[HN Gopher] Microsoft blocks Israel's use of its tech in mass su...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft blocks Israel's use of its tech in mass surveillance of
Palestinians
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 745 points
Date : 2025-09-25 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| srameshc wrote:
| > Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200,
| the military's elite spy agency, had violated the company's terms
| of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its
| Azure cloud platform
|
| You can spy but data is all mine.
| sionisrecur wrote:
| What's the protocol when a client stores data that violates
| their terms of service? Delete it immediately? Retain it until
| the client can retrieve a backup? Deny access until they sign a
| new contract?
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| I suspect that really depends on the content. What does
| Microsoft do when it's CSAM? They can't legally posses it but
| can't legally delete it because that would be destroying
| evidence. I'm sure there's a process.
| Cenk wrote:
| > 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data - equivalent to
| approximately 200m hours of audio - was held in Microsoft's Azure
| servers in the Netherlands
| Aeolun wrote:
| It bothers me more that it was held in the Netherlands than
| that it was held on Azure servers.
|
| It's a fucking disgrace to any government to be facilitating
| anything like this, and the Netherlands seems extra complicit.
| dh2022 wrote:
| What makes you think Netherlands government knows what data
| resides within its borders?
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't necessarily expect them to know what resides within
| their borders, I merely expect them to act against
| atrocities. It is no accident that all this data was
| located in the Netherlands.
| jfengel wrote:
| Would it have been different elsewhere in Europe?
| bilekas wrote:
| But why do you think the Netherlands govt was in anyway
| involved in this? I host some bsremetal in the Netherlands
| but I don't need to report to the government what I store..
| dh2022 wrote:
| I wonder why IDC choose the Netherlands location. Microsoft has
| one Azure region in Israel itself:
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/reliability/regions-...
| honeycrispy wrote:
| Safer from ballistics
| smileybarry wrote:
| The Israel Azure region wasn't launched until 2023, and AFAIK
| has substantially less services available than the others. I
| know Google's Israel region doesn't have as many GPU options,
| for example.
| AlfredBarnes wrote:
| Why build something near or semi near conflict?
| serialNumber wrote:
| Valid question, but just look at the huge amount of R&D /
| the tech companies in Israel. Even if it's near conflict, I
| don't think companies care
| darkwater wrote:
| A company doesn't care. An army does.
| warrenmiller wrote:
| might have something to do with the Netherlands being a large
| investor in Israel. the largest in the EU. It's responsible
| for two-thirds of EU investment in Israel.
| https://www.somo.nl/economic-sanctions-eu-is-israel-
| largest-...
| ballenf wrote:
| How much would the bill be for this?
| tiahura wrote:
| A little more surveillance might have prevented Oct 7.
| n1b0m wrote:
| A lack of surveillance wasn't the problem. It was not believing
| the intelligence.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-milita...
| mrits wrote:
| Such a Monday quarterback's perspective. There is always
| plenty of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| The amount of intelligence to suggest there will be an
| attack on specific places at specific times is contextual
| and not comparably equal.
|
| Every time I hear or read that expression, I stop taking
| the comment seriously because it attempts to shut down
| dialogue with a cute, esoteric phrase instead of fostering
| a discussion about a serious retrospective.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Not moving troops and police away from the border might have
| prevented Oct 7th. I think they were more focused on the West
| Bank at the time.
| emsign wrote:
| Or following up the reports of suspicious behavior in Gaza by
| your own IDF border troops days before the terror attack.
| fph wrote:
| Ah, yes, the classic argument: we must ramp up surveillance
| because it is the only way to stop pedophiles, terrorists, and
| pirates.
| codeulike wrote:
| _"I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the
| Guardian," [Microsoft's vice-chair and president, Brad Smith]
| wrote, noting that it had brought to light "information we could
| not access in light of our customer privacy commitments". He
| added: "Our review is ongoing."_
|
| Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the
| full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to
| privacy commitments.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| It could also mean "now that someone else has seen it, we can
| finally act on what we have only privately seen but couldn't
| admit seeing"
| scuff3d wrote:
| More likely MS was well aware of what was going on and didn't
| care until the Guardian forced their hand.
| ms7m wrote:
| > The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft
| executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based
| employees may not have been fully transparent about their
| knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as
| part of the review.
|
| Highly likely, or at least a bit naive -- Completely
| reasonable to have local staff for a contract this big, but
| Microsoft should have independently 'double-checked' sooner
| scuff3d wrote:
| The head of that Israeli unit met directly with the CEO
| of MS. I don't buy a second the execs at MS didn't know
| what was going on. Blaming the local contractors is just
| MS throwing people under the bus.
|
| I've worked for big corporations for nearly 20 years,
| I've seen this more times then I can count. Higher ups
| always happy to turn a blind eye to a bad situation as
| long as it's making the company money, and then
| immediately throwing subordinates under the bus when it
| bites them in the ass.
| AlfredBarnes wrote:
| A tale as old as time.
| lazide wrote:
| If they weren't intended to be thrown under the bus,
| they'd be called... superordinates? I guess?
| scuff3d wrote:
| Not to sound too much like a reddit comment... but God
| damnit take my upvote.
| keeda wrote:
| And if they all just took the bus together they'd be
| coordinates?
| lazide wrote:
| 'I'm shocked! shocked! that there is gambling in this
| establishment! This is unacceptable!'
|
| 'Your winnings sir'
| williamdclt wrote:
| I don't know if it's _true_, but it seems right? I don't want
| Microsoft to have this level of visibility into my usage of
| Azure, just like I don't want my phone provider to eavesdrop on
| my conversations. I'm no privacy ayatollah, but this seems like
| a reasonable amount of privacy from Microsoft
| ngcazz wrote:
| Well, the average org isn't out there literally committing
| genocide
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Privacy ayatollah? Is that like an infosec shah?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Grand Mullah of GDPR Compliance
| saghm wrote:
| Metadata monitoring messiah
| pyrale wrote:
| Privacy professing prelate
|
| Surveillance-Suspicious Saint
| spongebobism wrote:
| Chain of Custody Cakkavatti
| lioeters wrote:
| Bodhisattva of Vibe Ops Infrachaos
| lazide wrote:
| Data pope?
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Thanks for this one, putting in request to my manager to
| change my job title to data pope, since our titles are
| all meaningless anyway might as well have a fun one.
| clort wrote:
| No, a Shah is a hereditary ruler (a King), whereas an
| Ayatollah is more like a Bishop (ie a religious leader, but
| not the top guy such as the Pope in Roman Catholicism)
| keeda wrote:
| I have seen "czar" used as an informal title to denote
| ownership of a domain, e.g. the "security czar."
|
| I suppose it originates from the term "border czar" and
| others in politics e.g.
| https://www.politico.com/story/2009/09/president-obamas-
| czar...
| Etheryte wrote:
| The whole point of confidential computing is that the cloud
| provider can't access your data and can't tell what you're
| doing with it. This is a must have requirement in many
| government contracts and other highly legislated fields.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| I've personally never seen anything requiring confidential
| computing in anything. Is this required in the USA? I find
| that hard to believe, because the technology on a cloud level
| is still very beta-feeling. I think that Microsoft just never
| looked because they did not want to know.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| They have services literally dedicated to things like
| health data records.
|
| But you don't even need to go that sensitive, literally any
| type of online service might run the risk of handling PII.
| Which is why CIS, NIST et al have security frameworks that
| cover things like encryption at rest.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| But encryption at rest is not confidential compute. And
| Confidential compute is pretty new in terms of tech and i
| would be genuinely suprised if it's already required for
| some stuff. I am genuinely interested though, if you have
| any links about it please enlighten me.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/confidential-
| computi...
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| What country does this "confidential computing" exist in, and
| how can I get there?
| braiamp wrote:
| That comment is... weird, considering they disabled the
| accounts of certain International Court of Justice that were
| individually targeted.
| lazide wrote:
| The reality is that no one can tell whose ass it is safe to
| kiss now a days, so it's all scandal driven actions. Unless
| someone can create a big enough scandal, no one is going to
| do squat.
| covercash wrote:
| Weird, pretty sure employees brought this to their attention a
| few times already...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-palestine-is...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-prote...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-build-israel-gaza-prote...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-protest-employees-fired...
| cl0ckt0wer wrote:
| If they act on information their employees report, they are
| violating their commitments.
| sc68cal wrote:
| There have been public reports by major news organizations
| on the subject of Israel using big tech companies to
| surveil the West Bank and Gaza, for a decade. This isn't an
| issue of customer privacy.
| meowface wrote:
| The difference is that pre-2023 it could at least have
| some plausible excuse of trying to detect terrorist
| activity. With Israel's current actions in Gaza, there is
| no longer any plausible excuse or defense for any
| security action Israel is conducting towards
| Palestinians.
| Aarostotle wrote:
| Did something happen in 2023 that makes it _less_
| relevant for Israel to try to prevent terrorist activity?
| meowface wrote:
| Israel has a legitimate reason to want to try to
| intercept and detect terrorist activity, but given what
| they've been doing in Gaza for the past year and a half,
| they simply can't be trusted. They've lost all
| credibility and benefit of the doubt. So they can't
| expect other entities to help them do something they say
| is legitimate, because no one can trust them to do
| something in a legitimate and ethical way.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I think OP's point is Israel's legitimate surveillance
| needs have risen alongside their credibility crashing.
