[HN Gopher] Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign
bribes
Author : jrepinc
Score : 471 points
Date : 2022-03-25 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| worik wrote:
| I have been reading the comments about bribing foreign companies.
| Very interesting
|
| I think it is pertinent to remind people here, especially
| subjects of the USA, that in the USA bribing politicians is a
| formal and accepted practise. Records are kept, they are publicly
| available.
|
| The hypocrisy of those politicians is legendary for all sorts of
| reasons, this is just a minor point. Bribery is only illegal if
| done informally in foreign countries or the private sector.
| jnwatson wrote:
| To be clear, this is not (just) a matter of ethics. If true,
| these acts are in violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices
| Act. Each violation can be up to 5 years in prison.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| I am just so sick of all the cheating. Every time you turn
| around, some business, politician, or wealthy person is corrupt
| as f** and everyone who can do anything about it won't.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's almost as if the people should form a more perfect union.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What are you doing about it? It's a democracy - like open
| source software, if you don't like it, change it.
| hulitu wrote:
| It is not a democracy. It is a corrupted democracy.
| Qem wrote:
| My work involves a public sector organization in Brazil. In the
| last years there was a big push towards microsoft products at my
| workplace, to a point where emails with announcements from
| corporate IT sometimes looks and sounds like spam pushing MS
| products. Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here
| too, or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here too,
| or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership.
|
| Usually the latter, often it is just marketing, but you can
| never discount the former, and the lines are often blurred.
| rbanffy wrote:
| No need to wonder. Of course it's bribery. Most likely not by
| Microsoft, but by their local VARs, with tacit corporate
| approval.
|
| All the blood, sweat and tears we gave during the early 2000's
| to make FLOSS the standard, how we advocated for it on grounds
| of openness and auditability, how it would - and did! - help
| foster a local industry... All this work and see it being
| undone by the current government and their cronies.
|
| As a note, Sao Paulo state, where I lived, was a very reliable
| income source for Microsoft.
| hulitu wrote:
| It is the same also in some automotive company.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| it is well documented in the 1990s antitrust documents against
| Microsoft Corp. that attorneys under contract with Microsoft,
| paid money to senior management at the Brazilian national phone
| system to adopt Microsoft Office as standard, _and remove_ any
| other system internally, IIR
| goodpoint wrote:
| It's well known that Microsoft has been giving bribes even to
| small companies for many decades.
|
| The entity of the bribes from MS are above average.
| tombert wrote:
| Is it considered a "bribe" if it's a transaction between
| private companies? I would think that's just considered a
| "discount" at that point.
|
| Not saying it's right, I'm just saying that I thought there
| might be a legal distinction.
| goodpoint wrote:
| It is a bribe because it goes into the pockets of
| individuals rather than savings for the company.
| tombert wrote:
| Ah, fair enough...I didn't realize that was something
| that happened, though I suppose I should not be
| surprised; I'm now reasonably convinced that is the
| reason that _anyone_ signed off on the use of Sharepoint.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| and it also leads to unfair competition.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| If the company is public traded, the IT manager is hurting
| the investors by accepting the bribes. If the company is
| owned by a family but big enough to have an IT department,
| well, they might solve their problems the Corleone way.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Microsoft products for large institutions are very popular;
| they don't need bribery (or even bad taste).
| rapsey wrote:
| MS is insanely powerful pretty much in every country in the
| world. They know damn well how to get into the power
| structures.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| They just had the advantage of having the _only_ viable GUI-
| based OS on mass market computers. Linux has only begun to be
| usable on the desktop around 2005-ish, Mac always was
| expensive because you had to buy Macs.
| worik wrote:
| That is untrue.
|
| In 1995 the Windows GUI was complete trash The Linux GUI
| _much_ better.
|
| I was the sole Linux guy (Microsoft Windows 95 mostly plus
| a HP Unix workstation the boss controlled fromOS/2
| desktop). The windows machine constantly crashed and ran
| like a steam roller in two feet of mud. Lots of mess, not
| much speed.
|
| It was _not_ the quality of the operating system that made
| Microsoft successful. They were successful despite having
| the worst operating system in that room. Significantly
| worse.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The reasons corporate IT uses Microsoft:
|
| * Backward compatibility: Ripping out everything and
| starting over is very expensive; what is the return on this
| investment for the company's bottom line?
|
| * Applications: Everything in business, perhaps outside
| creative arts, is compatible with Windows; much is only
| compatible with Windows.
|
| * Management: Active Directory is by far the leading tool
| for managing thousands of computers efficiently. That has a
| network effect: Other management tools, including for
| specific applications, integrate with AD. This automation
| greatly reduces labor costs and improves quality.
| 4oo4 wrote:
| If Microsoft can get away with this, what are the rest of the
| FAANGs doing that we don't know about?
|
| So nice that we legalized corruption and white collar crime in
| the United States, how disruptive!
| chrismcb wrote:
| I like how there is a ton of commentary on how to skip ethics
| training. If you are thinking of skipping ethics training... That
| training might be targeted at you.
| cryptica wrote:
| > "they're promoting the bad people. If you're doing the right
| thing, they won't promote you."
|
| I can relate to this. Seems to be an industry-wide phenomenon. It
| probably explains what's going on with the world.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I'm disappointed but not surprised that the title is
| editorialized. It specifically leaves off "whistleblower
| alleges". It's literally one disgruntled former employee claiming
| this. But as usual for HN these days a tiny populations claim -
| in this case a population of one - is stated as fact.
| pcurve wrote:
| Bribery is pretty common. In many countries you almost cannot
| do anything without greasing wheels. My Father was a head of
| publicly traded pharma. Stories he had about China and India in
| particular were fascinating and sad at the same time. One time
| he was told that somebody dumped a huge pile of paper trash in
| front of his newly opened drug packaging facility in China. He
| investigated to find there culprit. It turns out it was from a
| paper factory owner nearby. Asked why he did it, his answer was
| : "you didn't use my company as your paper supplier". My
| fathers response: "how was I supposed to know there was a paper
| supplier nearby!! And why didn't you come and introduce
| yourself before ?!?!"
|
| He ended up using the supplier and they did haul away the
| mountains of trash.
| sha256sum wrote:
| What's your point? One whistleblower alleged the NSA of the US
| was illegally conducting bulk surveillance across the entire
| world, including its own citizens. A court later ruled this
| program was illegal and unconstitutional.
|
| Are you saying we should discount all whistleblowers because it
| doesn't fit some preset narrative?
| stickfigure wrote:
| Not the parent, but I'm saying we shouldn't rush to judgement
| based on an accusation. Not everyone is Edward Snowden.
| qiskit wrote:
| Did you expect an army of whistleblowers? Aren't most
| whisteblowers solitary and generally disgruntled former
| employees? Your first point has some merit but is diminished by
| your attack on the whisteblower. Whistleblower laws exist to
| encourage disgruntled employees to expose wrongdoing in
| corporations/governments/etc. Not sure why you are so quick to
| dismiss the whistleblower in this case.
| treis wrote:
| The piece written by the whisteblower includes links to
| documents:
|
| https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-bribe...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think this is an excellent document that should really be
| the main article.
|
| One of the things I think this really highlights, and that
| absolutely _infuriated_ me during the Trump impeachment
| hearings, was that categorizing a whistleblower as a
| "disgruntled former employee" does not negate the evidence
| that they show of malfeasance.
|
| I mean, of course whistleblowers are usually disgruntled
| about something, but a major point of whistleblower
| protection laws is that the motives of the whistleblower _do
| not matter_. To the GP comment 's point, it's true we
| shouldn't just take accusations as proof, but the whole role
| of a whistleblower is to provide the "thread" that
| investigators can then pull on to get detailed evidence of
| what was going on. And, given the links to documents in the
| above post, I think this looks really, really bad for
| Microsoft.
| throwaways85989 wrote:
| Ah, yeah, company ethic lectures,pamphlets and statements. I love
| those on webpages.. right beside the company locations world map.
|
| Love it, when they then have branch offices, that "exclude" one
| another - as in you can not be active in both countries, without
| violating a law of one, and obviously bribing yourselves out of
| that to be active in both.
|
| At least they prevent some moral philosopher from starving, who
| got bribed to write this.
| sloan wrote:
| Why am I not surprised. Microsoft operates in all the sketchy
| countries.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| I reckon Microsoft and others haven't learned from Lockheed in
| the 70s. It'll only be a matter of time before we hear about
| other charges regarding Apple and Google
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| It may be that they have learned from Lockheed and tried to do
| the bribes in a better way.
| azemetre wrote:
| What is the lesson you're alluding too?
| FourHand451 wrote:
| There are a few:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals
| dukoid wrote:
| Every generation has to re-learn this lesson?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals
| topspin wrote:
| Has it been one full generation since the SEC was handed
| evidence of fraud (Madoff) and blew it off? That was only 14
| years ago.
| legalcorrection wrote:
| The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act should be repealed and American
| companies should be allowed to compete on equal footing with
| their foreign competitors. No other country, even if it
| technically has an FCPA-like law on the books, actually enforces
| it to the extent the US does. It means that everyone is free to
| openly participate in bribery to win foreign markets, markets
| where bribery is just how business is done, while American
| companies have their hands tied behind their backs. This has
| overall been a major hamper on American competitiveness while
| being a huge boon to middle-men and white collar criminal defense
| lawyers who specialize in working around the laws and defending
| against prosecutions.
| otterley wrote:
| Do you think our laws should be tuned for maximum profit, or to
| reflect who we are, ethically and morally, as a society?
| fallingknife wrote:
| From a moral standpoint I think we have to accept how other
| societies are run and act accordingly, and our laws should
| end at our borders.
| otterley wrote:
| That suggests that human beings are substantially different
| outside our borders, and that ethics are not universal.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I would say that's more or less observably true
| otterley wrote:
| Go on...
| missedthecue wrote:
| I don't think every culture has exactly the same ethical
| framework. One can easily imagine a few different
| examples where that's not the case.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think the question is more about whether you have the
| same ethical framework when dealing with other cultures
| as when dealing with your own, not whether other cultures
| tend toward different ethical standards themselves.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Sounds right to me. In fact that's one of the main
| reasons why we have different nations and borders in the
| first place. We should not assume our WEIRD values are
| universal.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
| otterley wrote:
| > In fact that's one of the main reasons why we have
| different nations and borders in the first place.
|
| I'm not so sure about that. We have different cultures,
| to be sure, and certainly different governments to which
| we pledge allegiance, each with limited reach. But the
| modern concept of statehood and universally-recognized,
| clearly-delineated borders is a relatively new
| phenomenon, dating only back to the 20th century. Borders
| and distinctions between territories before then were
| rather blurry. See, e.g., http://www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto
| /references/robinson_boundari....
