though it would continue to sell computers in the country.

In 1996, HP pulled out of Burma following a Massachusetts law on “selective purchasing” under which the commonwealth government avoided contracts with companies doing business there.

In 2014, the Presbyterian Church USA voted to divest from the company over its role in the Israeli occupation. Prior to the vote, HP attempted damage control with a letter to the church claiming the Basel System reduces “friction” at Israeli checkpoints.

Stephanie Westbrook is a US citizen based in Rome, Italy. Her articles have been published by Common Dreams, The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, In These Times and Z Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @stephinrome.

The unique identifiers found by a biometric eye-scanner, Image from Dreamstime, Popular Science.

What is Hewlett-Packard?

Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) is a US multinational information technology corporation. It is a global provider of computer products and IT services. It is also one of the top 25 defence contractors with the US Pentagon.

Why is Hewlett-Packard a BDS target?

Palestinian movement within the West Bank is tightly controlled by Israel through the use of checkpoints. The major checkpoints use what is known as the BASEL system. This system uses scanners with hand and facial recognition to collect biometric data about every Palestinian who uses the checkpoints.

The biometric data of nearly every Palestinian over the age of 16 is held by the Israeli authorities as part of Israel’s system of control and repression.

HP Enterprise Services, a division of HP, is responsible for developing, integrating and maintaining the BASEL system.

HP not only profits from developing systems to racially profile Palestinians and track and control their movements, it is also complicit in the Israeli apartheid which limits the parts of the West Bank which they can access, and which restricts their freedom of movement.

As such, it is complicit in the breach of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement…within the borders of each state.”

HP is also contracted to provide the Israeli navy’s IT infrastructure. The Israeli navy is used to enforce the illegal blockade of Gaza from the sea, to prevent Palestinian fishermen from carrying out their trade, and to bombard Gaza during major assaults.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza constitutes collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and designates it as a war crime. By contracting with the Israeli navy, HP becomes complicit in the Israeli state’s war crimes against Gaza.

HP has, in the past, supplied PCs to the Israeli army, which enforces the lethal occupation of Palestinian land.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – don’t buy HP products!

Why Hewlett-Packard?

from Global Exchange, no date.

All photos from Who Profits?

The BASEL System

Palestinians wishing to enter Israel must apply for a magnetic biometric ID card with the Israeli occupation authorities; each electronic ID card contains biometric, personal, and security information. While only a fraction of Palestinians who apply for permits actually receive them, each applicant’s information is kept and stored in a database held by the Israeli authorities. Over the years, Israel has accumulated this information into a population registry that contains information about every Palestinian in the occupied Palestinian territory over the age of 16. The biometric data is also collected as part of the BASEL system (see picture), a biometric access control system, which is installed in major Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank. This system is used to restrict Palestinian movement across checkpoints inside the West Bank and to grant or deny special movement privileges (see for example this UN Report). EDS Israel, now part of HP Enterprise Services, is responsible for developing, integrating and maintaining the BASEL system.

The BASEL system is installed in checkpoints deep inside the occupied territory, and is used as part of the separate road system in the West Bank, restricting all Palestinian movement. Although the checkpoints system is often portrayed by Israel as a “security measure,” the main checkpoints are deep inside the occupied territory, restricting movement between Palestinian cities. Palestinians wishing to go into Israel, mostly as day workers, are still able to avoid these and find their way. The checkpoints system, and the BASEL system in it, is a control mechanism used to repress and submit the Palestinian civilian population in the occupied West Bank. See our Separation Wall and Checkpoints page to learn more about how these obstructions deny Palestinian’s freedom of movement in their own land, restrict their access to medical care, employment and educations services, and decimate their commerce and economy.

Israeli ID System
In 2008, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior announced a contract with HP to manufacture five million Israeli biometric ID cards. Through its subsidiary EDS, HP also won a contract to systemize the collection of biometric and photographic data for these ID cards. See more about the way these contracts were obtained by HP in the latest Who Profits report: Technologies of Control: HP’s involvement in the Israeli Occupation. The Israeli ID system is stratified by ethnicity and religion, and the new biometric database and ID cards system are a part of the state’s systemized and tiered control of ethnic and national minorities.

Under the Israeli ID system, blue IDs designate “Israeli citizens” and orange and green IDs are given to Palestinians in the oPt, provided they have a permit to enter Israel. Blue IDs are not granted to non-Jews in the occupied territory or to non-Jewish descendants of refugees from the area. Granting full citizenship to a small number of Palestinians who were present in the post 1948-war census in their own homes has allowed Israel to deny it to other Palestinians who fled or were forcibly removed during the creation of the state of Israel. As a 2007 UN Report states, over 250,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, which was annexed into the state of Israel, have not been granted citizenship, and thousands more have been denied citizenship within state borders based on technical restrictions that apply only to non-Jewish residents. In the state’s population registry, ethnicity/nationality is recorded and labeled on state IDs in various ways. The Israeli ID system reinforces the political and economic inequalities between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, Arabs and non-Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, and restricts the mobility of select groups.

Contracts with the Israeli Army
HP has won a series of major contracts with various sections of the Army in the last two years. Among them are a two-year contract to supply all PCs to the army, a three-year virtualization tender, and a contract for the outsourcing of the Navy’s IT infrastructure, including the management and operation of its computer and communications centers, information security, and user support.

The Israeli army and navy are responsible for countless war crimes in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. See the following Amnesty International publications related to: Operation Cast Lead, The Siege of Gaza and the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Production in the Settlements
HP provided a computerized storage system to the illegal settlement of Ariel. A subsidiary of a main distributor of HP products, Matrix, has an offshore outsourcing project out of an illegal settlement in the West Bank.

U.S. Prisons and Immigration
HP also profits from the US prison system and aids Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2009, The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) awarded HP a contract to begin a multimillion-dollar effort to automate and streamline prisoner data systems. The project, called the Strategic Offender Management System (SOMS) replaced over 40 electronic and paper database systems, to create an “Electronic C-file” for inmates and provide the opportunity for electronic data exchange with Jails, Courts and the Office of Prison Healthcare Services. The HP website also describes their provisions for prisons across the country with offender, healthcare, visitor and administrative management and kiosk services through their HP Offender Management service.

Beginning in 2010, HP was awarded a contract by the US Department of Homeland Security ICE Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) to speed up the internal process of deciding a person’s documentation status. Senior vice president Dennis Stolkey described in the HP press release: “HP has deep applications expertise as well as a long, solid history with ICE that will enable us to create the best solution possible for the agency.”

Surveillance Technology
HP is not blameless in other countries as well in regard to technological support of surveillance and population control tactics. In China, HP bid on a contract to be a main supplier of servers or storage equipment for a project called “Peaceful Chongqing,” a plan to install roughly 500,000 cameras throughout the city. The aim, according to officials, is to prevent crime although human-rights advocates warn that it could instead target political activists.

In Iran, a Reuters investigation reveals how HP products were used to create a “powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile, and internet communications.” Along with products from several other technology companies, the HP products were sold to a Chinese corporation, ZTE, which then created and sold the surveillance system to the Telecommunication Co. of Iran (TCI). HP has previously been investigated for using a third party to sell products in Iran, despite U.S. sanctions.

And recently in Syria, HP products have also been used to target political dissidents. As this article reveals, “Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) equipment worth more than $500,000 has been installed in computer rooms in Syria, underpinning a surveillance system being built to monitor e-mails and Internet use…” An Italian company bought the HP equipment in Italy through resellers.

HP sells info on every Palestinian’s body to Israel