| This isn't a simply reduced problem unless one has a
| horse in the race.
| meowface wrote:
| I understand that, and I am sympathetic to those needs to
| some degree. They do have increased legitimate
| surveillance needs. But they've lost all of their good
| will. Partnering with them is too morally and PR-ily
| hazardous.
|
| I am not saying Israel is nearly as bad as Nazi Germany,
| but I think this argument is overall kind of pointless
| because one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had
| greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after
| they invaded Poland.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had
| greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after
| they invaded Poland_
|
| This is an interesting comparison--thank you.
|
| That said, did the Poles launch cross-border attacks on
| German civilians? The closest I can come up with is
| Bloody Sunday [1], which _was_ an attack on ethnically
| German civilians, but _not_ a cross-border incursion.
| (Granted, we can only observe this _ex post facto_ , so
| your argument still stands.)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1939)
| DaveExeter wrote:
| There was the Warsaw uprising.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Not cross border. The only purpose German surveillance of
| Poland would have furthered would have been (again, with
| the benefit of hindsight) their own occupation. Not the
| safety of Germans in Germany.
|
| If the _Armia Krajowa_ had carried out an October 7 style
| attack on the German homeland, against German civilians,
| their memory would be mixed, not the virtually
| unblemished heroism they deservedly command in the
| historic record.
| babu657 wrote:
| Warsaw uprising with killing babies. Sure you're the good
| guys
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| The Palestinian-led military operation on October 7 did
| _not_ involve killing babies.
|
| One baby was killed. Another died 14 hours after birth
| after its pregnant mother was shot. Only one of those was
| conclusively shot by insurgents from Gaza (the UN fact-
| finding report[1], on page 44, notes that many Israelis
| were killed and injured by "friendly fire")
|
| Out of 1200 non-Gazans killed, 33 were children, or 2.7%,
| and again, at least some of these deaths can be
| attributed to the Israeli military response. It should be
| noted that the casualty rate of Israel's response in Gaza
| has been at least 30% children.
|
| It's bizarre that you bring up the infant casualties of
| Hamas October 7, of which there was 1, as evidence for
| calling it a terrorist attack, when the actual number of
| babies killed by Israel is an order of magnitude greater
| than the _total_ number of people killed by Hamas on
| October 7
|
| [1]: https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/06/a-hrc-...
| hashim wrote:
| Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land
| was previously Palestinian land before being handed over
| by colonial powers and then "won" in subsequent "wars"
| (read: massacres) on the barely-armed villagers living
| there? The Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the
| Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence
| for their causes. Hamas was established in 1984, by the
| generation that had grown up with the occupation in 1948.
| If your country was occupied and members of your family
| killed, would you be as careful to keep your resistance
| peaceful?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why would being cross-border matter when the entire
| land was previously Palestinian_
|
| That's how borders work. (Anything else is, by
| definition, a border dispute.) If the _Armia Krajowa_ had
| bulldozed into Lithuania on the logic that they lost it
| due to foreign meddling, they would have tarnished their
| record. (Despite the claim being true.)
|
| > _Viet Cong, South Africa 's ANC, the Suffragettes and
| civil rights movements all used violence for their
| causes_
|
| On their own turf. And as for the former, against
| military targets--nobody serious in the Viet Cong or USSR
| was plotting Al Qaeda-style attacks on the American
| homeland.
|
| October 7th was a terrorist attack. It was plotted like a
| military operation. But so was 9/11.
|
| > _would you be as careful to keep your resistance
| peaceful?_
|
| Not particularly. But I'd want to be fighting an actual
| resistance. 7 October attack was a strategic failure. The
| only reason it might end in a draw is because Netanyahu
| surrounded himself with maniacs. Even then, permanent
| damage has been done to the viability of a sovereign
| Palestine.
|
| (There is also a massive difference between something
| being understandable and something being justified.)
| hashim wrote:
| So the problem is that you don't believe Palestinians are
| on their "own turf", because Israel "legally" won it from
| the villagers there in 1948 after having the British
| install them to it. Got it. Once again, the Palestinian
| homeland is exactly where the kibbutz (which is a
| military camp and outpost) was, mere miles from Gaza, and
| all of the people involved were actively standing members
| of the IDF (i.e. the occupying army akin to the Americans
| in Vietnam). You keep calling it a terrorist attack while
| appearing completely clueless that it's a largely
| meaningless political term. We considered Nelson Mandela
| a terrorist while he was locked up for 30 years, and for
| the UK at least he was only removed from that list in
| 2013.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| > when the entire land was previously Palestinian land
|
| No such thing as Palestinian. Just Islamic Arab. Choosing
| to label yourself the same as one name for the land
| doesn't make the land yours. But also - who do you think
| occupied the land previously?
| hashim wrote:
| Sure, that must be why the very text of the Balfour
| Declaration specifies "Palestine" and why coins from the
| 19th century have been proven to show the same. I'm
| afraid the hasbara isn't gonna work anymore.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that
| had grown up with the occupation in 1948
|
| Correction, Gaza was first occupied by Israel for a few
| months in 1956, then occupied continuously since 1967.
|
| Regardless, by 1984, nearly half of the people in Gaza
| would have lived their entire lives under occupation, and
| the most would have lived at least half their lives under
| occupation.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _I am not saying Israel is nearly as bad as Nazi
| Germany_
|
| oh, that's generous of you
| concinds wrote:
| No, because those employees didn't learn about it by
| snooping around in Azure data.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Can anyone help clean up these sources/verify?
|
| The first one seems to be after Microsoft's claim "and
| Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British
| newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate
| attacks on Palestinian targets".
|
| The second one looks similar "Microsoft late last week said
| it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported
| by British newspaper The Guardian".
|
| The 3rd one seems to be a genuine example that Microsoft
| employees were reporting this specific contract violation
| concern - but I feel like there are more genuine examples
| I've heard of than just this one report.
|
| The 4th one is a bit unclear, it seems to be a general
| complaint about the contract - not about specific violations
| of it.
|
| Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was
| so different about the report from The Guardian". It's not
| like these kinds of claims are new, or in small papers only,
| but maybe The Guardian was able to put together hard evidence
| from outside that allowed Microsoft to determine things
| without themselves going in breach of contract details?
| covercash wrote:
| > Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what
| was so different about the report from The Guardian".
|
| I think timing. The world is finally ready to stop ignoring
| what Israel has been doing so it's significantly easier for
| countries, companies, and even individuals to stand up,
| speak out, and take action.
| michael1999 wrote:
| I think it's the latter -- Microsoft was unable to look
| internally, or able to pretend they were ignorant. But the
| Guardian report was just too detailed to ignore.
| duxup wrote:
| I actually think understanding exactly how your customers do
| a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
|
| I've had sales, customer reps, even engineers and customers
| describe how a customer / they work ... and then I go and
| look and ... it's not how anyone said they work IRL.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > I actually think understanding exactly how your customers
| do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
|
| Nor is surveillance even necessarily a bad thing given the
| context. Would it be a better world in which Israel were
| not able to precisely target Hamas entities and assets?
| Surveillance is a big part of properly targeting the
| correct targets.
| duxup wrote:
| I wasn't addressing any of that. More generally that
| knowing what your customer is doing, even if someone
| "tells" you, it might not be accurate.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > Would it be a better world in which Israel were not
| able to precisely target Hamas entities and assets
|
| They are already not doing that
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They should ask their Chinese engineers in charge of sensitive
| Azure servers.
| filoleg wrote:
| That's the best part, they cannot. Well, they technically
| can, but the answer from the company that runs chinese azure
| servers is gonna be "none of your business."
| nashashmi wrote:
| What is interesting is they gave some privacy while others they
| strip away.
| buyucu wrote:
| A small step, mostly for PR I guess, but still better than
| nothing.
|
| There should be no tech for genocide!
| hdlothia wrote:
| Kinda bullish for azure that the idf chose it over aws
| igleria wrote:
| Not sure about that. To many companies or individuals, it might
| make them choose another provider. Unless... they already are
| Azure customers, in which case they might probably want to
| avoid the cost of moving from a cloud provider
| tasn wrote:
| Israel (like many governments) is very Microsoft Windows
| centric, so if I had to guess it wasn't chosen due to technical
| merits but instead based on existing business relationships.
|
| Note: I've used Azure and it sucks. :)
| dmix wrote:
| Azure's web app for managing servers is a nightmare
|
| Uses the same awful UI/plaform as their Xbox account settings
|
| Microsoft always somehow succeeds in spite of the quality of
| everything they build.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| why would that imply bullying?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Bullish, as in, not bearish.
| blitzar wrote:
| implying not bearing
| asadm wrote:
| meh more of a bearish signal. evil using shitty evil tech.
| _blk wrote:
| Seems to be fairly equivalent to ABC pulling Kimmel and
| reinstating it a few days later.
| aaomidi wrote:
| After they fired how many protestors?