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| But I don't think this refutes the notion that ethics and
| morals are not universal.
|
| Sure, rigid borders are relatively new but I don't think
| we should get bogged down in terminology. Maybe I should
| have said "government" instead of nation and "territory"
| instead of "borders".
| legalcorrection wrote:
| It's not about our laws, it's about their laws. Whether
| bribery is legal or otherwise tolerated seems to be a
| question properly for the country whose officials are being
| bribed. It may be hard to imagine, but this is just how it
| works in some countries. They don't pay their public
| officials enough, and everyone expects that they pad their
| inadequate official salaries with corruption. I certainly
| wouldn't want my country to be run that way, but it's just
| how some societies work.
|
| Yes, the bribery is technically illegal in most of those
| countries, but thinking that is is of primary importance is
| mistaking western legalism for a universal ethos. In many
| other places, the technical requirements of the law are much
| less important. The real law in all cases is what is actually
| practiced, which in these societies can be quite different
| from what's on the books.
| otterley wrote:
| > mistaking western legalism for a universal ethos.
|
| If our laws aren't reflecting a "universal ethos," then it
| seems to me we need to change our own laws. If, on the
| other hand, our laws are tuned to reflect our judgment that
| bribery is universally ethically and economically
| problematic for a multitude of defensible reasons
| (regardless of whether it's a common practice elsewhere),
| then perhaps we are doing the right thing.
|
| Sometimes theory and practice come into conflict.
| Persuading others to adopt our policies, which we believe
| to be grounded in universally applicable ethics, through
| economic pressure is the best thing we know how to do that
| doesn't involve going to war.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yes. It's not our governments job to prosecute foreign bribery.
| It's the foreign government's job. And if they don't do their
| job, I don't see how that's my problem.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| that stank flows upstream which is why we want it stamped
| out.
| Zigurd wrote:
| To do so would be to invite a large increase in corruption in
| businesses within the US.
| [deleted]
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I am against that. The result could be that US companies would
| go all in on bribing and make the countries even more corrupt.
| It would make the US even more hypocritical when they preach
| ethics to the world.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Perhaps (and I recognize that this is controversial) the US
| should reconsider its habit of preaching ethics to the world.
| Rury wrote:
| No, this reeks of putting money over ethics, and would likely
| increase corruption in the US. IMO, we shouldn't do business
| with countries via practices we view as corrupt, even if we
| were following their laws and would mean losing their business.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| In my view that law is to protect very big US companies that
| pay the middle men from the smaller US companies that don't.
| mring33621 wrote:
| I don't like it but I think this is a realistic opinion.
|
| Maybe overseas bribes become legal, but must be disclosed in a
| publicly-accessible format.
| 1024core wrote:
| The only way to stop this is to give the whistleblower a large
| cut of the fine: say, 50%. That will drive up the incentive to
| whistleblow; otherwise, all you get is a pink slip and a spot in
| the soup kitchen line.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| The US SEC started a similar program in 2012, but with a
| smaller cut (10-30%). It's been quite successful, with $1
| billion+ in whistleblower awards so far
|
| https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-177
| cryptica wrote:
| We have to abolish corporations. Nationalize them. The concept of
| an entity which spares directors from liability is ridiculous...
| It's a financial instrument designed for scams and nothing else.
| marricks wrote:
| Fridays are the days most interesting news lands because it's
| easiest to sweep it under the rug with the weekend.
|
| I wish news organizations where more courageous and held on to
| this stuff to Monday/Tuesday.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Looks like it was "..the whistleblower platform Lioness.." that
| released it today. Interesting that you point out it would have
| been more effective in the news cycle if it had landed another
| day.
|
| Perhaps this is a case of Hanlon's Razor and the whistleblowers
| need to get more savvy.
| twblalock wrote:
| Waiting several days to publish news is not courageous -- it's
| just late.
|
| The public expects news organizations to publish the news as
| soon as it's known.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Wouldn't people be more likely to see something in the news on
| a day when they're not busy with work?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I bet this is normal procedure for most companies that do
| business in countries where bribes are common. In Germany foreign
| bribes used to be even deductible.
| worik wrote:
| It is arguable that the prohibition of bribes is a cultural
| thing.
|
| So insisting on not bribing in other cultures is some sort of
| "imperialism".
|
| That would make bribing foreign officials a "legitimate"
| business expense.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Problem is that foreign entities bribing in foreign cultures
| is an even worse form of imperialism. Big corporations with
| deep pockets could totally distort the market in these
| countries by bribing generously instead of competing by
| merit. It's bad enough that lobbying (some may call it
| bribing) money plays such a big role in US economic policy so
| let's not make it even worse. Especially large scale bribing
| corrupts countries and their culture.
|
| Capitalism is only useful if there is honest competition in
| the market.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| If bribes are ok, why don't the criminals openly advertise
| their prices and what they are doing?
|
| Bribes do economic harm to people of the country, whether we
| call it 'culture' or something else.
| bnt wrote:
| Let's see how The Verge falls out of Microsoft's grace moving
| forward. The Verge had (what feels like) direct access to top MS
| execs for all product launches. I guess those days are over.
|
| Don't get me wrong, if this was picked up by the SEC or DOJ - I'd
| take it more seriously, but it sounds like accusations with no
| real proof.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Will MSN also fall out if Microsoft's grace?
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/microsoft-allegedly-connec...
| [deleted]
| tombert wrote:
| Wouldn't that be evidence that they have less reason to lie
| about this? This is potentially burning a bridge, which could
| potentially cost them financially long term.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Western countries look the other way when their companies exploit
| poor countries. Then let the same corrupt money to be be taken
| out from those poor countries and hidden in their banks and
| property markets. Microsoft is not alone in this many other
| companies do the same. I personally feel the biggest hate from
| the west for the chinese so called road and belt initiative is
| not that China is exploiting these countries rather China has
| pushed them out and taken over their scam.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Then let the same corrupt money to be be taken out from those
| poor countries and hidden in their banks and property markets.
|
| Coincidentally, here is an article that very issue in US
| property markets:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30805296
| president wrote:
| Well there is a geopolitical perspective to this as well right?
| Wouldn't want our biggest adversary to have strategic influence
| over these nations. Not to mention the potential intelligence
| capabilities from installing our equipment rather than theirs.
| Whether one country is more righteous than the other doesn't
| matter at this point - you should be rooting for the country
| that your survival depends on.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| People like to imagine that international relations are
| completely amoral; it's a sort of thrilling, Game-of-Thrones
| type fantasy. But that's not the case at all.
|
| Look at the EU, NATO and other US alliances (e.g., with
| Japan). They are connected held together by values. They are
| very imperfect and corrupt, but these alliances have lasted
| so long because there is no way, for example, Germany is
| attacking France again. It just doesn't make any sense,
| because of the values.
|
| International relations are fundamentally (but certainly not
| wholly) anarchy, but anarchy doesn't exclude values - perhaps
| it makes them even more powerful, relatively. As some have
| said, to a great degree, right makes might.
|
| In practice, blowback is one result of ignoring it: The US
| supported the Shah, a brutal dictator in Iran. When the Shah
| lost power in ~1979 - well, you can see that the US is still
| paying a price. The US supported some unsavory people to
| fight the Soviets in Afganistan; some of those people became
| Al Qaeda. The US armed and trained brutal right-wing militias
| in Central America to suppress enemies; some of them became
| today's Central American drug gangs. Meanwhile, while the US
| promotes democracy and freedom, it draws many, many into its
| orbit around the world.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > Meanwhile, while the US promotes democracy and freedom
|
| Didn't the US overthrow many democratically-elected
| governments (usually because they were leaning towards
| communism/the Soviets) and install undemocratic dictators
| in their place?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I pointed out times the US has done 'right' and when they
| have done 'wrong'. Promoting democracy and freedom in
| some times and places is not incompatible with
| overthrowing it in others. Right isn't incompatible with
| wrong; you can't find a single individual who doesn't
| contain both, much less an entire government. We can't
| wait for purity to start doing right, or we might as well
| withdraw to a monestary and pray.
| bllguo wrote:
| at least you're honest, most people don't get this far. but
| doesn't make your stance moral, I cannot justify keeping poor
| countries poor because of petty concerns like "we must remain
| #1"
| sakex wrote:
| Bribing in Africa is so common it could be considered a business
| practice
| notriddle wrote:
| That's an essential part of it.
|
| "We ordered them to not accept bribes! Never mind that we also
| ordered them to somehow convince these governments to run
| licensed copies of Windows instead of cracked copies, and since
| it costs them money while buying them nothing, the only way it
| could possibly be done is bribery. It's not our fault because
| we told them not to!"
| hulitu wrote:
| It is not limited to Africa. First world countries like to call
| it with a different name: lobby.
| sakex wrote:
| True, insider information is another big one
| datavirtue wrote:
| And in many other parts of the world. It is so bad that
| businesses in n the US did adopt it as a practice. The
| ballooned to such epic porportions that the US Senate sponsored
| a bill to make it in illegal. If it had been kept down to a
| mild roar the law would still be missing from the books.
|
| It is still bad because the incentives are still in place.
| Throw a little bit of money at a few people, get your business
| locked in. If you get caught you pay a very small portion of
| the profits and get to keep your business deal in place.
|
| The fines are a joke, and the rules are indeed for the little
| people.
| carapace wrote:
| I worked briefly for a startup that wanted a .sy domain. That's
| Syria. They had to get the State Dept. involved (Hillary
| Clinton had to sign one of the documents, she was Sec. of State
| at the time.) The package they sent to Syria was a kind of
| Matryoshka doll: a package with some grease (cash!) and another
| package inside, that in turn had the grease for the next level
| of the bureaucracy and another package for them to pass on,
| which contained more grease and another package... All in all
| four or five layers of payments and bureaucracy. They got the
| domain name but then abandoned it for some reason I don't know
| (I suspect it was just more trouble than it was worth to have
| "foo.sy" and deal with Syrian government rather than just
| "foosy.com".) US$20,000 down the drain. FWIW this was all
| official enough that it wasn't legally bribery.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Why do Americans think that the rest of the world operates
| according to the illusion that America pretends to follow?
| Payoffs aren't always bribes. They're more like a tax.
| xtracto wrote:
| Right... the PACs SuperPACs and other payments from private
| companies to lawmakers would be highly illegal in my country.
| Yet in the USA they are promoted and celebrated.
| otterley wrote:
| Source article: https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-
| illegal-bribe...
| Shadonototra wrote:
| I knew it, their only way to push their services globally was to
| resort to that kind of behavior with dirty money
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| If a government organization would want to use a Linux, how hard
| would it actually be? Is it a viable alternative?
| EnKopVand wrote:
| I spent 7 years working with digitalisation in the Danish
| public sector and it depends on what you mean, and what you
| want to pay for it. Basically the short answer is that it is
| impossible.
|
| What is often forgotten about non-tech enterprise here on HN is
| that a typical public sector organisation has a ratio of 20-50
| IT people (this is everyone, from the network and operations
| people to developers and project managers) per 10.000 employees
| in organisation where almost every employee uses some form of
| IT system to perform their duty.
|
| Some users will not be capable of telling you if they are on an
| iOS or Android devices, and almost all of them know Microsoft
| Office and Outlook because that is what every place they have
| ever worked and will ever work uses. Or to frame it
| differently, the change management and retraining of 10000
| employees is going to crush you, very, very quickly. On top of
| that your IT staff is certified and trained with Microsoft
| technologies, and most of them are likely happy about that to
| the point where they will leave your organisation if you push
| them toward Linux.
