Military, Security & Surveillance

Gun manufacturer Remington and its insurers have agreed to pay $73 million to kill a lawsuit over the company’s marketing of military-style weapons to the general public – specifically the Bushmaster AR-15 - used by a gunman to kill children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012. Read More

Anne Schroeter and Cannelle Lavite of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights speak by video with CorpWatch about European arms exporters supplying weapons to a Saudi-led military coalition currently involved in bombing Yemen. These companies include Airbus, BAE Systems, Dassault Aviation, Leonardo, MBDA, Raytheon, Rheinmetall and Thales. Read More

Billions of euros in bank loans and investments are flowing into companies operating in Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They include construction contractors like HeidelbergCement and Volvo, travel operators like Airbnb, Booking, and Expedia, as well as military and surveillance contractors like Cisco, Elbit Systems and Motorola. Read More

Many of the military generals who directed the war in Afghanistan over the last two decades have taken up lucrative jobs as members of the boards of directors of major military contractors that take in billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon every year. Read More

Oracle, one of the world’s largest software companies, has been marketing surveillance technology to Chinese police forces, according to a series of reports by the Intercept. In doing so, Oracle is joined by a number of other major U.S. companies like Intel, Hewlett Packard, Seagate Technology and Western Digital. Read More

CorpWatch executive director Pratap Chatterjee interviews Anna Feigenbaum, associate professor in Digital media & communication at Bournemouth University in the Southwest of England, on the role of private sector companies that manufacture riot control weaponry, used against protestors around the world. Read More

Last month thousands of Black Lives Matter activists gathered peacefully outside the White House in Washington D.C. to protest the killing of George Floyd. They were met with unexpected force as police dispersed them with tear gas and flash bangs so that President Donald Trump could conduct a photo-op. Read More

Google, the Silicon Valley search giant, has hired IRI consultants, a market research firm notorious for aggressive union busting, likely in response to multiple recent employee protests. In a disturbing move – possibly related - five employees involved in the protests, were recently fired for allegedly breaching data security policies. Read More

The city of Denver, Colorado, recently voted 8-4 not to renew $10.6 million in contracts with CoreCivic and Geo Group, the two largest prison contractors in the U.S. The vote was a response to local concerns over human rights abuse at for-profit prisons and undocumented migrant detention centers. Read More

Emails released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has tapped into car license plate surveillance data gathered by Vigilant Solutions, based in Livermore, California, and the Irvine Company, a real estate business based in Newport Beach, California, despite previous denials. Read More