| pbiggar wrote:
| There was an interesting point in the earlier article on this,
| where Microsoft tried to push their Israeli employees under a
| bus. They claimed their Israeli employees had lied to them about
| the use of Azure for war and civilian harm because they held more
| allegiance to their army than to Microsoft.
|
| Now obviously, this was a lie, but the implication is staggering:
| Microsoft can't trust it's own employees in Israel, and believes
| they're lying to the mothership! And if microsoft can't trust
| them, surely no one else should either!
| hashim wrote:
| Unrelated, I knew I recognised that name, thank you for
| everything you do, I've made a few commits to T4P myself in the
| last few months and can't imagine the regular work that must go
| into it.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Wow, they actually are pulling back. That is really surprising.
| Wonder if they see the winds changing on this issue and want to
| get on the right side of history. Big props to everyone at
| Microsoft who spoke out about this and risked or lost their jobs
| because of it. They kept that fire lit on their ass.
| slantedview wrote:
| Last week a UN human rights commission found that Israel is
| carrying out a genocide. I think you're right that the winds
| have changed and now companies will shift their positions.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Sentiment toward Israel outside of USA has changed.
|
| The leaders of the developed nations of Europe have gone
| against Trump and publicly stated their recognition of
| Palestine.
| some-guy wrote:
| It has changed quite a bit here in the US too, even among the
| Jewish population. Our synagogue is very divided on this,
| mainly between the young and the old.
| sieep wrote:
| Very true. I've gone on dates with a couple Jewish women
| over the past two or three years & they've all staunchly
| supported Palestine which surprised me a bit.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Your sample size of two surely is conclusive? lol
| sieep wrote:
| I'm just speaking from my personal experience and don't
| mean to draw any conclusions about anything.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I can understand your skepticism, but this is an example
| of what is termed "normal human conversation," where
| people share their personal experiences. Quite often, one
| will find people sharing stories without the backing of
| statistical evidence.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why would that surprise you? I think the opposite opinion
| is a lot more surprising.
|
| One in every 50 children in Gaza was killed by the
| Israeli military. That's like killing a child in every
| second classroom in the US...
| sieep wrote:
| That's a fair point. My gut reaction is that people will
| default to tribalism, but I think this has been a
| different situation than most others (and going on a lot
| longer).
| sa501428 wrote:
| Why is it surprising?
|
| Fwiw my Jewish friends have also been quite vocal in
| opposing Netanyahu/Likud, usually more vocal than Muslim
| friends.
| DSingularity wrote:
| I think it's surprising because Israelis are very loud in
| their support for Netanyahu. Yeah, there are protests but
| it polling suggests that the overwhelming majority of
| Israelis support Netanyahu.
| js212 wrote:
| No they are not. It's like 20%
| swat535 wrote:
| Comments like that reminds of people asserting blanket
| statements like: majority of Iranians support the regime
| and hate Jews!
|
| Like do people not realize Iranian Jews also exist?
|
| Anyway I digress..
| sieep wrote:
| My gut assumption is that people will default to
| tribalism, but that has proven to be wrong over the past
| few years.
| js212 wrote:
| I think the fact that you have gone on dates with Jewish
| women shows they don't really care about being Jewish.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| My boomer Jewish stepmother surprised me when I saw her
| recently - complete U-turn from last year's "all
| Palestinians are human animals" to "Netanyahu is a war
| criminal".
| lkey wrote:
| The statistics bear this out, millennials on down are very
| against this. Within the last year a true overall majority
| of the American Jewish population are opposed to what
| Israel is doing to Gaza. I expect this trend to continue.
| The truest supporters of Israel in America have always been
| Christian (for both insane and cynical reasons).
| throwaway3060 wrote:
| Do you have a source for this?
| danans wrote:
| Here is a good background:
|
| https://jewishcurrents.org/antisemitic-zionists-arent-a-
| cont...
| Joeboy wrote:
| "There you are, Mr. Netanyahu! Just who do you think you
| are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then
| wrapping yourself in Judaism like it's some shield from
| criticism? You're making life for Jews miserable, and life
| for American Jews impossible!" - Jewish character on the
| latest South Park, a show created and run by two Jewish
| people.
|
| Also "It's not Jews vs. Palestine, it's Israel vs.
| Palestine!"
| catigula wrote:
| Hard to imagine that this argument exists, the real
| victims of mass murder aren't the actual victims of mass
| murder.
| Joeboy wrote:
| If a country was killing thousands of people and saying
| it was to make people like you safer, might you not be
| inclined to point out it's having the opposite effect?
| catigula wrote:
| No, that isn't my general reaction to Hitler saying he
| killed Jews to make Europeans safer.
|
| My reaction is "what are you talking about, psycho
| murderer?"
|
| That's a good look, try that.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Perhaps we'll have to agree to differ, but I think
| American Jews being like "not in my name" sends a more
| politically effective message than "what are you talking
| about, psycho murderer?".
|
| tbf I'm not primarily interested in what's a good look.
| catigula wrote:
| I think we're stuck and have to agree to disagree but the
| message sent is at least indistinguishable from the
| message of a self-interested sociopathic community with
| no moral concerns beyond their own. When I do things I at
| least try to make it discernible from psychopathy.
| Joeboy wrote:
| I don't really want to get into the A word thing, but
| your position makes more sense to me from a perspective
| of being anti-Jewish, rather than pro-Palestinian. From
| the latter perspective, I think it's better to challenge
| Israel's narratives than embolden them.
| catigula wrote:
| I'm glad you realize how silly that word has become. In
| reality, groups of people via culture or whatever other
| mechanism do generate certain things that are undeserving
| or deserving of censure. For example, due to cultural
| reasons, 1930-1940s Germany produced a high preponderance
| of Nazis, so we destroyed them.
|
| I'm not suggesting cultural destruction is possible or
| desireable (maybe it is, but it's not my purview), but if
| a culture is producing a large preponderance of murderous
| ethnic supremacists it's time to sound the alarm bells.
| This entire thing wouldn't have been possible if that
| community didn't make it so.
|
| This is especially compounded given that this group feels
| above critique from outsiders. That is a dangerous
| concoction and unfortunately the end result is wanton
| murder and redirection of resources to abet it. I think
| we're all about sick of the killing now. With great power
| comes great responsibility to be a moral agent.
| Joeboy wrote:
| I think word is sometimes used as a cudgel to derail
| reasonable discussion. I still think it has its place and
| at this point, yeah I'm going to say you're unambiguously
| an antisemite.
| catigula wrote:
| Sorry Joe, I guess we didn't frame the discussion of a
| _checks notes_ horrific genocide done and abetted by and
| on behalf of a cultural and ethnic identity helped or
| hurt you specifically enough.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Palestinians don't discern Jews and Israelis. If you
| listen to this recording you'll understand - they're
| after the Jews:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bACNYtaLBQI
| Joeboy wrote:
| I think you're probably propagandizing rather than trying
| to engage coherently with the conversation, but perhaps
| I'm missing something.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I was directly referring to your closing line saying
| "It's not Jews vs. Palestine, it's Israel vs.
| Palestine!". Given that about half of Israelis are Arab
| in origin, and about a fifth are proper Muslims, the
| objection of Palestinians is not to Israelis but to Jews.
| The video I linked demonstrates the common mode of
| thought in that part of the world.
| Joeboy wrote:
| You linked audio of a phone call from a Hamas terrorist,
| as evidence that "Palestinians don't discern Jews and
| Israelis". I hope you can see the irony there.
|
| There's also, I think, an irony that antisemites and
| Zionists are united in their their efforts to conflate
| Jewishness with the actions of the Israeli state. I think
| it's a welcome development that Parker / Stone / Sheila
| Broflovski aren't going along with it.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Politics is weird. With the Biden administration there was
| lots of lip service given in opposition to the slaughter in
| Gaza while at the same time they were shipping unprecedented
| amounts of weapons to the IDF.
|
| Now with Trump they state that they have max support for
| Israel while it seems like all of Europe is turning away from
| unconditional support for Israel and a massive change in the
| typical rhetoric around media in the US. That's odd.
| dmix wrote:
| The article says they are continuing to work with IDF. It's the
| spy agency who crossed a line.
| leosussan wrote:
| Honestly, respect to the big M.
| moogly wrote:
| No one left to surveil, I guess.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Estimates of deaths are around 60,000, of a 2 million strong
| population.
| moogly wrote:
| I could write things here about those officially reported
| deaths (not estimates, which are much higher, but no one
| really knows and very likely never will), or the internal
| diaplacement, but since there might be at least 1 Palestinian
| still alive digging in the rubble somewhere, literalists like
| you would still feel the need to overcorrect.
|
| I thought the defeated tone of my post made it clear that it
| was not meant to be taken that literally. I guess not.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| That's about the latest number from Gaza health ministry that
| stopped counting well over a year ago as Israel had destroyed
| all but one hospital. It doesn't even count the people left
| in rubble from destroying 80% of all buildings.
| amscanne wrote:
| This is nonsense. The Gaza health ministry continues to
| report estimates, of which are substantial portion are
| missing and presumed dead.