|
| That is the employees. There is also the technology, and all
| the IT systems that only works on windows and have no
| competitors. This can be everything from your million dollar
| MRI machine to the dentist program (dentists are part of the
| public sector in Denmark). Cutting ties with Microsoft
| completely, would mean you'd need someone to develop
| alternatives to these things. (Yes, your million dollar MRI
| machine shouldn't depend on windows XP, but it does).
|
| So obviously it's not impossible, nothing is, it's just really,
| really, expensive. It's so expensive that it will likely be it
| would be political suicide because the money you need to pay
| for the transition is going to come from firing nurses, school
| teachers, and other primary functions.
|
| That being said, a lot of public sector organisations do take
| open source seriously. Especially here in Europe. But there
| isn't a clean way to cut ties with Microsoft, and it's actually
| become harder and harder. Because where is the Linux
| alternative to office365?
|
| Disclaimer: I consider Microsoft to be the best external
| business partner that I've worked with while I was in the
| public sector.
| AlanYx wrote:
| The other challenge in the public sector is that the
| "business" itself is so heterogeneous that the IT management
| tends to be siloed, while people in these siloed orgs need to
| work with people in other siloed orgs. You can't switch the
| whole government wholesale; you'll get some fraction of
| business units to adopt something else and hope other units
| will slowly switch too, but in the meantime, you've got
| people trying to share documents with some intricate set of
| track changes, comments or some other special feature across
| orgs using different tech, and the roundtripping with
| different software causes some of that to be messed up and
| then you've got an ongoing IT support problem and
| dissatisfied stakeholders.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| How many native windows apps are being used?
|
| It sounds like it's always gonna be a messy migration, but I
| wonder if you can somewhat simplify it by moving all users to
| web apps? Basically as an intermediate transition step to
| first decouple usage from the underlying OS.
| worik wrote:
| In the end this is what will kill Microsoft Windows.
|
| It will not die because it a scary ball of buggy spaghetti,
| a security risk and an energy hog.
|
| It will die because people use cloud software in their
| browsers. Thank you Google (That hurt)
|
| Windows will continue, I fear, to power MRI machines,
| bank's server rooms, and (shudder) jet aeroplane cockpits
| and control software.
| themadturk wrote:
| And British type 45 destroyers [0]
|
| [0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/window
| s_for_w...
| madsbuch wrote:
| I do use Office365 on linux, I even develop Office plugins
| under Linux. So it would seem like a transition to cloud
| software would be the enabler of Linux based operating
| systems?
| rirze wrote:
| Didn't Germany at one point, try to do this? I'm not sure if
| they still are using Linux.
|
| Also certain Chinese agencies are most definitely using custom
| distros.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Yes, Germany did do this for a few years.
|
| And the Microsoft came calling again - guess what they use
| now?
|
| It is the example I used to tell clients about how if your
| organization is big enough, publicly visible enough and open
| to being in the news/or a case study) and has great lawyers,
| you can probably get Microsoft licensing for essentially
| "free".
|
| And those "nearly free" licenses will increase over the next
| 2-5 years.
|
| The cynic in me says that Germany did this to get better
| bargaining leverage with Microsoft...
|
| (Apparently they are cycling around back again, over the last
| couple years trying to transition away from Microsoft for
| some states/groups/municipalities within Germany)
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| It was the city of Munich [0], not the entirety of Germany.
|
| I think there is also Vicenza in Italy where the municipality
| is using Zorin Os. [1]
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
|
| [1] https://itsfoss.com/vicenza-windows-zorin/
| hulitu wrote:
| > Didn't Germany at one point, try to do this? I'm not sure
| if they still are using Linux.
|
| Well Gates made a "visit" in Munich to "convince" them that
| windows is better.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Not hard technically, but hard because people associate free
| things with cheap and there's a lot of experience momentum that
| really upsets people if they think they're being forced to do
| something even slightly differently.
|
| And yes it's a viable alternative and has been for decades.
| pid-1 wrote:
| I don't think govs are different from your average company.
|
| Having a Linux based business is hard, for a few reasons:
|
| - Destkop Linux sucks
|
| - You need experienced sysadmins. There is no Linux equivalent
| to AD / Azure AD in terms of simplicity, as far as I know. Also
| true for other stuff like app management.
|
| - User resistance, as few people use Linux as their daily OSes
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I wonder if we will see a push from Google with chrome os.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| They have already pushed and many companies ship Chrome OS
| to their employees. It's extremely common for non-technical
| folks.
| nivenkos wrote:
| But on the other hand they have a much bigger incentive than
| a company to be able to have a system they control and can
| use throughout different public administrations.
| worik wrote:
| Desktop Linux does not suck.
|
| It has not sucked since about 1993
|
| If you compare Linux 1993 to Mac SO 2022 it still stacks up,
| almost.
|
| Comparing Linux 1993 to MS Dos of the time is unfair.
|
| It took MS till about 2000 to be able to compete with Linux
| on quality
|
| MS Windows was successful for other reasons than the
| operating system.
| Woodi wrote:
| So, MS was hacked day or two ago and damage control appears
| already ? :>
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| peter_retief wrote:
| Billions get paid to Microsoft from countries with starving
| people. This has always upset me and I do not use Microsoft.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Couldn't bribe North Korea. I can't believe Juche actually
| worked.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Corruption is why we win https://youtu.be/1yhAOs94n8k
| timcavel wrote:
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Former Microsoftie here.
|
| After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit
| through, I am infuriated by this.
| asd88 wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. Every year, the Standards of Business
| Conduct training talks about not bribing foreign officials and
| devs are like "who the hell is ever in that position anyway?".
| russellbeattie wrote:
| If it helps, I had to sit through all that stuff at Amazon as
| well. I was in the bit that makes consumer electronics and
| never dealt with contracts in any way, yet still had to spend
| time learning not to make or take bribes from wholesalers or
| international businesses or governments. Every. Single. Year.
|
| Initially the training software was badly written so you
| could just open up DevTools and type "v =
| document.querySelector('video'); v.currentTime = v.duration -
| 1000;" or similar and just bop through the sections. Later
| they seemed to track time on the server, so really the most I
| could do is turn off the window focus check and leave the tab
| open in a second monitor. So annoying.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Now this is true hacker spirit
| lostlogin wrote:
| I worked somewhere that had a fire safety online test
| each year. One staff member would be nominated to do all
| the tests and would sit down with everyone's logins and
| spent the whole day sitting the test again and again. The
| other staff provided food and drink.
| trhway wrote:
| Yea, those simple times have passed. Ours require clicks at
| various points ("Next" and testing questions at the end of
| sections), so i accumulate them until there are 4-5 of such
| mandatory crap due and do them simultaneously. I suppose in
| time they will catch onto that too, and you'd be able to
| run only one at a time.
| [deleted]
| thefunnyman wrote:
| Yeah I just mute the tabs and set video speed to as fast
| as it'll let me. Ours has little quiz sections but you
| pretty much always get infinite tries and it doesn't take
| a genius to guess the answers.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > "who the hell is ever in that position anyway?"
|
| Microsoft does business worldwide, of course. Wouldn't that
| imply that many are in that position?
| mikestew wrote:
| _and devs are like..._
|
| How many MSFT devs do you think travel to foreign countries
| to close deals? I do not think one has to have worked there
| to come up with, "mmm, probably not very many", and thus
| devs are like, "WTF do I have to watch this?"
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| As nearly always, its the people that _touch the money_
| who are most likely to be corrupt. By which I obviously
| mean salespeople.
| tedajax wrote:
| Me desperately trying to get a decent repro case for a
| bizarre networking bug in Halo: "Oh man, gotta remember,
| better not bribe any foreign officials while I sort this
| out."
| saalweachter wrote:
| On the other hand, if network errors could be debugged by
| bribing foreign officials, I'm assuming there would be a
| lot of rather rich foreign officials.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| Exactly...
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| In the banks we have the same. As IT guy, the amount of
| quarterly trainings and their focus is a bit crazy, most topics
| I will never ever touch since I don't work in ie Legal and I am
| _so_ far from ever interacting or even seeing any client.
|
| Most of the trainings are about a fine we got due to being
| caught doing something bad, say 10 years ago, and part of legal
| settlement is apart from direct fine, a nice 30-60 min training
| where they tell you that stealing and lying and cheating is
| bad.
|
| Those trainings keep re-appearing quite consistently so they
| are really not that effective.
| mianos wrote:
| I did one "Modern Slavery". The first time I saw the email
| request that I do the training I genuinely thought it was
| spam.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Perhaps by training everyone, potential bad actors know that
| everyone in the company will recognize what they are doing?
| burntoutfire wrote:
| In banking, the bank is the bad actor and people who do
| shady stuff usually do it on its behalf (and get rewards
| with promotions, bonuses etc.).
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| Many years ago, another division of my employer got caught
| bribing Nigeria. As a result, a bunch of people who were never
| in a position to do so had to sit through hours of ethics
| training. Some of it came with oddly specific examples. Halfway
| through one such lecture, in which we were being admonished to
| never accept a car from a customer, some engineer in the back
| did some quick mental arithmetic on his own salary versus costs
| of cars and asked "Which customers were giving out cars?"
|
| We laughed. Instructor not so much.
| Ekaros wrote:
| "Hypothetically speaking which customer offered a car?" "And
| again entirely hypothetically speaking how could one move
| forward to accept such offer?"
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Being that Instructor is 100% bullshit job. I.e. you're doing
| something entirely pointless, day in-day out, just so your
| company can later say to some lawyers that it was done. I
| feel bad for people who work those jobs.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Did bizden / sales have to go through the same videos?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Those annual trainings are there to show compliance. This
| prevents pro active investigations by authorities into business
| conduct. Without those corporations are free to engage in all
| kinda of shady business behaviour. And when something turns
| sideways, the offending employees passed the training, so the
| company is shielded, to an extend.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > the offending employees passed the training
|
| This is the definition of ineffective training :)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| If they are aware of what is right and wrong, it is
| effective.
| amalcon wrote:
| It's effective in its real goal (preventing fines), just
| not in its stated goal (preventing bribery). Of course this
| means that it's at best a half-truth to call it training (a
| more accurate name would be e.g. "indemnity procedure").
| wolverine876 wrote:
| People downplay such training, but imagine the environment
| without it. Imagine if nobody officially talked about corrupt
| practices: it would create a very dark place for such things
| to occur, nobody would know what the rules are or what to do,
| and especially the silence would speak very loudly.
|
| Edit: By training _everyone_ , not just the people directly
| involved with such situations, anyone considering corrupt
| acts will know that _everyone_ - from the tech support person
| who helps them send the corrupt message to the receptionist
| who takes the corrupt call to the finance underling who mails
| the check - _everyone_ will recognize it. There is no talking
| the rube into helping them; there are eyes everywhere, all
| the time.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| People know that what they hear in the training videos and
| how they must really act are two different things. If you
| find out that your boss's boss is corrupting goverment
| officials in Poland to get a $100m contract (a real case
| BTW, involving one of MS's big competitors), do you really
| think the company wants you to raise alarm and blow that
| contract? What good does it do to your boss's boss career,
| or the shareholders?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's not a perfect solution, but nothing is. The training
| shifts the equation significantly relative to no training
| (as described in the GP). Our alternative to perfect
| solutions, if that's what we require, is to do nothing.
