Surveillance State in 2026: Quaker Witness Against Three C’s

By South Jersey Friends for Peace | Sixth Month, 2026

“Technology is a powerful tool in our witness work… But Tech can also be problematic, summed up in the three C’s: Creepy surveillance, Corporate exploitation, and Complicit partnership with military contractors.”
— Quakers for Peace in Palestine/Israel

In the spring of 2026, as we scroll through news of ceasefire violations in Gaza or the latest political turmoil in Washington, we do so through a glass darkly. The very devices that allow us to witness the suffering of our Palestinian neighbors—breaking our hearts via livestream—are the same devices being weaponized against us and them.

For Friends in South Jersey, the call to “let our lives speak” requires us to look hard at the architecture of the 2026 surveillance state. This is not a far-off dystopia; it is the operating system of our current reality. As Quakers for Peace has noted, the problem is the Three C’s: Creepy surveillance of our devices, Corporate exploitation of our data, and Complicity with military-industrial violence.

Here is what we know about how surveillance in 2026 is targeting our neighbors, our families, and the global community—and how the Spirit calls us to resist.

Our Corporate-Military Fusion: The “Palestine Lab” of War

The most disturbing development in 2026 is the open acknowledgment that the genocide and occupation in Palestine have served as a “live-fire laboratory” for surveillance technologies that are now returning to the United States and Europe.

According to a recent report by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, the phrase “battle-tested” is not a marketing gimmick; it is a warning. Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), recently stated:

“When we describe Palestine as a laboratory, we’re naming how surveillance tools, artificial intelligence targeting systems and weapons are tested on a civilian population living under occupation without any consent or accountability. Surveillance and weapons systems come back into our own policing, our own borders and our own wars.” 

We see this specifically in the case of Microsoft. In May 2026, reports confirmed that the tech giant dismissed the General Manager of its Israel branch following an internal investigation into the use of the “Azure” cloud platform by Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200. This unit used Microsoft’s cloud to store and analyze intercepted communications of Palestinians—processing up to “one million calls per hour”—to facilitate mass surveillance and targeting in Gaza .

When we use Microsoft Outlook or Azure, we are digitally adjacent to a system that maps Palestinian society for purposes of airstrikes. Jalal Abukhater, a Palestinian policy manager at 7amleh (the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media), warns:

“I cannot overestimate how much this regime of surveillance has control over Palestinians. In Gaza, it is used to determine whether a family will be killed in their own home.” 

The Battle Over AI and the Pentagon

The year 2026 has also seen a dramatic clash between AI companies and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) over the ethics of mass surveillance. In February, the Pentagon designated the AI firm Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security”—effectively blacklisting them—because the company refused to allow its AI models to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons .

U.S. government wanted “unrestricted access.” When Anthropic said no, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth imposed a deadline. While Anthropic fought back in court, OpenAI quickly stepped in to sign a deal, removing language previously prohibiting military use .

This exposes the lie of “neutrality” in tech. As Privacy International notes, “An entire industry has now made the shift to war.’ Surveillance powers developed to track Palestinians are being integrated into infrastructures of a U.S. homeland’s apparatus.

Who Sponsors the Identity Cartel? Hint: Your Data Is Not Safe

Beyond even the battlefield, domestic surveillance is booming through the ad-tech industry. A disturbing investigation in The American Prospect reveals that Publicis Groupe (a global ad giant) is finalizing a $2.5 billion takeover of LiveRamp, a data broker that has built “identity graphs” on 245 million Americans—virtually every adult in the U.S. .

These graphs combine your web activity, medical history, financial transactions, and physical travel. The concern for Friends is not just privacy, but safety. In 2026, it was revealed that U.S. military troop locations were tracked using commercial location data sold to brokers. Senator Ron Wyden warned, “We need to start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat” .

If government can track soldiers via a weather app, how safe is an activist attending a Palestine rally in Philadelphia? Doxxing is no longer fringe threat; it is a business model.

Queries for Our Meetings

As we sit with this information, let us hold these queries in the Light:

1. Complicity: Are we willing to examine the supply chain of our communication tools? Do we know if our cloud providers are contracting with military entities that violate international law?
2. Witness: How do we balance the need for digital security (encryption, VPNs) with our testimony of transparency? Are we protecting the vulnerable in our community from “creepy surveillance”?
3. Boycott: Given the call from Palestinian civil society to “Follow the BDS Movement,” how do we disentangle our Meetings from tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft who are “complicit partners” in the occupation?

What could it mean? Decolonizing Our Tech

The situation is dire, but not hopeless. Quakers for Peace is hosting workshops with collectives like Tribe-X to teach activists how to “decolonize their tech”—moving away from surveillance-heavy platforms toward open-source, secure alternatives.

Penny Best, a Quaker activist, reminds us: “Our Quaker testimony of Peace must come with another core testimony, that of Justice. Peace without justice is not peace.” 

We cannot abandon the digital town square, but we must build it on our own terms. We must demand that our data not fund bombs. We must support legislation that reins in the ad-tech industry. And we must continue to watch the livestreams from Gaza, not as passive consumers of tragedy, but as active witnesses seeking accountability.

Action Item:
Join Quakers for Peace in Palestine/Israel for the online workshop “Tech & Palestine Solidarity” on Saturday, June 20, from noon to 1:30 p.m. ET. Register here: https://cutt.ly/UtMUKgeo

Resources & Contacts:

• FCNL (Quaker Lobby): Contact Hassan El-Tayyab for legislative updates on surveillance and Middle East policy.
• 7amleh (Digital Rights): Follow their reports on how Palestinian digital rights are violated.
• Quakers in Britain Press Office: media@quaker.org.uk (For updates on protest rights and surveillance laws) .

Let us walk cheerfully over the digital earth, answering that of God in everyone—even the algorithm.

Citations:

• Quakers for Peace in Palestine/Israel (Invitation Statement)
•  The American Prospect / Publicis-LiveRamp Merger
•  Al-Quds / Microsoft & Unit 8200
•  Penny Best, MK Quaker / Peace with Justice
•  Privacy International / Militarisation of Tech
•  The Next Web / Anthropic vs. Pentagon
•  Washington Report on Middle East Affairs / Palestine Lab

Article for South Jersey Quakers by peace-minded neighbors, written in spirit of query provided.