| hashim wrote:
| If you think that figure is remotely accurate despite the
| fact Israel has decimated all hospitals, leveled entire
| areas, wiped out entire families and is starving those that
| are still alive to do the counting, you're being naive, and
| that's a generous interpretation. Once Israel finally allow
| the UN in, that figure is going up by a factor of _at least_
| 2 or 3. The true cost of most genocides are only counted
| years after it 's over, when it's too late.
| oefrha wrote:
| Military spy agency involved in ongoing war stores 11.5PB of
| data, Microsoft commissioned external review founds no evidence
| that military spy agency is using said data to target and harm
| people, only to backtrack after media breaking more project
| details? Come the fuck on. What's the point of these performative
| external reviews? Just thugs hired to say whatever their customer
| wants them to say.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own
| state after this.
| barbazoo wrote:
| And their own datacenter!
| lupusreal wrote:
| Right of return for all Palestinians and their descendants,
| worldwide.
| vkou wrote:
| Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, here, that would
| have the stench of colonialism about it.
|
| It's not their land to 'return to' - after all, people
| already live there and they have no moral right to displace
| them.
| lupusreal wrote:
| They have been deliberately displaced by Israeli's
| apartheid government giving Jewish people around the world
| a "right to return" to Israel. Except unlike the
| Palestinians, they were never from Israel in the first
| place so the term "right to return" as used by Israel is
| nothing but colonialist propaganda.
|
| Undoing colonialism isn't colonialism.
| lazide wrote:
| It's all just the 'hopes and prayers' of the left anyway.
| When someone doesn't give a damn (like Israel right now),
| all the public shaming is just another version of the
| UN's strongly worded letter.
| hashim wrote:
| Yes, the shameless and evil generally aren't to be
| reasoned with, in which case things will come to a head
| and there are other ways to stop genocides. See for
| example, the Nazis.
| albulab wrote:
| Hey chatgpt how many jews displaced from Arab countries
| in 1948? and how many descendants they have today?
| hashim wrote:
| So you think the Jews imported by the One Million Plan
| and the tens of others like it were "displaced"? There's
| a reason that the multiplicity of Jews in Israel today
| are American and European immigrants with no connection
| to the land whatsoever.
| throwforfeds wrote:
| Honestly can't tell if this is satire or not.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| Poe's law! Welcome to the internet!
| lupusreal wrote:
| I can only hope it is, and assume it isn't.
| basilgohar wrote:
| How do you think Israel was formed in the first place? Or
| is your comment intentionally ironic?
| ars wrote:
| In the fist place? That was 3,000 or so years ago.
| basilgohar wrote:
| There was never a country called Israel until 1948. It
| was always Palestine.
|
| The idea of a nation called Israel is the invention of
| Zionists in the 19th and 20th century.
| hashim wrote:
| And spearheaded by the Haganah and Irgun, who were
| violent terrorists whose many bombings "persuaded" the
| British to hand the land over to them.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Ancient Israelites existed approximately 2000 years
| before your incorrect claimed timeline. Today's Jews are
| descendants of Israelites.
|
| It is also trivially simply to disprove "It was always
| Palestine". It was made up by Romans. Again, much later
| than when Jewish people lived there.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Today's Israel has absolutely nothing to do with ancient
| Israel. They took on the name as propaganda, a cynically
| constructed state origin myth.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| How do you think most countries or borders were formed?
| It's almost all wars and displacement.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Israel was not formed by displacement. That's a common
| misconception. Jews bought lands all across Palestine in
| early 1900's, with bodies such as the JNF. The
| displacement ("Nakba") came in 1948, during the Israeli
| War of Independence (started by the Arabs in Palestine
| and abroad), and even that mostly concerned areas which
| participated in the war. Areas that remained peaceful
| integrated into Israel (today's Israeli Arabs, 23% of the
| population).
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Started by the Arabs is charitable when Jewish terrorists
| went around massacring villages.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| It wasn't started by the Palestinians. Israelis conduced
| ethnic cleansing operations against civilians to displace
| them, including biowarfare and well poisoning. It
| continues today, in Gaza and in the West Bank.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_expulsion_fro
| m_L...
| flyinglizard wrote:
| The article you linked refers to events during the war of
| 1948, when Israel was already formalized. It's
| establishment up to that point was primarily based on
| lawful acquisition, not expulsion. When it turned to an
| all out war, then yes, expulsion took place.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Palestinians still owned most of the land... and buying
| land doesn't give you the right to rule over the peasants
| who till it. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commo
| ns/thumb/4/46/Pa...
| hashim wrote:
| Yes, it was so lawful that the Irgun had to bomb the
| British and Palestinians to lawfully convince them to
| hand it to them.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Imagine you kill my dad, steal his house and turn me out
| into the street; you get convicted and sent to jail and
| your son gets to keep the house.
| ars wrote:
| That what Jordan did to the Jews in Jerusalem, and then
| handed the house to Palestinians who decided they want to
| make it their capital.
| basilgohar wrote:
| You say "the Jews" but you're leaving out that there are
| Arab Jews and European ones. Arab Jews have lived in
| Palestine for hundreds of years alongside other Arabs
| peacefully in coexistence.
|
| The arrival of Zionist European Jews was a phenomonen of
| the 19th and 20th centuries.
|
| The Zionist Jews that came from Europe brought with them
| a supremecist ideology that, in their eyes, justified all
| forms of violence committed against the Muslim,
| Christian, and yes, Jewish Palestians that opposed their
| colonization.
|
| I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in
| your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem, but Jews have
| always lived in Jerusalem since the Muslims first took
| control of it 1400 years ago when Umar ibn El-Khattab
| brought back in Jews who had been expelled by the
| Christian rulers prior to that.
|
| Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim
| rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or
| otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims
| and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there
| never was one.
| ars wrote:
| > I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in
| your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the
| _We...
|
| "The Jordanians immediately expelled all the Jewish
| residents of East Jerusalem.[54] Mark Tessler cites John
| Oesterreicher as writing that during Jordanian rule, "34
| out of the Old City's 35 synagogues were dynamited. Some
| were turned into stables, others into chicken coops.""
|
| Which is why Palestinians should never get East Jerusalem
| as their capital, it's simply not theirs, not even in the
| nebulous way that the West Bank is.
|
| This:
|
| > Jews have always prospered under actual religious
| Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran,
| or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between
| Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this
| there never was one.
|
| Is not true, as even a cursory view of the history will
| reveal endless massacres of Jews by Muslims.
| basilgohar wrote:
| This is completely in the context of the formation of
| Israel in 1948.
|
| Also, you are lying about "endless massacres of Jews by
| Muslims". This is not, has never been, and continues to
| not be, true whatsoever.
|
| Arabs and Muslims didn't even have antisemitism before
| Zionism existed. You can only look to times after Zionism
| with its supremeist ideology to find hostility from Arabs
| and Muslims specifically targeting Jews for being Jewish.
| It simply did not exist and they have coexisted for
| nearly the entirety of the history of Islam. Only when
| Europeans came down into the Middle East and they
| segmented and separated the society did this occur.
|
| Avi Shlaim [0], an Israeli and also Arab Jew, talks
| extensively about the peaceful coexistence Muslims and
| Jews had for hundreds of years in the Middle East prior
| to Zionism.
|
| Zionism tried to force a wedge between Arab Jews and
| Muslims that simply wasn't there beforehand.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| I'm as against the genocide as you can be, but what you
| are saying is historically completely inaccurate.
| Discrimination against Jews is old, older than Israel or
| Zionism. The arguments against the land theft and
| genocide are strong enough without the hyperbole.
| nailer wrote:
| Also for the 850K middle eastern Jews that were kicked out of
| their countries by arabs?
| octopoc wrote:
| If committing genocide puts the genociders in a tough spot,
| then I'm actually cool with that
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| On genetic terms, the Palestinians are virtually identical
| to Semitic Jews.
|
| There's been plenty of slander to try to say they're more
| arab, but they're essentially close cousins.
|
| Which leads one to believe, perhaps a large amount of the
| jews in the region simply moved on with the times with the
| new religion taking hold.
|
| Essentially Israel/Palestine is a fight between cousins,
| and one side's inlaws who never actually came from the
| region but converted elsewhere.
|
| So converts vs converts. Do the local converts have a say
| over the foreign converts?
|
| The idea that land rights can be derived from the bible or
| spans of 1000s of years is silly, but the ongoing ethnic
| cleansing of Palestine going back to 1945 is within living
| memory.
| worik wrote:
| > On genetic terms...
|
| ...race is fiction.
|
| Genetic analysis does not match "racial" classifications
|
| "Race" is a social construct
| hashim wrote:
| Kicked out? Is that what you call the One Million Plan and
| all the other plans like it? They were imported there
| because that's been the MO of the state of Israel since the
| Irgun and Haganah first envisioned it.
| dotancohen wrote:
| On what land, exactly?
| basilgohar wrote:
| Their own land, of course, where they've lived for thousands
| of years.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Serious question, what do you think is their own land? And
| what exactly makes you think it is their land?
|
| Are you aware that most of the Arabs of the Holy Land came
| around the same time period as the Jews? There were Arabs
| living here previously, of course, as were there living
| here Jews. Half a century before the British mandate,
| Jerusalem was already Jewish majority. >
| where they've lived for thousands of years.