|
| > What good does it do ... the shareholders?
|
| Note that we commonly talk as if people will naturally
| care about the interests of one group of humans they
| don't know, the shareholders, but not another group, the
| public. Various rules say you should care about both (and
| there are many more rules regarding the latter).
| sangnoir wrote:
| > People know that what they hear in the training videos
| and how they must really act are two different things
|
| It also shifts culpability to the individuals; aka CYA
| for the org. Corporate counsel will say "We have training
| for this every year; they knew they were not supposed to
| do that,and we weren't aware they were doing that, so
| it's not our fault"
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think Enron would have been better off if someone had
| blown the whistle early. Probably would still be in
| existence.
|
| Me, I'd be more likely to narc to the government,
| especially if I can get a share of the penalty like SEC
| narcs do.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Exactly - all they are is formal "risk mitigation"
| akhmatova wrote:
| _Those annual trainings are there to show compliance._
|
| And also obeisance -- on the part of the person required to
| sit through these trainings (and pretend that they had some
| connection to reality).
| leetcrew wrote:
| meh. I'd be happy to sit in a chair and watch nonsensical
| videos for $100/hr any time you like.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Watching company policy videos wears thin after about 2
| minutes, but I wasn't paid anything like $100/hr...
|
| My method was to open another browser tab, then you can
| play several at the same time. The next company I was at
| prevented that somehow. So I opened a few different web
| browsers. Then they broke that and also made each clip
| about 2 mins long and had loads of them, so you can't
| even queue them up in one browser.
| kabdib wrote:
| Not when you have a deadline and your stuff is behind,
| you don't :-)
|
| Happily, it was better than that. Most of these courses
| were online, and you could just let the videos of actors
| working through scenarios run in the background and then
| answer some simple questions. The questions never varied
| and the correct answer was usually pretty obvious (e.g.,
| don't pick any answer that includes hiding a body).
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The questions never varied and the correct answer was
| usually pretty obvious
|
| Siemens ask different questions in reruns of end tests,
| vary the order the questions are in, and also ask
| questions you can't answer from understanding the topic.
| Eg 'what colour was the background of the graph
| demonstrating the effect?"
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Also it's not like you can fail the test, it just keeps
| you on the question till you select the right answer.
| mstipetic wrote:
| Ffs
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Pointy Haired Boss: Everyone must attend mandatory ethics class
| at noon.
|
| Dilbert: Is it ethical to steal our lunch hour to make us
| attend a work class?
|
| Pointy Haired Boss: I wouldn't know, I'm not required to take
| the training.
| RyJones wrote:
| When I went blue in 2005, I had to sit through sexual
| harassment videos by some guy.
|
| Who had been fired.
|
| For running HR like a harem.
| belter wrote:
| In almost every country with a dictator and human right abuses,
| you will find a constitution guarantying civil rights and
| liberties of the individual...
|
| [1] - "The Constitution of the Russian Federation"
|
| Article 17
|
| 1. In the Russian Federation recognition and guarantees shall
| be provided for the rights and freedoms of man and citizen
| according to the universally recognized principles and norms of
| international law and according to the present Constitution.
|
| 2. Fundamental human rights and freedoms are inalienable and
| shall be enjoyed by everyone since the day of birth.
|
| 3. The exercise of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen
| shall not violate the rights and freedoms of other people.
|
| Article 18
|
| The rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be directly
| operative. They determine the essence, meaning and
| implementation of laws, the activities of the legislative and
| executive authorities, local self-government and shall be
| ensured by the administration of justice.
|
| Article 19
|
| 1. All people shall be equal before the law and court.
|
| 2. The State shall guarantee the equality of rights and
| freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of sex, race,
| nationality, language, origin, property and official status,
| place of residence, religion, convictions, membership of public
| associations, and also of other circumstances. All forms of
| limitations of human rights on social, racial, national,
| linguistic or religious grounds shall be banned.
|
| 3. Man and woman shall enjoy equal rights and freedoms and have
| equal possibilities to exercise them.
|
| and so on...
|
| [1] http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-03.htm
| joey_bob wrote:
| The title is a bit inflammatory, but in this clip from
| Scalia's testimony relates the overall concept well.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0
| belter wrote:
| Thanks for that:-) Correct time: https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--
| UO0?t=134
| tored wrote:
| Scalia has some good points, however some notes
|
| A gridlocked political system is not guaranteed to create
| "good legislation" as Scalia puts it, take US as a prime
| example of that, almost every legislation is packed with
| pork and other things unrelated to the legalisation itself.
|
| To Scalia defence he might have meant "not awful
| legislation", like avoid harming a minority, because of the
| bicameral legislature. But good legislation? No.
|
| It is true that in Europe it is common to mix the
| legislative and the executive with the same election and
| thus chamber. However in Sweden the executive power is
| divided in half, with the elected prime minister with his
| cabinet (regeringen) on the one hand and the independent
| government agencies (myndigheter) on the other. This is a
| separation of powers that US doesn't have.
|
| And it is in the executive that has the highest risk of
| political corrupt behaviour, because it deals with all the
| practical details of running a country, therefore
| separating the executive into two separate branches, the
| elected and the civil servants, creates better protection
| against political corruption.
|
| Scalia main argument is that US can't become the Soviet
| union because of the bicameral gridlock built into the
| system, however what we have seen in the US when the
| legislature is politically paralyzed is that the executive,
| and to some extent the judiciary, has encroached on the
| legislative powers.
|
| How many of the wars that US has been involved in since the
| second world war has been formally approved
| constitutionally by the senate? Zero.
|
| Did President Obama execute a US citizen without a trial?
| Yes.
|
| This is a gap in Scalias argument, the executive power is
| too unrestricted, hence it is the US executive power that
| will be removing citizen rights from the citizenry, not the
| legislature.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Let's remember that Scalia was a judge, not a political
| theorist or a legislative expert. Scalia's expertise
| would be the operation of the judiciary, courtrooms, etc.
| philjohn wrote:
| That doesn't track with what I've read ... Unitary
| Executive Theory for instance.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| It's frustrating that law only applies to the lower classes,
| and not to the upper corporate classes
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Who are the "lower classes" that do business internationally
| and are prosecuted by the US Departmet of Justice?
| a4isms wrote:
| This is unproductive quibbling.
|
| If I, a middle-class independent contractor, attempt to
| bribe a government employee to award me a contract, I am
| going to jail.
|
| If someone with even lesser means attempts to bribe a
| social worker to award them welfare of some kind, they are
| going to jail.
|
| That is the discrepancy that matters.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > This is unproductive quibbling.
|
| No need to take a shot at the other comment; maybe they
| just don't understand you. I didn't know who you meant;
| 'lower classes' is a vague term, especially in context of
| foreign corrupt practices.
| a4isms wrote:
| "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
| There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not
| bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not
| protect."
|
| --Composer and Software Architect Frank Wilhoit
|
| https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-
| progre...
| [deleted]
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| Lol, did you think otherwise?
| criddell wrote:
| I read a story yesterday[1] how the policy inside Google is to
| cc their legal department on any emails that you think could
| make the company look bad in any future legal proceedings. As I
| understand it, this shields the email from discovery.
|
| Did you have similar guidelines inside Microsoft?
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30760923
| zht wrote:
| one thing that they teach you in this sort of training (never
| a Googler but been at at other big names) is that it is not a
| blank check to shield all emails from discovery by just cc-
| ing legal.
| themadturk wrote:
| At my employer, where where everyone has to undergo
| multiple types of ethics training every year, I think they
| would view this as "willful ignorance," which they say is
| not a defense for anything. Plus, they tell us to contact
| legal only when we think something has been done to violate
| the ethics guidelines, not to prevent it from happening in
| the first place.
| chihuahua wrote:
| No, never.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| As I recall, the informal guidance I got as a lowly Software
| Engineer II was, "if legal gets involved, you've already
| screwed up."
| verall wrote:
| > As I understand it, this shields the email from discovery.
|
| LOL that's NOT how discovery works
| criddell wrote:
| Well, it's the theory Google was operating under.
|
| This is from the DOJ's brief:
|
| > Plaintiffs respectfully request the Court to sanction
| Google LLC (Google) for its extensive and intentional
| efforts to misuse the attorney-client privilege to hide
| business documents relevant to this case. Google has
| explicitly and repeatedly instructed its employees to
| shield important business communications from discovery by
| using false requests for legal advice. These efforts
| directly harmed Plaintiffs, undermined their discovery
| efforts, and subverted the judicial process. The Court
| should sanction Google and order the full production of
| withheld and redacted emails where in-house counsel was
| included in a communication between non-attorneys and did
| not respond. Alternatively, the Court should hold these
| silent-attorney emails are not privileged and immediately
| order their production.
| nickff wrote:
| That's what the DoJ is alleging; it's not clear what
| "theory Google was operating under". The DoJ may be right
| or wrong, and separately, they may be on a wild goose
| chase.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Them, a brilliant Google executive: "They cannot arrest a
| husband and wife for the same crime."
|
| Me, a low-level employee: "Yeah, I don't think that that's
| true, Dad."
|
| Them: "I have the worst [expletive] lawyers."
| philjohn wrote:
| Remember - there's always money in the banana stand, no,
| wait, that's Amazon.
| com2kid wrote:
| When I was at MS I once saw someone from legal jump into the
| middle of an email thread, that he wasn't on, and shut it
| down.
|
| That was... interesting to say the least.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Someone smart bcc'd LCA.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Did you have similar guidelines inside Microsoft?_
|
| As one there before, during, after that little DoJ/IE
| kurfluffle, I recall the guidelines to be simple: there are
| things you don't talk about in email[0]. Which is why this
| Google thing mystifies me: why are you talking about it in
| email _at all_? And then to rely on what sounds like some
| crackpot legal theory? (I mean, maybe it 's not, and IANAL,
| but it reeks of "sovereign citizens don't have to pay
| taxes".)
|
| [0] Yes, that is a vast oversimplification (though accurate)
| to make a point.
| jmspring wrote:
| Finally an episode of SoBC where Nelson ends up blindfolded,
| kidnapped and taken to a black ops site? /s
|
| Former here, too, I found it part of "big company" overhead.
| Had similar things many years ago at a different European based
| employer.
| worik wrote:
| SoBC?
| jmspring wrote:
| Standards of Business Conduct. It is a yearly required
| training that pics up one year after the next.
| jmspring wrote:
| Here is a Hanselman tweet referring to it -- https://twit
| ter.com/shanselman/status/1032027295572090880?la...
| kjellsbells wrote:
| standards of business conduct. annual training. With
| remarkably high production standards and costs, I might
| add. I'm a big fan of Nelson, the lovable everyman
| developer.
|
| If its true that microsoft were doling out 40k bribes, that
| would be less than five minutes of what an sbc episode must
| cost to produce. The irony.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Special Olympics British Columbia was the best my Google-fu
| could find. I am assuming some TV series but ...
| asdfasxcdf wrote:
| Can't wait for the next season of SBC!
| stocknoob wrote:
| Rules are for the little people.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It's part of negotiating down punishments, in lieu of a big
| fine we'll agree to force our staff to watch ethics videos.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Those trainings are just ass coverings for when the company
| goes to court.
| spicymaki wrote:
| AFAIK the trainings are part of a settlement with the
| government after the company goes to court.
| asveikau wrote:
| When i was at Microsoft, i recall an engineer saying that
| corporate puts that in there so that when somebody is caught
| giving bribes they can point to them and say they're a lone
| wolf, bad actor, etc., because clearly the policy is not to
| give bribes, and they took the training course in this, we
| documented that...
|
| Implication: they can fire that employee and continue to give
| bribes.
|
| Ps. Full disclosure, I never witnessed anybody giving bribes,
| nor worked with anyone who would be in a position to do so.
| [deleted]
| sgm_ro wrote:
| This has been common knowledge for me for a long time, after this
| case surfaced in the media here in Romania:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption...
|
| Pretty much all of the public system uses windows as OS, and most
| of the times it's just to use a browser to access a webapp. But
| there are actual windows lock-ins (due to people training and
| existing workflow/infrastructure that has no incentive to
| change), such as MS Office and Adobe Reader.
|
| So there was no reason for Microsoft to bribe decision-making
| people to use windows, windows was already firmly locked in, they
| did it just so they can overprice licenses and for them to accept
| leased licenses instead of a permanent one time pay windows
| license. Big win for MS and bribe takers, big loss to common
| decency and public spending availability.
|
| A sign of a healthy democratic government can be seen in the
| decisions to build future public software infrastructure on open
| source technology, and use Linux as client/server OS (as it's
| pretty much the only other alternative offering similar ease of
| use/maintenance/compatibility with existing software).
|
| edit: wrote this to show it's not necessarily the cost of doing
| business, in most places, because the software ecosystem is
| already locked in and can't be replaced overnight and without
| considerable spending. It's just the cost of extracting more
| public money. And sometimes it's the cost to keep the business
| safe from decisions to steer towards Opensource:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
| markdown wrote:
| Not just foreign bribes:
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?id=D...
| madrox wrote:
| I was prepared to get my pitchfork out, but after reading I'm
| struggling to connect the dots. This article is scant on details
| of what illegal or favorable behavior Microsoft is expecting in
| exchange for money. The only concrete mention is a previous SEC
| filing that has nothing to do with this whistleblower. The first
| example about $40k doesn't seem to explain what Microsoft was
| actually thinking it would get for that money, let alone whether
| that money was illegal. At worst, it seemed to violate corporate
| policy, which I can understand if that got missed in an initial
| review. The other examples don't sound like bribery on
| Microsoft's part so much as resellers squeezing as much out of a
| deal as they can get away with. I call that a problem with the
| reseller model.
|
| I imagine Microsoft looks the other way while resellers make lots
| of money because, realistically, being in some of the markets
| mentioned is impossible unless you're connected with the right
| person. While not necessarily efficient, I wouldn't call that
| illegal or even unethical without a lot more detail than this
| article provides.
|
| But maybe I'm missing something. This article reads as poorly
| researched, and the whistleblower comes off as disgruntled more
| than ethical.
|
| Edit: It's worth noting that the whistleblower's original words
| are a little more well-written than this article [1]. However, it
| makes the contrast clearer between what is factual vs what is
| only insinuated.
|
| 1: https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-
| bribe...
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| An Overview
|
| The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended, 15
| U.S.C. SSSS 78dd-1, et seq. ("FCPA"), was enacted for the
| purpose of making it unlawful for certain classes of persons
| and entities to make payments to foreign government officials
| to assist in obtaining or retaining business. Specifically, the
| anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA prohibit the willful use of
| the mails or any means of instrumentality of interstate
| commerce corruptly in furtherance of any offer, payment,
| promise to pay, or authorization of the payment of money or
| anything of value to any person, while knowing that all or a
| portion of such money or thing of value will be offered, given
| or promised, directly or indirectly, to a foreign official to
| influence the foreign official in his or her official capacity,
| induce the foreign official to do or omit to do an act in
| violation of his or her lawful duty, or to secure any improper
| advantage in order to assist in obtaining or retaining business
| for or with, or directing business to, any person.
|
| Since 1977, the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA have
| applied to all U.S. persons and certain foreign issuers of
| securities. With the enactment of certain amendments in 1998,
| the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA now also apply to
| foreign firms and persons who cause, directly or through
| agents, an act in furtherance of such a corrupt payment to take
| place within the territory of the United States.
|
| The FCPA also requires companies whose securities are listed in
| the United States to meet its accounting provisions. See 15
| U.S.C. SS 78m. These accounting provisions, which were designed
| to operate in tandem with the anti-bribery provisions of the
| FCPA, require corporations covered by the provisions to (a)
| make and keep books and records that accurately and fairly
| reflect the transactions of the corporation and (b) devise and
| maintain an adequate system of internal accounting controls.[1]
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but at worst it's starkly clear to me that
| this runs afoul of the law. Might I suggest it may be the
| awareness of it is the something you are missing?
|
| https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-pract...
| madrox wrote:
| You'll need to draw that line a little clearer, because it's
| not starkly clear to me. I'm aware of the definition of
| bribery. I don't think anything mentioned here describes
| graft as much as it describes the reseller business unless
| there is some law that limits the amount of money a reseller
| makes on a deal, or that a purchaser is required to use all
| of said purchase. In the Saudi example, the contractor got a
| great deal, but that's hardly illegal. In the Qatar example,
| buying more seats than you use is a common problem and any
| company that sells based on seats is guilty of this on some
| level.
|
| For me to take this farther than "that's how reselling
| works," there'd need to be some signs that Microsoft
| employees or government officials were seeing kickbacks from
| these inefficient deals...basically, the resellers were the
| ones doing the bribing. The whistleblower seems to be
| insinuating that's happening, and maybe it is, but there's no
| hard evidence of it here or that it's something systemic that
| Microsoft is promoting (indeed, Microsoft would be one of the
| victims in that case). Without more detail on what exactly
| Microsoft was extracting out of these circumstances I find
| the whole thing vague.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Unfortunately, we are left with the problem that it can be very
| hard to tell the difference between a bribe and a grease payment.
| The latter are an unfortunate reality that companies can't
| realistically function without--and not just in the third world.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| They're the same thing.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Fair play to this guy whoever he is. If only more people had his
| integrity.
| cute_boi wrote:
| He is an anomaly, and we are lucky that people like him exist.
| The system incentivizes pretentious, artifice people who trick
| people via skulduggery. And, M$ should realize that committing
| such unforgivable sins like corruption in Africa means they are
| responsible for hunger and poverty in Africa.
|
| If the atrocities were committed by Chinese/Indian companies,
| the media would have vehemently criticized those countries and
| companies. But, as long as US and EU are involved media seems
| to be silent which I don't like.
| tyrfing wrote:
| > If the atrocities were committed by Chinese/Indian
| companies, the media would have vehemently criticized those
| countries and companies. But, as long as US and EU are
| involved media seems to be silent which I don't like.
|
| That's ridiculous. Compare Ericsson to ZTE/Huawei, for
| example. Of course it'll get coverage in the US media though,
| it's mainly the US DOJ that will prosecute those foreign
| companies for bribery - not their own governments.
| bstar77 wrote:
| And much of this is to convince governments to not go open
| source. This kind of behavior is part of Microsoft's DNA.
| nashashmi wrote:
| There is a lot of supposition from the article based on a single
| source that these payments were bribes. These kinds of articles
| are really calling wolf when there are none. And potentially
| downplay instances when actual wolves are spotted. This is a hit
| piece from a potential competitor trying to do business in the
| same market.
|
| Going to add further the article has way too much fluff. It's a
| play on reader psychology to turn them against Microsoft.
| hammock wrote:
| Agreed. Reminds me of the payments of as much as $183K a month
| from a Ukrainian natgas company to a man with no energy sector
| experience that just happened to be the son of the US Vice
| President. There's no evidence it was a bribe, just a hit
| piece, probably from a competitor like Russia
| nashashmi wrote:
| Hilarious.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Did you mean former vice president? his father got a new job
| last year.
| digisign wrote:
| What kind of payments should vendors be making regularly to
| customers?
| nashashmi wrote:
| Accounting malpractice is a common problem in non western
| nations. Negotiators will personally take money in name of
| their employer.
| Gepsens wrote:
| Foreign companies get fined billions for doing the same when it
| doesn't please Uncle Sam...
| will_walker wrote:
| Primary complaint document:
|
| https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-bribe...
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| > "What is a shock: This time around, the SEC and DOJ have both
| declined to investigate Microsoft over the same types of bribes
| in the Middle East and Africa. They acknowledged my evidence
| (which I submitted three times) yet did not take up the case,
| claiming that the current pandemic has prevented them from
| gathering more evidence from abroad--even though I have already
| provided documentation that I believe shows Microsoft is in
| breach of the 2019 agreement and is still participating in
| corrupt business practices in direct violation of U.S. law."
|
| I have no words for this one. I guess being a trillion dollar
| company comes with a lot of benefits.
|
| Source: https://www.lioness.co/post/microsoft-is-using-illegal-
| bribe...
| snarf21 wrote:
| This is what life in an oligarchy is all about. Now, back to
| checking how much the S&P 500 is up today.
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| More likely that Microsoft learned a very good lesson from
| their 1990s encounter with the DOJ, but it wasn't the hoped for
| "stop doing illegal and unethical things" but instead "make
| more and better targeted political contributions."
| slim wrote:
| and share data with 3 letter agencies
| datavirtue wrote:
| Another form of corruption.
| jollybean wrote:
| Why would anyone be shocked?
|
| This is how business is done in most of the world.
|
| If it's a 'standard practice' - then it is 'accounted for' and
| effectively part of the equation.
|
| How else do you think think the states vast wealth trickles out
| to it's citizens?
|
| The $10M Bribe to the Minister of Education goes t pay for the
| construction of his Mansion, staff, services.
|
| What 'mostly matters' in these kinds of situations frankly is
| de facto transparency and efficacy.
|
| If the ration are 'understood' and actually well-strutted, then
| there's a kind of de-facto transparency. In the case of a rich
| state like Qatar, it might actually be better than simply
| having nothing.
|
| You could argue the 'lack of competitiveness' from MSFT bids
| given alternatives, but in many cases it really might not
| matter, the 'winner' was a fait-accompli anyhow.
|
| When this is Nigeria, and the state is providing it's citizens
| with nothing, then it's much more of a problem.
|
| I should also note that this is a function of the regional
| system, not MS.
|
| MS is playing the game that's handed to them. Their alternative
| choice is to pull out of all of those markets, and hand them
| over to other businesses who operate that way.
|
| The 'problem' should mostly be directed at state agencies
| setting up the system.
|
| There should be more analysis and journalism on this kind of
| stuff, particularly because it does happen in countries wherein
| 'regular people' do end up paying the price, but the focus
| should on the agencies, not businesses who would otherwise play
| fairly.
|
| This is a nuanced issue and we should not be 'shocked and
| horrified' by it, this almost implies a serious kind of naivte.
|
| We need to recognise that it's complicated before just trying
| to 'blame MSFT'.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Meanwhile ... the SEC and DOJ are in a backroom meeting with
| Microsoft with their hands out for more bribes. :)
| mc32 wrote:
| Are the bribes being directed by MS US or are these things
| taking place in overseas offices where customs are different?