|
| The only reason that Jews in the West Bank are called
| settlers is because the Jews were ethnically cleansed from
| the West Bank in 1948, and that territory was free of Jews
| for 19 years. Other than those 19 years, the Jews had been
| here far longer than the Arab colonizers had been.
| basilgohar wrote:
| [flagged]
| js212 wrote:
| Jews are an ethnicity and are genetically the same. Even
| those from Europe and those from Muslim countries (who
| now live in Israel after getting kicked out of Muslim
| countries). Stop making stuff up.
|
| Ohhh and Muslims didn't treat Jews "peacefully". They
| were second class citizens and often massacred. Read some
| history.
| basilgohar wrote:
| No, Jews of today are ethnically quite diverse and have
| mixed significantly. There are several recognized
| heritages of Jews of today with known populations from
| North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, and also Europe. I
| don't deny the "Jewishness" of anyone, but say "The Jews"
| as if this covers all of them is wrong. There are huge
| swaths of Jews today that are anti-Zionist and consider
| Israel an abomination on religious grounds. That it is a
| religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea
| driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and
| the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their
| support and will play any role to achieve their own
| goals. The recent newly emerging religious Jewish
| Zionists are a divergence from mainstream Judaism and a
| recent development that relies on a lot of creative
| interpretation and ignorance of Jewish religious texts.
|
| And yes, Muslims and Jews lived over 1000 years far more
| peacefully than any time before. Jerusalem and the rest
| of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule except
| for the Crusades which, surprise, came from Europe.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Why do you think Jewish people are mixed? Could it that
| occupiers, like invading Islamic Arabs, drove them away
| and they mixed over time with others? Regardless of that,
| it is Jewish people and their culture that are indigenous
| to the Levant. Not the Islamic Arabs who call themselves
| Palestinian.
|
| > That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel
| is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than
| Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists
| enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve
| their own goals.
|
| It is literally a religious goal of Hamas and the people
| who voted for them (Gazans) to destroy a religion
| (Judaism) and to commit genocide. It is literally in
| their charter. They voted for it. Meanwhile, the nation
| of Israel has a population that is over 20% Islamic Arab
| and they are thriving. The reality seems to me to be the
| opposite of what you're stating here.
|
| > Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace
| under Muslim rule
|
| It seems to me like you are pro colonization when the
| rules are Islamic and when the suppressed are Jewish. But
| not in the reverse? Israel is a democracy. Surely that is
| preferable to a religious supremacist rule?
| dotancohen wrote:
| This is such a perversion of the history of the holy land
| that I don't even see fit to correct any of it. Any
| reader here is welcome to read about the Muslim
| conquests, of which the Muslims are extremely proud.
|
| In fact, part of that pride is calling it an the Arab
| conquest, even though the colonizer - Salah AlDin - was a
| Kurd and not an Arab.
| pron wrote:
| There are quite a few inaccuracies here.
|
| Palestine is not in Arabia but in the Levant, which was
| conquered by Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the 7th
| c. as part of the Arab-Byzantine wars, and came under the
| Rashidun Caliphate, the first incarnation of the Arab
| Empire (which also conquered parts of Europe, BTW, not to
| mention that people in Morocco or Tunisia speak Arabic
| for pretty much the same reason people in Peru or Mexico
| speak Spanish). Warfare in the Levant obviously preceded
| the crusades by centuries and millenia, and included not
| only European conquests such as Greek and Roman, but also
| Persian and Arab conquests.
|
| While it is true that modern Zionism originated in
| Europe, most Jews living in Israel have no European
| ancestry whatsoever. Most Jews in Israel have a recent
| ancestry in the Middle East and North Africa.
|
| Even Ashkenazi Jews of a recent European ancestry (who
| are a minority in Israel) have genetics pointing to
| Middle Eastern ancestry. While it is hard to tie any
| group to ancient Jews, it isn't unlikely that Jews of all
| origins as well as Palestinian Arabs have ancient Jewish
| ancestry.
|
| Just as European nationalism excluded Jews as Europeans,
| Arab nationalism excluded Jews as Arabs, and if there's
| any group that identifies as Jewish-Arab today, it is
| vanishingly small.
|
| What Zionism is has not only changed considerably over
| time, but now, as in the past, there's great disagreement
| among those considering themselves Zionist on what it
| means. For example, as recently as a decade ago you could
| find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who
| identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a single
| multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state, i.e.
| the same position was regarded as both Zionist and anti-
| Zionist by different people simultaneously. Today, many
| (perhaps even most) of those identifying as Zionists
| favour a two-state solution.
| worik wrote:
| > For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find
| a small but not negligible group of Israelis who
| identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a multi-
| national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state,
|
| This
|
| The evil ideology is _political_ Zionism
|
| The idea the Jews should live securely in the Levant is
| not obnoxious.
|
| The idea of a racialised state where "only the Jewish
| people have the right of self determination" is utterly
| repugnant
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/israel-passes-law-
| granting-o...
| pron wrote:
| Even political Zionism is minimally defined as supporting
| "a home for Jews in Palestine"[1] Not only does it not
| require any ethnic exclusivity nor even for a national
| identity, it doesn't even require an independent state in
| the contemporary sense. Some of those who identify as
| Zionist take it to mean only that Jews should be able to
| live with some form of self-determination in Palestine,
| and so when they hear "anti Zionist" they take it to mean
| supporting the expulsion of Jews, which, of course is not
| what many of those who identify as anti-Zionist want.
| When some anti-Zionist hear the term Zionist, they take
| it to mean support of an exclusive ethno-national Jewish
| state, which, of course, is not what many of those who
| identify as Zionist want. The term could mean something
| very different to different people, to the point that the
| same political position can be called Zionist by some and
| anti-Zionist by others, which makes the term mostly
| useless.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_Zionism#Polit
| ical_Zio...
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where else?
| nailer wrote:
| Arabs are from Arabia, Egypt was colonised just like Judea
| and the rest of the middle east and north africa was.
| bhouston wrote:
| > It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own
| state after this.
|
| This seems off topic. I will flag it.
| bhouston wrote:
| Good on Microsoft! This is really amazing.
| baobun wrote:
| All: Please actually read the article before posting conclusions
| based on the headline or a quick skim. Most of this thread is
| confused.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| This is off-topic, but I'd like to hijack your comment to
| remind everyone that your comment is _technically_ against the
| rules. I hope this particular example reveals that the rule
| against "RTFA" is misguided and should be changed or removed
| because it creates a culture where people are deliberately
| misinformed seeking only a summary in the comment section (if
| that) and some kind of hot take to fume about.
| notmyjob wrote:
| I agree but there are some dodgy links that make it through
| and a good way to lower risk is being hesitant to click
| random links, or at least not being the first person to do
| so.
| hashim wrote:
| Articles should probably come with a similar delay that comment
| replies do, to prevent comments in the first few minutes after
| it's posted.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Wow! This is fantastic news, I wouldn't have bet on Microsoft
| ever doing something like this. I pray it's just the start and
| other American companies start to do the same.
| politelemon wrote:
| I am seeing several kneejerk "Microsoft bad" reactions here,
| which HNers don't do for many other companies. I encourage many
| of you to read what is written.
|
| They listened to their internal staff and stakeholders and public
| pressure, and did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it
| or doubling down.
|
| That is a good thing.
| n1b0m wrote:
| They fired staff who protested against the firm's ties to the
| IDF.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| That's a funny way to say "they fired staff that vandalized
| company property, broke into the CEO's office, and used an
| internal company website to publish and promote anti-company
| propaganda".
|
| That will get you fired from bussing tables or washing
| dishes, let alone a six-figure job at MS.
|
| Edit: Source on the last one; the first two were widely
| reported on in media:
|
| https://lunduke.substack.com/p/fired-microsoft-employee-
| enco...
| nashashmi wrote:
| One protestor was fired after interrupting a CEO's speech.
| keanb wrote:
| And?
| t1amat wrote:
| You might have 1A rights as an American but it seems to
| me the manner in which this person protested would be
| grounds for termination in many jurisdictions.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| 1A doesn't apply to private entities anyway. 1A protects
| against government prosecution for your speech, and the
| government may make no laws "abridging the freedom of
| speech."
|
| But your employer? They can put whatever rules and
| restrictions they want on your speech, and with at-will
| employment, can fire you for any reason anyway, at
| anytime.
|
| You can say whatever you want, but you aren't free from
| the consequences of that speech.
| throwaway74628 wrote:
| This comment sums up well how the spirit of the law is
| not being upheld, given that the biggest players in
| government, finance, and the corporate world are working
| together hand in glove.
|
| >"Corporations cannot exist without government
| intervention"
|
| >"Some privates companies and financiers are too big to
| fail/of strategic national importance"
|
| >"1A does not apply to private entities (including the
| above)"
|
| >"We have a free, competitive market"
|
| I find it very difficult to resolve these seemingly
| contradictory statements.
| platevoltage wrote:
| Literally nothing to do with 1A
| BrenBarn wrote:
| That's because 1A only has to do with a limited subset of
| the actual concept of freedom of speech.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like interrupting a CEO's speech at a big
| conference is pretty well understood to be a social
| indicator of a high level of insubordination. I suspect
| the protestor knew that too.
|
| The consequences were appropriate, even if I might share
| some of the protestor's concerns.
| snickerdoodle14 wrote:
| > insubordination
|
| Are we talking about the military or some company?
| duxup wrote:
| I think that term can be / is used for individuals at
| companies.
| gmueckl wrote:
| US corporate culture has a stronger sense of hierarchy
| than many other countries. It is an environment where one
| can get fired quickly and suddenly and that instills a
| lot of obedience and discipline (if not outright fear) in
| employees.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't even think you need a strong sense of hierarchy.
| The meaning of the word would apply anywhere.
| fluoridation wrote:
| LOL. The military isn't the only organization with a
| hierarchy.
| rkachowski wrote:
| You feel that being fired is an appropriate consequence
| to interrupting a CEO?
| duxup wrote:
| When doing a presentation at a big conference, yes.
|
| If it was an open discussion in a meeting with 5 people,
| no.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| Interrupting a speech? Yes. It demonstrates a lack of
| maturity, decorum, and is completely unprofessional.
| Someone who pulls these shenanigans is unworthy of the
| role they were hired for. This isn't high school anymore.
| They were hired to perform productive work not be
| disruptive and play pretend activist.
| 34679 wrote:
| You lost me at "pretend activist". This person put their
| job on the line for what they believe in, and in a public
| enough way that complete strangers are discussing it on
| the internet. That's real activism.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| If they don't like it, they don't have to work there.
|
| All these people hate on their employer and customers
| whilst simultaneously drawing a salary.
|
| If they put their money where their mouth is, they can
| all quit en masse and let the company deal with customers
| without employees to support.
| nashashmi wrote:
| If they don't like it, they can voice what they don't
| like. And that is what happened here.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In general, continuing to get paid while being disruptive
| and forcing them to fire you is _more_ activist than
| quitting.
| ecshafer wrote:
| You are trivializing what they did. This is not that they
| were in a meeting with the CEO and accidentally spoke
| interrupting him. They started yelling disrupting the
| CEOs speech at a large event. Name a single company that
| wouldn't fire someone for that.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Half the jobs I've worked, I'd be immediately fired if I
| interrupted a CEO's speech. The other half, I'd be in
| serious trouble and I'd be first on any layoff.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I know a story of a guy who got fired for just talking to
| the CEO of his large company!
| snickerdoodle14 wrote:
| america sounds like such a hell-hole
|
| that would be a nice compensation package in any first
| world country
| mikestew wrote:
| You're going to base an opinion on a third-hand story?
| That might not even be true just to illustrate a point?
|
| I know a guy that passed BillG in a hallway and said,
| "hey, Bill, how's it hangin'?" (Saw him do it; I was
| mortified.) Just a bottom-tier IC at the time. 20 years
| later, he still works there. Still an IC, though, so make
| of it what you will. :-)
|
| So there, now you have another folksy anecdote to balance
| things out.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Well, not quite third-hand, the guy was working in my
| team. But not a US company, not in the US either though.
| rolph wrote:
| failure to use acceptable method of interdepartmental
| communication ?
| mikestew wrote:
| If I interrupt the CEOs speech at a _public_ conference,
| yeah, I fully expect to get canned. It's not like this
| was an internal all-hands or summat.
| ecshafer wrote:
| If I did what the protestor did at an internal all-hands
| or summit I would expect to get canned as well. You can't
| go up yelling and interrupting the CEO. In an internal
| all-hands/summit situation you need to maintain decorum,
| if you have a point you wait until a QA session, then
| express your displeasure.
| tormeh wrote:
| Oh, it was an event with custoners invited? Yeah, that's
| grounds for dismissal anywhere, I'd think. Even in
| countries with strong labor laws you could just show the
| court the video recording of an employee doing willfull
| sabotage.
| progbits wrote:
| Oh no, is the CEO ok?
| n1b0m wrote:
| Source?
| natebc wrote:
| https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-
| prote...
|
| There's a couple of sub links off of that one. Not sure
| if that's what GP was referring too but there is mention
| in there of employees being terminated related to
| protests
| belorn wrote:
| I would also like to read the source for the last claim
| of that statement. The break-in is well established in
| multiple sources, and also documented on Wikipedia
| (citing one of those sources). CNBC also add that they
| planted microphones (using phones) as listening devices.
|
| _" In the aftermath of the protests, Smith claimed that
| the protestors had blocked people out of the office,
| planted listening devices in the form of phones, and
| refused to leave until they were removed by police. "_
| (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/microsoft-fires-two-
| employee...)
|
| Protestors (in associated with the firing) also projected
| "Microsoft powers genocide" on the office wall
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft).
| nashadelic wrote:
| They've been raising the alarm for months. If this extreme
| action is what it took Microsoft to look into genocide and
| then terminate the contract, it was absolutely the right
| call
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Not that you're implying this, but making an "absolutely
| the right call" does not in any way shield one from
| consequences.
|
| Heck, it's usually because one will be punished that
| _doing the right thing_ is in any manner noble. Otherwise
| it 's just meeting minimum expectations as a human.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Some people seem to think rioting and vandalism are
| acceptable behaviors.
|
| It's important that people engaging in such activity are
| dealt with swiftly and justly. Such behavior further
| encourages violence and destruction as acceptable behaviors
| in society, which they are not.
| blitzar wrote:
| Pardons all round then
| mossTechnician wrote:
| The United States has a history of rioting, vandalism,
| and violence. The Boston Tea Party comes to mind. The
| more important question is the contexts in which it is
| unacceptable, and who should be given the authority to
| swiftly deal with it - an authority that will itself
| require the ability to commit violence.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Rioting and vandalism are unacceptable...until they
| aren't and are instead necessary.
|
| Is everyone so quick to forget that the rights we have
| today in the US were won through violence after all other
| methods failed? The 40 hour work week we enjoy today was
| also won through blood.
|
| Now, in this case between employees and Microsoft I'd
| agree, no, vandalism wasn't necessary at all.
|
| But when it comes to defending our rights and freedoms,
| there will come a day when its absolutely necessary, and
| it's just as valid of a tool as peaceful protest is in
| enforcing the constitution.
| dmix wrote:
| There's been a couple studies showing that disruptive
| protests (blocking roads, yelling at people entering
| buildings, etc) cause public support for their cause to
| decrease or even increase opposition.
|
| If the ideas are good then support will build through
| effectively communicating those ideas. Being noisy is
| fine but there's an obvious line that selfish activists
| cross. The sort of people who want their toys now and
| don't want to patiently do the hard work of organically
| building up a critical mass. So they immediately start
| getting aggressive and violent in small groups. Which is
| counter productive.
| lomase wrote:
| I think the people is just more vocal, not that the
| protest changed its opinion, but now they have an excuse,
| violence, to go against the cause they did not like.
|
| "Violence" like stoping the traffic. If that is
| violence...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Stopping traffic can easily kill people if it stops a
| medical transport, for example.
|
| Even if it just ruins the day for thousands of people, I
| have zero sympathy for such assholery. Whether you call
| it "violence" is unimportant.
| lomase wrote:
| Using your car every day create trafic and congestion.
|
| I have zero sympathy for people like yourself that use
| their car every day and put their time before others
| peoples lifes.
| jajuuka wrote:
| The classic "an effective protest is one that is neither
| seen nor heard". Which is just ahistorical. Civil rights
| in the US was not passed because black folks explained to
| white people that they are people deserving the same
| rights as them. I hate this white washing of history as a
| series of peaceful movements that everyone agreed with.
| coredog64 wrote:
| The other side of this is that the people doing the
| protesting have to have the fortitude to accept judicial
| punishment. If the punishment is out of whack WRT the
| crime, then you get popular support (e.g. a year in jail
| for sitting at a lunch counter). But the current
| situation where folks can break the law and then suffer
| no consequences? F that noise.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Sitting at a lunch counter was illegal and the punishment
| was widely viewed as too light for the protesters. Like
| the racist violence going on right now, people of color
| were framed as disturbing the peace and disturbing a
| private business. There were called animals and
| criminals. Like I said, buying the white washed version
| of history where everyone was on the right side.
| stale2002 wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with being seen or heard. Instead
| it is that being violently disruptive tends to lose you
| support.
|
| You are posing a false dilemma where the only thing a
| person can do to voice there opinion is to destroy or
| disrupt things.
|
| That's not true though. Instead you can simply voice your
| options. You can put out manifestos, publish articles in
| the newspaper, post to social media, or even talk to
| people in person.
|
| All those methods are how speech and ideas are normally
| distributed in a normal society. And if people aren't
| convinced by what you say, then it is time for you to get
| better arguments.
| jajuuka wrote:
| If you think being violently disruptive loses you support
| you should look at any equality movement. I'm not posing
| a false dilemma, I'm saying that when peaceful means are
| not working then violence will follow. "A riot is the
| language of the unheard".
|
| The idea that everyone can just be convinced with a good
| argument is a nice fantasy but just never true in
| reality. You've also rigged the game since you can just
| dig in your heels are refuse any argument and just say
| "get better arguments". It's a situation no one else can
| win. If people could so easily be convinced that
| different people deserve the same rights then we wouldn't
| have had to spend over a century trying to get them.