| One example was Hungary --I imagine Ukraine and Nigeria too
| would have executives there who are part of the local culture
| where they do things differently.
|
| While the actions go afoul of US law, they may be in line with
| local customs culture and practices --that is harder to root
| out as now you are trying to change another culture (cultural
| imperialism as it was called).
|
| If this is being directed from the US, then it's easier to root
| out.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| While working as an executive for eBay in Germany, the
| company made it totally clear on many occasions what illegal
| behaviour is and that they would take action. And the
| standards were the higher US standards not the lower German
| ones.
| markdown wrote:
| > While the actions go afoul of US law
|
| LMAO, surely you jest! The US is one of the most corrupt
| societies in the world. Where else is it not only accepted
| practice, but enshrined in law with "money is speech".
|
| Please see https://www.fec.gov/ (BWAWAAHAHAHHAH, this is an
| government website listing bribes... they don't even have to
| hide it!). See also, https://opensecrets.org/.
| bluGill wrote:
| Money is speech. There is no way around it.
|
| Even in the most unfree society in the world you can go in
| your shower and whisper anything you want. Nobody will know
| you said anything though so it won't do anything. To make a
| difference in a society as large as the US you need a lot
| of money to pay for things. You can print and mail flyers
| (money for paper, printing, and postage), you can take out
| ads on prime time TV... It all comes down to money is
| needed to make your message get someplace. There for
| limiting money is limiting speech.
| aeternum wrote:
| Yes, a bribe in one country is often seen as just the cost of
| doing business in another.
|
| In the US should tips be considered bribes? What if you tip
| at the beginning rather than the end in order to get better
| service?
| vmception wrote:
| I consider the associated penalty in the US as a bribe of
| public officials and cost of doing business. It takes a
| special level of hubris for Americans to go "noo, its
| different because we have due process", when the user
| experience of a simpler bribe and slightly more convoluted
| bribe is 1:1
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is a formal fallacy - joining something substantial,
| serious and a matter of public law, to something personal,
| of little consequence, and governed at a local level.
| please reconsider this as this important public discussion
| evolves on YNews?
| markdown wrote:
| > something personal, of little consequence, and governed
| at a local level
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-
| corp/summary?id=D...
| aeternum wrote:
| What is your definition of bribe then?
|
| Keep in mind that in countries like Cambodia and Yemen,
| something like 70% of public companies _receive_ bribes.
| It is very much common practice and culturally
| acceptable.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I would say at that level of acceptance it isn't a bribe.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It is a bribe but it is accepted and perhaps not illegal
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It probably is illegal but the countries have weak rule
| of law (if rule of law is even a thing in those countries
| at all). Note that there are differences between fees and
| bribery, if something can be legally presented as a fee,
| it is no longer considered a bribe (important if you are
| an American or American company).
| aeternum wrote:
| This is why I brought up the example of pre-tipping. It
| is clearly not a fee but it is generally accepted. If you
| hand the Valet a $20 and say please park it close, is it
| a tip, fee, or bribe?
|
| How about at a bar, can you tell the bar tender "I have
| an extra $5 if you make it a heavy pour"?
|
| How about attending the Salesforce conference but it's
| mostly because you want to visit SF and see
| Metallica/Chainsmokers?
|
| We have bribes in the US, we just don't think of them as
| bribes.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| At least when we did anti corruption training for
| Microsoft China, the emphasis was on government
| employees, but that could also apply to grad students
| with stipends and anyone working for an SOE. So you can
| tip the doorman as long as they aren't working for the
| state, but you can't buy a grad student lunch (without
| pre-clearance anyways).
| edgyquant wrote:
| That's because none of those things are bribes. The
| definition of bribe is
|
| * persuade (someone) to act in one's favor, typically
| illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other
| inducement.*
|
| Tipping your waitress isn't illegally or dishonestly
| persuading someone to act in your favor.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Usually when you think bribe you think paying someone to
| get an advantage or edge, when everyone is paying
| something it's just called the price.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| His example was fine and doesn't stand alone. Who's to
| say that other countries don't consider US lobbying to be
| a form of bribery?
|
| Realistically, no country is going to see their own
| bribery as actual bribery because no one wants to have to
| blatantly admit they're the bad guy.
| striking wrote:
| There are laws around transparency in lobbying in the US.
| It would be bribery if you didn't abide by those laws
| when conducting your lobbying activities.
| mc32 wrote:
| Not Poster, but I agree to a degree. It's defined as such
| but in practice it can have the effects of bribery. If
| so, is it then legal bribery?
|
| Politicians set up foundations and then people or
| organizations coincidentally benefiting from some
| legislation donate or underwrite these foundations...
| Melatonic wrote:
| It is also super easy to get around those transparencies
| - the lobbying system in the US is for sure a big big
| problem
|
| Bribery with extra steps!
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I live in Kazakhstan and while I don't have any evidence, I'm
| pretty sure that many huge western companies operating here
| bribed officials.
|
| I don't think that's necessary part of local culture. Of
| course in poor country officials with $200/month salary are
| happy to get $1000 gift for signing $100 000 agreement.
| Western companies are huge part of corruption source here.
| That's my opinion.
|
| I've heard that Ikea decided not to bribe officials, so they
| didn't get approval to build their shops here. I kind of
| applaud them if that's true and I wish every so-called
| civilized company took that stance. But money doesn't stink I
| guess.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Same in India. In fact, public officials are paid very
| little with the expectation that they will supplement their
| income with bribes.
|
| It's just absolutely normal to get literally anything done
| with a government office in almost any non-western country.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If it's anything like eastern Europe it's really not that
| bad, just different. It just means the state has less
| direct control over its employees. In some cases this is
| good for the populace. In some cases this is bad for the
| populace.
|
| If the people in the building permitting offices in CA
| got paid the way they do in India there probably wouldn't
| be a housing crisis there.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yup, it is mindbogglingly unimaginable to people who
| spent their whole lives living in the west, but as
| someone who moved out of Russia over a decade ago, it is
| the exact same thing there. Extremely normalized in every
| single aspect.
|
| Applying for a passport? Well, you can do it normally,
| wait 9-12 months, hope papers don't get lost in the
| process (again), and maybe eventually you will be able to
| get it after a 2nd or 3rd try. Maybe not, who knows, you
| might just give up.
|
| Or, instead, you could give "little something" to the
| passport clerk and their boss, and your passport will get
| reliably done in 3-4 months. And this "little something"
| is pretty much expected, and most people who can afford
| will pay it. A lot of governmental services are just
| built with an expectation of a bribe. If a bribe isn't
| present, then the process will almost definitely go wrong
| in every single way possible.
|
| Same with cops, except worse, because much more is at
| stake. Routine "ID check stops" are expected, and you
| better have a bribe ready, unless you want to get in
| trouble for "insubordination" or something much worse.
|
| Pretty much any interaction with government or anything
| even tangentially related, where you need to get
| something done, you are going to be almost ostracized and
| make your life miserable if you don't bribe. Bribing gets
| truly awful and scary when it is an everyday expectation
| on even the most routine levels.
|
| EDIT: People in comments have pointed out that India
| isn't like that at all. My comment wasn't meant to have
| anything to do with India. I have never been there, so I
| cannot make a statement on it either way. I was only
| trying to describe the realities of "bribes are the
| expected norm in everyday life" experience using the
| place I was personally familiar with, which was Russia.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I suspect things may have improved in Russia since then,
| there is plenty of screwed up stuff but in my adult life
| I (and as far as I know my friends) had never been forced
| to bribe someone to accomplish something (passport,
| driving license, etc.), much less routinely do so. But
| then I was a small self-employed fish, and in fact due to
| my expectation of bribery I chose not to execute any
| business ideas in Russia. (Which so far seems not to have
| been a bad decision.)
| filoleg wrote:
| It might also depend on where in Russia specifically.
| Moscow and Saint Petersburg are its own thing pretty
| much, so I can totally believe that things have improved
| there. But imo the further away you go from those two
| largest cities and the smaller the population is, the
| worse it would get.
|
| I lived in a city of about half a million people about
| 800 miles east of Moscow (still in the European part of
| it though, not past-the-mountains regions), and it was
| definitely still the case there as of a few years ago
| (because my dad moved back there a while ago).
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Not European part. I agree it matters where, but it does
| not seem to be so black and white that the country works
| on bribes anymore.
|
| Perhaps that is why that foul regime enjoys popular
| support: people see is it not so awful anymore, but to
| consider it could have been even better is not
| acceptable.
| jollybean wrote:
| This is important for Westerners to understand i.e.
| 'different rules' and that's material to the situation.
| blackoil wrote:
| 12 months, in India now getting a passport take 1-4 weeks
| with no bribe involved.
| vaidhy wrote:
| Absolutely this.. Things in India have changed a lot in
| the last decade. Passports are one example. It used to
| take months when I was a kid. My first passport took 3
| months from application to getting it in hand and needed
| an "agent". My last one was through "taktal" - expedited
| application by paying extra fees and I got an SMS that
| the passport was sent to the printers by the time I
| walked out of the passport office. Another sms that it
| was dispatched next day and the day after I had it in my
| hand. No bribes, no agents, super smooth.
|
| For the common person, the most corrupt organizations
| they would encounter is around land and house
| registration, cops and maybe the DMV. If you work for the
| government, then it gets even worse as you are expected
| to pay for the job, pay for transfer to a nicer place
| etc. However, it is getting better every year.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > public officials are paid very little with the
| expectation that they will supplement their income with
| bribes.
|
| I'd like to offer my own perspective on this issue,
| having spent a lot of time in the third-world, that may
| not be obvious to many of us in the western world or from
| more developed economies.
|
| Many countries that are struggling with i.e. building
| robust transportation and energy infrastructure, are also
| struggling with the infrastructure that enables the
| reliable collection and enforcement of taxes. These
| issues happen to be related. Tax collection in the US
| isn't perfect, but it generally works. What do you do
| when huge parts of your economy runs on cash or when huge
| swaths of your population don't even have bank accounts?
|
| There's a joke that bribes in the third-world are
| "directly paid taxes". There's a kernel of truth there.
| If Microsoft pays $100 in tax that's paid to a govt
| salary, versus that tax not existing and them paying it
| to the same official, what's the difference? Loss of
| accountability and oversight, yes.
|
| BUT -- the reason bribery is so egregious in the West is
| that the officials taking the bribes are already fairly
| compensated. Also, the Western system of government is
| filled with unethical bribe-analogues, in for example the
| lobbying system we have, worse in some sense is that this
| unethical behavior is codified into law in a way the
| general public may not agree with but has no real way of
| changing (refer to Princeton voter preference study).
|
| Consider all that when these "corruption index" lists are
| published where the US are the good guys with a green-
| colored country and countries in the third-world are red-
| colored bad guys. /rant
| bluGill wrote:
| Even in that light bribes are still bad. With a tax I can
| look at the law and know exactly how much I need to pay,
| and also how much my competition paid. That later is a
| big deal, if my competitor different from me, then they
| have an advantage over me (sometimes this is a larger
| bribe ensuring better service, sometimes it is a cheaper
| bribe would have done the same).
|
| Also, bribes are not always money. Many are paid in sex.
| Not only does this exploit women (as if that isn't bad
| enough), but it also means it may not be every possible
| for me to compete so long as the woman my competitor got
| is willing.