| kbelder wrote:
| It's a difficult question, because _obviously_ violence
| is out of line for protests about many topics, while just
| as _obviously_ necessary for some.
|
| I think think that violence or vandalism in this case was
| unwarranted, but there are some other in this thread who
| believe otherwise.
|
| I guess that I'd say that, probably, vandals/criminals
| should always be punished, because they're doing clearly
| illegal things... and it's up to the protestors to judge
| whether the cause they're supporting is really worth
| going to jail for. If sufficient numbers of people feel
| that, you have a revolution.
|
| (And also, a separate issue, whether the violence is
| actually going to benefit their cause. It probably
| won't.)
|
| I certainly don't think that we should be in a position
| where courts are are judging certain crimes as forgivable
| because of their cause, while supporters of other causes
| get the full weight of the law for similar actions. I
| think the vandals on Jan 6th should get the same
| punishment as, for instance, similar vandals during BLM.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It's amazing how many discussions I've had in the past
| decade about how people are supposed to "properly"
| protest (I.e. in a way that commands as little attention
| as possible) and how few I've had discussing the merits
| of what people are protesting about.
|
| Except of course Jan 6th, which somehow normalized the
| belief that the 2020 election was stolen AND gaslit a ton
| of the country into thinking the violence that occurred
| did not and therefore doesn't need to be critiqued.
|
| This admin is truly adept at labeling all forms of
| dissent or disagreement as unacceptable actions that make
| discussing the issues at hand impossible.
| 6510 wrote:
| That would put you in the pro genocide camp and subject
| you to consequences.
| themafia wrote:
| The employees weren't "rioting."
|
| Vandalism can be measured in dollars. How much did this
| vandalism actually cost Microsoft to repair?
|
| It's important that we don't ignore context.
| worik wrote:
| Some people think it is ok to do business with genociders
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Every protest we praise in history broke the law at some
| point.
|
| "Promote company-hating propaganda" is an interesting way
| to describe what happened.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think laws enforced by the government are a difference
| in kind from social standards or company rules.
|
| Laws are backed by legal, physical violence.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| Building a website on internal Microsoft infra that ledes
| with a picture of "Azure Kills Kids" is beyond the pale.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| That's a pretty low bar for "beyond the pale." Company PR
| isn't some sacred thing and these people paid a hefty
| price for their protest. They should be praised for their
| bravery even if you disagree with their message.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| I make no comment on their message but you cannot use
| company resources to do it and not expect consequences.
|
| Sorry if that is unclear.
|
| This is a fireable offense in nearly every company
| handbook in existence.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| When did I say they shouldn't expect consequences or that
| it wasn't a fireable offense? The whole point of this
| discussion is that cries for people to "protest properly"
| are ridiculous and designed to make protests ineffective.
|
| Clearly I get that their jobs and more were at risk,
| hence why I said they were brave. The only thing unclear
| is where you got the impression I thought otherwise.
| hashim wrote:
| I'm not sure you know what "beyond the pale" means. You
| probably shouldn't look into the history of the
| suffragette or civil rights movements, for your own
| sanity.
| vkou wrote:
| Killing kids is not beyond the pale, building a website
| criticizing is.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Saying what has happened is worse than it happening?
| American missiles kill kids, and so does intelligence and
| support systems they use to do so.
| duxup wrote:
| I think how you protest matters.
|
| I can agree with protestors, also think their choices are
| bad.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Yes it's a good thing AND we don't need to be celebrating
| companies when they finally do _the bare minimum_.
|
| Nobody with any semblance of ethical, just or just plain being
| a basic good corporate citizen would say.. oh yeah mass
| surveillance of the comms of a whole population for money is in
| any way acceptable or ok. This shouldn't be a tech side note
| this should be a total meltdown front page scandal. What a
| disgusting abuse of power by all involved.
| bhouston wrote:
| > Yes it's a good thing AND we don't need to be celebrating
| companies when they finally do the bare minimum.
|
| I think we should give props here. This is an important step
| forward. Thank you Microsoft!
|
| I think we should protest when companies do things that are
| wrong and we should give them kudos when they make good
| moves. Carrot and stick.
|
| I am not fans of those that say because you did wrong things
| in the past, I will never recognize when you change and make
| good moves.
|
| I want to encourage more companies to correct their
| involvement in this.
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| I agree. If we want our pressure campaigns to be
| successful, we need to reward companies that respond to
| them.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| But the question is do you want to actually _reward_
| behavior that is just less bad than before? Or should
| that reward just be in the form of less punishment? I
| agree the consequences should get better in relative
| terms, but I don 't think bad behavior should be rewarded
| with a positive response, even if the behavior is less
| bad than before.
|
| It's like, if someone steals a million dollars and then
| steals a thousand dollars, you don't reward them for
| making progress.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| What kind of pressure campaign are we talking about here?
| And what kind of reward? Are we now buying Microsoft
| products because Microsoft's cloud storage is no longer
| allowed to be used in genocide, only Office and email?
| That's absurd. What this is about is public opinion, and
| that takes years and decades to change. And that's a good
| thing. If you change your tune after every Microsoft PR
| release, it's not you who's holding the carrot and the
| stick, it's Microsoft.
| hashim wrote:
| I disagree that we shouldn't give them their props when
| companies finally give in, because most are still not doing
| that (see Project Nimbus). The problem here is that we don't
| even know they have done the bare minimum yet, since this is
| only one contract and to my knowledge they have several,
| including still actively working with the IDF.
| nashashmi wrote:
| The Guardian last month reported a meeting between Microsoft
| CEO and Unit 8200. That means this comes from high level and
| they did not cancel because of protestors but because of media
| publicity.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Did the protestors help the media publicity?
| colpabar wrote:
| I really wonder if a company like microsoft has any real
| concern over people tweeting negative things about it. It
| seems like companies are finally realizing a lot of it can
| just be ignored, but with microsoft specifically, what's
| the risk? Who in a position to deny ms enough money that
| they'd care or even notice is going to decide to do it
| based on people protesting?
| squigz wrote:
| The problem here is thinking that the only form of
| protest anyone ever engages in is tweeting things. Some
| people stop supporting companies they disagree with, both
| individually and, if they're able, with their own
| company.
| colpabar wrote:
| But that's my point - who will do that? Who is going to
| go to their company's CEO and convince them to put in the
| massive amount of effort to switch cloud providers? Who
| is going to say "I don't think we should use Teams
| anymore" and actually be able to switch to something
| else? I have no idea if microsoft even cares about retail
| customers anymore, but are there really enough people who
| are going to boycott microsoft products (I honestly don't
| know what those products even are) over this?
|
| I just don't think they have anything to worry about. I
| personally think it's good what they're doing here, but I
| guess I'm too cynical to believe they are doing it out of
| the goodness of their hearts, and I don't think the real
| reason is that they're worried about bad publicity.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > Who is going to go to their company's CEO and convince
| them to put in the massive amount of effort to switch
| cloud providers?
|
| Surely if any movement leads to this, it's BDS, likely
| the most popular and widely-known boycott since before
| the end of South African apartheid.
|
| They even appear to have a page and a visualization
| devoted to compiling publicly visible impacts:
| https://bdsmovement.net/our-impact
| lucasmullens wrote:
| Some people like me are running a company and are still
| picking out their tech stack. I don't like Microsoft, and
| that absolutely affects how likely I am to use their
| services. My situation might not be that common but PR
| surely still matters some.
| squigz wrote:
| > are there really enough people who are going to boycott
| microsoft products
|
| Maybe not, but some is better than none, and I'll
| continue to push more people to do it, rather than tell
| them nothing they do matters.
|
| > over this?
|
| Maybe it's not just this. Maybe this is the straw that
| breaks the user's back. Or maybe the next thing is.
|
| My point was to address your belief that they're too big
| for anyone to make any difference. That isn't true, and
| the belief that you or any other citizen can't make a
| difference is their biggest advantage.
|
| (I put this last because I know what HN will say to this,
| but: are CEOs and other executives not people too? Can
| they not make principled moves either?)
| bornfreddy wrote:
| > (I put this last because I know what HN will say to
| this, but: are CEOs and other executives not people too?
| Can they not make principled moves either?)
|
| Not sure what you mean by "what HN will say to this", but
| for me the answer is clear - they are, they can, and they
| often do. As do their employees - or at least they push
| in the direction which is better aligned with their
| values.
| squigz wrote:
| > Not sure what you mean by "what HN will say to this"
|
| I fully expect some form of cynical "No" as an answer.
|
| I originally had phrased it, "Are CEOs not humans too?"
| which might make it clearer what I expected :P
| colpabar wrote:
| That's fair. For the record, I recently dumped windows
| for linux and won't ever buy/use a microsoft product
| again if I can help it, and I will encourage others to do
| the same, but that decision had nothing to do with
| politics.
|
| I don't think I actually disagree with anything you've
| said. I am just very cynical, and while I want to believe
| like you do, I find it very difficult.
|
| edit: "Can they not make principled moves either?" -
| Yeah, they _could_, but does that _ever_ happen at
| companies as big as microsoft?