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| One could argue it's more efficient. If you need to get
| something done, at least there is a way to receive
| service whereas in the US because there is little
| bribery, you're at the mercy of the bureaucrat who
| doesn't depend on your bribe to survive and so has lost
| the incentive to serve you.
| ganzuul wrote:
| In the west we simply don't recognize that system as
| democracy. For your officials to not take bribes means
| their relatives get offended that the office doesn't get
| them special treatment. That is feudalism. It means you
| built nothing together and have nothing to be proud of.
| mullingitover wrote:
| The irony is the bribes are, of course, a requirement to
| operate in the US as a large corporation, but here they're
| laundered as "lobbying" and "campaign donations."
| mulmen wrote:
| It's really not the same thing.
|
| Bribery undermines the rule of law. Lobbying helps form
| it. The difference may seem subtle but it isn't.
|
| If you believe US lawmakers are taking bribes please
| provide evidence because that is a Big Deal.
|
| If you believe lobbying is harmful to our democratic
| processes please present that argument directly.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > If you believe lobbying is harmful to our democratic
| processes please present that argument directly.
|
| Not OP, but it is easy to understand how lobbying is too
| close to a quid pro quo scheme. If a politician receives
| donations in any form, in order to push for legislation
| that may benefit the donors, how is it any different from
| bribery?
| mulmen wrote:
| The rule of law.
|
| Subtlety matters. Calling lobbying bribery is apathy,
| which is uninteresting. Even worse, it's ineffective.
|
| > If a politician receives donations in any form, in
| order to push for legislation that may benefit the
| donors, how is it any different from bribery?
|
| So, should I donate to a mayoral campaign that aligns
| with my beliefs? Is all money in politics evil, or is it
| just a matter of degrees? What if that mayoral candidate
| is a "political outsider" who relies on "grassroots
| support" to enable them to quit their job and focus on
| the campaign?
|
| I'm an expert in my field. Should I inform my elected
| leaders on the nuances of that field when they write
| legislation that relates to it? Or should laws only be
| written by the ignorant? How ignorant should they be?
|
| _Trade_ is a quid pro quo scheme. Pretending all
| exchanges of value are the same is, again, uninteresting.
| How can such a position be engaged? And to what end?
|
| Where's the line between bribery and democracy?
|
| It's not easy to draw. Calling lobbying bribery is an
| apathetic oversimplification. It's uninteresting and
| isn't a position that can be engaged constructively.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > The rule of law.
|
| Making it legal doesn't make it moral or ethical.
|
| Bribes aren't necessarily illegal either.
|
| > So, should I donate to a mayoral campaign that aligns
| with my beliefs?
|
| There is a very clear distinction between donating and
| lobbying. Political donations are typically not driven to
| any specific end, whereas lobbying seeks to influence
| specific legislation.
|
| Saying that lobbyists look to "inform" the "ignorant"
| legislators is naive and disregards the fact that
| congress and senate people have enough staff at their
| disposal to do the necessary research to pass
| legislation.
|
| Lobbyists aren't experts. They are marketers. It seems
| that to you, a lobbyist is an expert in a field, like a
| doctor is an expert in medicine. In reality, a lobbyist
| is more akin to a drug sales rep, a marketer. Do sales
| reps accurately inform doctors about drugs, or do they
| try to get them to prescribe a certain brand?
|
| Lobbying is then _legalised_ bribery. In fact, the US is
| one of the few developed countries where blatant private
| enterprise interference is allowed at all levels of
| government.
| Rury wrote:
| So there are subtle differences. Take a commission for
| example. Sounds pretty similar to a bribe right?
| Difference is, bribe makes for a hostage situation (give
| me something extra sweet or no deal), whereas a
| commission is a cut based upon a predetermined price that
| a salesmen can't really change (e.g. you get a 2% cut for
| every car you sell at a dealer). Salesmen can negotiate
| car sell price to some extent, affecting his cut, but he
| can't change his % cut on the total money spent by the
| buyer (otherwise, if he does, then it's a bribe).
|
| As far as lobbying, it's even closer to splitting hairs.
| I'd agree with you and say it is bribing and should be
| forbidden, but seems to only be called for when a donor
| is given overwhelming preferential treatment over another
| donor, and it is reflected by the amounts each donor
| paid.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jollybean wrote:
| Don't for a second suggest that this is about 'foreign
| companies bribing their way into something'.
|
| It's 100% powerful officials 'demanding kickbacks' for
| contracts and business - which is exactly 'the culture'
| that goes on in literally most of the world.
|
| The comments here are (and I don't mean to be denigrating)
| naive.
|
| Imagine that for all major contracts, say 10% will split
| between the buyer, possibly the 'local official' making the
| sale, possibly a 3rd party connection. It's been like that
| 'always'.
|
| The only way this will change, is if local government
| require it to happen.
|
| IKEA tried to hold out in Russia and they did for years.
| Until they caved paid the local mafia-ish guy his cut. And
| then Moscow got IKEAS. That's it. No cut, no IKEA.
|
| IKEA does not bribe people in US, Canada, Germany. (or at
| least not in any systematic way)
| ipaddr wrote:
| If Ikea did not bribe and failed to get approval perhaps it
| is part of the local culture of getting anything approved
| stefan_ wrote:
| There is an important distinction in this law. Paying an
| official to do something he would have done anyway is not
| a bribe, even if in the absence of it they might have
| never "gotten around to it".
|
| It's specifically things like this article alleges,
| kickbacks to officials involved in procurement decisions.
|
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_P
| ractices_Act#...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Now if only people in the west would apply this same
| logic to their own communities.
|
| Whole Foods isn't donating money to the private school
| that the children of some local politician to attend
| because of their belief in the school's mission. They're
| doing it because they want to redevelop a strip mall and
| a new soccer field costs less than anything that involves
| a courtroom.
| ethagknight wrote:
| I know you are trying to make an example of bribes,
| politicians, and private schooling, but honestly Whole
| Foods donating funds for a new playing field for a school
| and also redeveloping a strip mall instead of paying a
| bunch of attorneys to occupy space in a public courtroom
| sounds like... a win win win?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree but I'm not 100% sold on the
| high wealth floor that's required to access western
| corruption being a good thing.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Interesting fact: this used to be the case in Ukraine (IKEA
| negotiated for years and I believe publicly alleged
| corruption); yet finally in 2021 they opened the first
| small-format physical store. Knowing how things were
| actually improving lately makes the invasion doubly
| devastating...
| fallingknife wrote:
| > I don't think that's necessary part of local culture
|
| > Ikea decided not to bribe officials, so they didn't get
| approval to build their shops here
|
| Pick one
| pempem wrote:
| The OP's comment feels like debating about origin. Is it
| due to local culture or the standard being set by
| external actors and their culture
| buran77 wrote:
| MS has also been involved in bribery scandals all over
| Europe. Sometimes they were found guilty, sometimes the
| other party to the corruption charge found a way to make
| it all go away (more corruption). But when you do this
| all over the place the "it's the way things are done
| there" changes to "it's the way you do things". Every
| time MS is firing a couple of "rogue employees" because
| they got caught, not because they did it. And nothing
| changes at leadership level.
|
| Their way of doing things certainly extends to the SEC
| and DOJ via more convoluted and corrupt influencing
| paths.
| [deleted]
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I can tell you that on a "small" scale that's not
| something required, at least I did not pay bribes in my
| little life, although sometimes it could make things
| faster or cheaper I guess, but that's my principles as I
| hate corruption.
|
| Now Ikea-scale that could be unavoidable but I prefer not
| to have Ikea rather than living with corrupt officials
| around riding in their Mercedeses, showing off that
| living a honest life is strictly worse than living a
| criminal life. So children learn that you have to demand
| bribes to be successful in this life. That's never-ending
| circle. And worse of all it's partially fueled by foreign
| companies.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > I live in Kazakhstan and while I don't have any evidence,
| I'm pretty sure that many huge western companies operating
| here bribed officials.
|
| If the country requires bribes to operate in, and the
| western companies are operating in that country, then you
| can just do some simple logic to derive that they are
| bribing people.
|
| However, a lot of western companies will simply just form
| legitimate contracts with local companies that will then
| "fix" everything for them. Things get even murkier when the
| western company forms a join venture with a controlling
| share local company.
| wpietri wrote:
| It doesn't matter. For US persons and companies, it's always
| illegal.
|
| Here's the official page: https://www.trade.gov/us-foreign-
| corrupt-practices-act
|
| Here's the Wikipedia article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
|
| And here's a detailed look at one particular project, a Trump
| project in Azerbaijan:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/donald-
| trumps-...
| mc32 wrote:
| Of course the US considers it illegal. But if you're a
| Bulgarian executive running the Bulgarian subsidiary of a
| US company, they may do things closer to local custom
| despite US corporate directives. You're demanding that
| foreigners extirpate their foreignness while they are
| employees of a US company. It's not going to happen 100%.
| wpietri wrote:
| I don't think I'm demanding anything. But what I would
| like is for US businesses not to encourage or reward
| corruption, which harms the citizenry and diminishes the
| sort of strong competition that makes markets work well.
|
| I also think it's both ridiculous and insulting to
| suggest that corruption is some intrinsic property of
| Bulgarians and their "foreignness". Or anybody.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| By enforcing anti corruption on the parent company in the
| US, the parent company should in turn communicate and
| enforce their own anti corruption stance and policies on
| their foreign subsidiaries or branches. If there is no
| consequence for the parent company then the opposite
| might happen: extra money used for bribes is provided to
| the foreign subsidiaries with a wink; now the corruption
| is increasing.
| markdown wrote:
| > By enforcing anti corruption on the parent company in
| the US
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-
| corp/summary?id=D...
|
| Ooops.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| Agreed that the US Supreme Court decision on the Citizens
| United case was terrible and we are suffering the
| consequences of an an alternate indirect form of bribery
| as you point out. But this is head and shoulders above
| direct bribery which we still thankfully classify as
| illegal. The US has room to improve but let's not regress
| just because we're not 100% of the way there.
| mc32 wrote:
| You have to consider that local competitors and other
| foreign competitors may not have any issues with bribery,
| maybe they're both from cultures where bribery is normal.
|
| Now you're asking a local executive to paddle up river
| while their competitors go down river.
|
| Unless you have a somewhat leveled playing field it'll be
| an uphill battle.
|
| I believe there were espionage scandals in Europe by US
| intelligence where US companies were given confidential
| info on other negotiations --this was ab attempt to level
| the field in the face of what the US saw as unfair
| competition brought on by bribery.
| bluGill wrote:
| Microsoft is more than big enough to not play the game.
| We are not talking some little company against a big one
| here, we are talking about a big company, if they don't
| pay bribes what is the country going to do, they have
| more to lose than Microsoft.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Corruption does terrible things to a society. I look at how
| Russia, Mexico, Greece and others were/are absolutely crippled
| by wide-spread, run-of-the-mill corruption at all levels of
| government. We have always been our best in the USA when
| corruption has been the least prevalent. The "legalized
| bribery" from campaign donations and regulatory capture, while
| not as bad as in those other countries, does not do our system
| justice.
| thathndude wrote:
| To the extent the article gets anything wrong, it's the focus
| on just Microsoft. Microsoft is not some lone, bad actor here.
| soperj wrote:
| Who cares? Start with the one they have evidence on and move
| on to the next one.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| You say that but that's basically what happened with US v.
| Microsoft and they never moved onto the next. Apple is
| doing far worse with Safari on iOS and the DOJ refuses to
| apply the same standard.
|
| This seems like reverse rule of "if you're going to bring
| food, you have to bring enough for the whole class".
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Microsoft refused to pay lobbyist, now they do. AFAIK
| Apple never made that mistake.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| No, Apple has a tiny lobbying operation and does not do
| corporate PAC contributions at all.
|
| The real explanation is that Apple makes computers so
| they can legally control software however they want. When
| Microsoft got in trouble in the 1990s, they did not make
| computers, they were only a supplier. So they got in
| trouble for interfering with other suppliers. This is one
| reason Microsoft now makes and sells computers directly
| to consumers.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| How would that qualify as getting something wrong?
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I work in government, and I remember a story told to me by a
| federal official who was involved in the arrest of a former
| member of congress for bribery. The official told me that,
| essentially what the congressman did was illegal under federal
| law, but it was what you had to do in order to "do business" in
| "those parts of the world."
|
| I found that interesting. With what is going on today in the
| world, between nations committing human rights abuse and war,
| America still does business with them. Money exchanges hands,
| which furthers human rights abuses' and war because that's what
| our policymakers believe we needed to do to achieve our goals.
|
| One is breaking the law to achieve a goal, but what is the
| other called?
| igetspam wrote:
| While in India once, I ran into a friend from Google who was
| out there trying to build a data center. Total coincidence
| that we were both there at the same time. I was there to hire
| and train for another company and he was there to break
| ground. He'd been there for week and they'd yet to start
| doing more than some bare minimums related to surveys and
| permits. I was surprised that he was there at all, given the
| current state of construction.
|
| It turns out, they were way off target and they thought there
| was more progress already. Every time he spoke to anyone
| about permits and approvals, they'd say it was almost done
| and then there would be a delay. Amazon and Microsoft had
| been building in the area already and they had started the
| process much later. The difference? Google has a very strict
| policy on bribes. If you pay one, you won't be reimbursed and
| if they do and out, you won't be employed any longer.
| Microsoft and Amazon had no such policy and the conversations
| my friend had with his counterparts at those companies were
| pretty forthcoming about it. It's just how business is done
| there and if you don't play ball, you will have a hard time.
|
| Of course they paid. You have to. If you don't, things will
| happen eventually but that timeline is unpredictable. I'm
| sure Google found ways to ethically encourage progress
| eventually.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Meanwhile in America and the entire west to an extent, you
| have the government trying to "bribe" businesses to open in
| their jurisdiction through tax incentives and so forth.
|
| Really interesting cultural difference.
| rosndo wrote:
| It's the lack of corruption.
|
| In India the projects are blocked by individual officials
| seeking to line their pockets, they don't care if that
| causes their area to lose out on the project.
| zelon88 wrote:
| I'm somewhat confused.
|
| Here in America when you want to accomplish something like
| open a new facility you basically force the potential
| municipalities into competing with each other to win your
| favor.
|
| A big company will go to all the Chambers of Commerce in a
| given area and basically say "we're considering opening a
| 100,000 Sq ft facility and hiring 300 people. What
| incentives can you offer me if I build it here?"
|
| Then the towns will bend over backwards, gut their taxes,
| ease their planning zones, and basically contort everything
| they can to become the most appealing location.
|
| Is it just cheaper to skip this step and bribe the city in
| other parts of the world? Why doesn't this practice work or
| take place overseas?
| igetspam wrote:
| I don't know but that's the way things are. Cultural
| shifts are difficult.
|
| Bribes in India are so common, they made a website:
| https://ipaidabribe.com/
| enugu wrote:
| One issue in India is that local governance at level of
| cities and towns is very weak(very few know who the
| equivalent of the mayor of their city is). The state(as
| in say US states, not federal level) government basically
| runs the show.
|
| So, the state government does woo corporations with
| incentives to come to their state, but once the company
| reaches the level of permissions and deals with local
| officials who are looking for a cut(and in general, it is
| hard to fire these officials), the companies have to face
| the bribes process.
|
| You can transfer bureaucrats even if you cant fire
| them(and this does happen though sometimes for the wrong
| reasons). But the bribe network also involves local
| politicians.
|
| The intractable issue is that the journey to power of the
| top leaders in the state government involves taking
| support of local level leaders who either have some local
| support base or money which can be used for campaigning.
| In return, these local leaders demand a cut of bribe
| money which the top leader is obliged to allow or else
| risk losing their support.
|
| Of course, this is not an all encompassing explanation
| and some leaders are much worse(corrupt far beyond any
| political necessity) and some better.
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| I'm originally from a small part of India, and the logic
| is quite simple. In your example, 300 jobs = 300 votes.
| But it would require millions in incentives to the
| company. But the local politician can just "buy" 300
| votes with 300,000 INR (indian currency; 1000 rupees for
| 1 vote). So there is no point spending so much money on a
| facility when you can simply buy all the votes you need.
| zelon88 wrote:
| That is terrifying.
|
| So is Microsoft literally buying and installing
| politicians in foreign governments?
| markdown wrote:
| Nah, only in the US.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-
| corp/summary?id=D...
| enugu wrote:
| Election money is important but the role it plays is
| somewhat different.
|
| Politicians do often woo companies to come to their sate.
|
| A job (particulary a well paying one) creates a lot of
| economic activity and can make that region prosperous.
| Politicians want this both for votes created due to
| prosperity but more importantly, once the region becomes
| rich, they have more money for their social schemes and
| freebies which is a prominent part of how they come to
| power. Not to speak of more bribes obtained in richer
| areas.
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| Yeah it's happened like that in local communities where I
| live. Big company says to city government "if you don't
| give us a big tax break we'll move our
| [headquarters|factory|operations|etc] to our branch in
| [that other town]".
|
| More often than not the city relents and the tax breaks
| are enacted. No city officials are paid off, it's all
| about arm-twisting.
|
| Seems to me this is a form of _extortion_ not _bribery_.
| Of course extortion is no more ethical than bribery, but
| it 's not illegal to use the threat to take one's
| business elsewhere. Call it "negotiating", it happens all
| the time.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| "Here in America..."
|
| Parts of the world that require bribes have nothing close
| to the governmental system of regulations and permitting
| that America does. It's not that it's cheaper, it's that
| the system is so mismanaged and corrupt in its entirety,
| that the only way to achieve a goal without delays, cost
| overruns, sabotage, and violence, is to just pay the
| bribe..or else.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > What incentives can you offer me if I build it here?".
| Then the towns will bend over backwards, gut their taxes,
| ease their planning zones, and basically contort
| everything they can to become the most appealing
| location.
|
| I mean, that's basically a bribe too, we just don't call
| it a bribe when we do it on our side.
|
| _" Woah, woah, woah. You can't just hand government
| officials money! That's bribery! You have to do business
| within their specific jurisdiction and trade favours on
| the planning and setup of your business (favours none of
| your competitors or existing other business will receive)
| all on the promise of future increases in tax revenues in
| exchange, *that's* how you hand government officials
| money!"_
| xmprt wrote:
| Except they're not really close because in one case, the
| government is handing you tax payer money in exchange for
| potential growth and revenue _for the city_ whereas in
| the other case you are paying a specific government
| official for personal gain.
| [deleted]
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| The same bribes/kickbacks are very big in government contracts.
| Not sure what the DoJ would do when they would up investigating
| themselves.
| raincom wrote:
| With one major difference: in Africa, in general in the third
| world countries, whom to bribe, how much to bribe, who is the
| intermediary who handles the bribes, etc--are common
| knowledge. In the developed word, that is secret--only
| accessible to the super wealthy.
| yonaguska wrote:
| The military industrial complex, and the intelligence
| communities are above the government. Investigations would
| never take place, unless they were fake and only to placate
| the public.
|
| Lots of our dark foreign policy, is orchestrated through
| NGO's like the National Endowment for Democracy, where they
| then go on to do all kinds of illegal things in other
| countries. All is legal in the name of "national security".
| Kankuro wrote:
| US authorities don't investigate about MS (hopefully they
| will), but they use the extraterritoriality of US laws to sue
| foreign companies who corrupted in a foreign country. The
| French company Alstom (rolling stock and gas/nuke turbines
| manufacturer) was prosecuted for corruption... in Indonesia
| [1]. I'm all for fighting against corruption everywhere, but
| here it looks like the case was allegedly used to force to sell
| the power division to General Electric. These turbines are used
| by the nuclear plants in France, so they are quite critical and
| could have been used by the US authorities to negotiate
| something with France. I would have preferred if those guys
| were sued in France in the first place.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom#Judicial_troubles
| known wrote:
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I think almost with any common sense would recognize this. It
| happens a lot in the US as well and in academia, but most of all
| government services. People get kickbacks, Microsoft helps with
| marketing... so and so switched to Microsoft, here is what they
| have to say about how it helped the organization. Except, they
| never talked to the employees who would have told you how they
| hate it and it actually makes their jobs worse. People realize
| they are powerless and just leave or accept it as a normal part
| of business and the practice continues.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Kudos to Yasser Elabd! This man sounds awesome.
|
| This part particularly stood out to me:
|
| > When he refused a performance improvement plan, he lost the job
| and left Microsoft for good in August 2018.
|
| I didn't know you could refuse a PIP. TIL
| tstrimple wrote:
| You can do whatever you want if you don't mind losing your job.
| digisign wrote:
| Reminds me of this great piece (and hn discussion) regarding
| corporate bribery during the Watergate years:
|
| https://longreads.com/2018/11/20/the-second-half-of-watergat...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498796
|
| This reads as the modern chapter to the story.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I wonder if this explains the shocking incompetence of the
| Windows division...
| civilized wrote:
| Microsoft spokesperson: "how dare you single us out, obviously
| everyone is doing this"
| johnny_canuck wrote:
| The headline reminded me of the SNC-Lavalin affair in Canada
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-snc-lavalin-court-idUKKBN...
| cute_boi wrote:
| They also have habit of saying, "If we don't do this, Chinese
| company will do this and so what we are doing is clearly a
| benevolent act on humanity. To erase this blemish Microsoft
| shall donate 5 computer to Nigeria to help those poor kids to
| draw something in MS Paint"
| jonpo wrote:
| Ohh man my ESG ETF is suddenly evil..
| svachalek wrote:
| I was very interested in ESG until I saw that pretty much all
| ESG funds had Facebook in the top handful of holdings. Because
| they're easy on the environment compared to an aluminum
| smelter, and somehow destroying democracy around the world
| doesn't count as a social or governance issue. I've changed my
| focus to owning shares via funds that will vote my shares with
| some sort of conscience. (Vanguard is the rock bottom on that
| metric, btw.)
| locusofself wrote:
| Jesus do you know how many training videos about anti-corruption
| and bribery I've had to watch as an MS employee?
| timcavel wrote:
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