| squigz wrote:
| Don't worry, so do I :)
| hashim wrote:
| Not just some people - a lot of people, and an increasing
| amount of people in the last year or so, including whole
| countries like Ireland, Spain and Slovenia. See the BDS
| movement/website/Facebook pages. As a lifelong Windows
| user I've been seriously considering moving to a Linux
| distro for my next desktop. I'll need to dig into the
| news some more, but this decision more than likely means
| I can stick with Windows.
| hashim wrote:
| Yes, unfortunately this is what happens when you have
| people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on
| what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s, it
| devalues genuine modern criticisms and makes all
| criticism meaningless.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > this is what happens when you have people who are
| constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know
| of the company from the 90s and 00s
|
| There are more than a couple of us who have Office or
| Teams imposed on us. There is plenty to complain about
| that is current and most definitely valid.
| hashim wrote:
| "Software with slightly worse UX than the competing
| products" is not an ethical concern.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Have you used a modern Microsoft OS? They are somehow
| worse than they were in the 90s and 00s. I don't remember
| having to agree to sell my personal information in the
| 90s or having advertising baked into the start menu in
| windows xp.
| hashim wrote:
| I agree that in-OS advertising for a paid product is
| dumb, but a) I thankfully still use Windows 10 which
| doesn't have those, and b) those are ultimately UX
| concerns, not ethical. And no, Microsoft doesn't sell
| your data no matter how many in tech subscribe to that
| conspiracy theory.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Last time I installed windows 11 in a VM I had to agree
| to at least 3, possibly more, un-skippable Eulas that
| required me to agree to share my personal information.
| Maybe they aren't selling it outside of MS, but MS is
| such a giant company if they are using it for ads I don't
| see the distinction.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| You are right that with the Trump administration (well,
| bipartisan support), US companies don't have to worry
| about any adverse political action by cooperating with
| Israel. Negative publicity from the common people also
| won't adversely affect their bottom line. But they do
| have to worry about the legal aspects - the US is one of
| the few countries actually having laws against genocide /
| war crimes. Trump may be ready to bomb the Hague and the
| ICC, but we know he can't bomb US courts for any similar
| proceedings against any US or foreign firms ...
| colpabar wrote:
| Trying to pin support for israel on one side and not on
| the entirety of the us government at all levels is either
| profoundly naive or profoundly dishonest.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Well, Biden was claiming that "there is no genocide"
| while approving the building of (future) concentration
| camps for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while
| Trump is worried only about the "optics" but is fine as
| long as a "beautiful resort is finally built in Gaza",
| after herding the Palestinians into these new "refugee
| centres" (i.e. the concentration camps) and from there to
| Egypt (who has been promised to be made the future gas
| hub for Europe) to complete Israeli occupation of Gaza.
| I'll leave it to you to decide whether I am being naive
| or dishonest or who planned the genocide and who is
| complicit in it - Here's the "propaganda" sources based
| on which I am making these assertions:
|
| 1. Trump criticizes Israel for releasing photos and
| videos of its devastating war in Gaza -
| https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-criticizes-israels-
| pho...
|
| 2. Trump ruthless take on Israel's war on Gaza: 'Finish
| the problem' - https://www.newarab.com/news/trump-
| israels-war-gaza-finish-p...
|
| 3. Satellite photos show Egypt building Gaza wall as
| Israel's Rafah push looms -
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/16/satellite-
| photos-sh...
|
| 4. Israel's plan to build Gaza 'concentration camps' was
| rolled out months ago -
| https://mondoweiss.net/2025/07/israels-plan-to-build-
| gaza-co...
|
| 5. Trump's Gaza takeover all about natural gas -
| https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/trumps-gaza-takeover-all-
| about...
| lostlogin wrote:
| > the US is one of the few countries actually having laws
| against genocide / war crimes.
|
| Yet the US does not allow prosecutions in the
| international criminal court.
|
| How do you explain Mai Lai what went on more recently in
| Afghanistan and Iraq.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Int
| ern...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I can't speak to Microsoft specifically, but bad press
| has certainly hurt other similar companies (eg Meta) when
| it comes to hiring.
|
| BDS is also about as formidable as a boycott movement
| gets.
| hashim wrote:
| You know a boycott movement is effective when Israel has
| tens of lobbies like the IAF that are dedicated entirely
| to passing legislation to make it illegal. Germany has
| already passed it and the UK is unfortunately looking
| very close.
| worik wrote:
| > BDS is also about as formidable as a boycott movement
| gets.
|
| Barely gotten started.
|
| This is what made the difference in South Africa, but the
| boycotts were much bigger
|
| Amazon, Google and Oracle will have to boycott too. I am
| boycotting them
| platevoltage wrote:
| Isn't media publicity the entire point of peaceful protest?
| pmontra wrote:
| I guess that one needs some help to transfer "swiftly" 8000
| Terabytes of data. At 1 Terabit per second it would take
| about 18 hours. 8000*8 Tb / 60s / 60 / 24 =
| .740740... 24 h *.740 = 17.76 h
|
| But is 1 Tb/s a thing?
|
| I think this has been another case of "Never underestimate
| the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down
| the highway" (Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981). Maybe rack units of
| disks? For very important data I would pay for the privilege
| of removing my disks at a very short notice.
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
| rolph wrote:
| that would be an interesting service contract.
|
| the rack and infra are yours; the storage media and all
| contents are mine.
| coredog64 wrote:
| AWS Snowball can be used to get data out of S3. They copy
| it onto portable devices, ship them to you, and you can
| copy the data off without saturating your DirectConnect
| bandwidth.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| or it means that they met with Unit 8200 to see if there was
| common ground that would rationalize keeping the contract and
| their tech being used for a way that respected human rights,
| dignity, and a coherent strategy to getting to that place,
|
| and there wasn't
| hashim wrote:
| I want to believe this is true, but it would only be true
| if they cancel all the contracts they have with Israel that
| enable the genocide, rather than just the ones that have
| made the most noise. Otherwise it's just PR, not ethics. In
| other words, a lot is resting on the "some" in that quote.
| righthand wrote:
| > did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or
| doubling down
|
| This was after they ignored it and doubled down for almost 3
| years*. What was the total gain in profits and how many
| Palestinians died during that time? You're going to ignore the
| full cost because they did the least they could do almost 3
| years later?
|
| * if the starting line is set to October 2022 attacks, if not
| how long were they making money off this contract?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| October 2023
| mock-possum wrote:
| M$ _is_ bad, just not cause of this
| jimbo808 wrote:
| I mean, they have thoroughly soiled their reputation with the
| US tech workforce by being the most egregious abusers of the
| H1B program.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Will Microsoft rehire the employees who were fired for
| protesting?
|
| No? Hmm, then you should not let Microsoft whitewash its record
| by taking credit for the very cause those workers were punished
| for defending
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Will Microsoft rehire the employees who were fired for
| protesting?_
|
| One can be correct in theory and wrong in practice at the
| same time.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| > The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft's
| chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit's then commander,
| Yossi Sariel ... In response to the investigation, Microsoft
| ordered an urgent external inquiry to review its relationship
| with Unit 8200. Its initial findings have now led the company
| to cancel the unit's access to _some_ of its cloud storage and
| AI services.
|
| "Some" ... Microsoft's chief executive was involved in
| cementing a collaboration for a _secret_ military /
| intelligence project with an AI component, to spy on people
| against whom a genocide is ongoing by their colonial occupiers.
| This only "ended" when the public became aware of it, for
| political and (possibly) legal reasons, clearly indicating that
| they would have continued with "business as usual" if the
| public hadn't become aware of it. What other Israeli projects
| are Microsoft hiding and supporting, that possibly aids
| Israel's genocide, is what concerns me ...
| gruez wrote:
| >to spy on people against whom a genocide is ongoing by their
| colonial occupiers
|
| To be fair in 2021 you'd be laughed out of the room (or be in
| a DSA conference) if you called what was happening in
| Palestine a "genocide".
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| True, the correct term back then would've been apartheid.
| evil-olive wrote:
| > To be fair in 2021 you'd be laughed out of the room (or
| be in a DSA conference) if you called what was happening in
| Palestine a "genocide".
|
| you have a _very_ narrow historical lens if you think a DSA
| conference in 2021 is the only place that has treated
| allegations of genocide seriously.
|
| I'd recommend reading through [0] which has a very nice
| chronological timeline.
|
| for example, way back in _1982_ the UN General Assembly
| voted to declare the Sabra and Shatila massacre [1] an act
| of genocide. it was carried out against a Palestinian
| refugee camp in Lebanon, by a militia allied with the
| Israeli military, and during the Israeli invasion of
| Lebanon:
|
| > In February 1983, an independent commission chaired by
| Irish diplomat Sean MacBride, assistant to the Secretary-
| General of the United Nations, concluded that the IDF, as
| the then occupying power over Sabra and Shatila, bore
| responsibility for the militia's massacre. The commission
| also stated that the massacre was a form of genocide.
|
| there's also a long history of "well...it's not genocide,
| because genocide only comes from the Geno region of Nazi
| Germany, everything else is sparkling ethnic cleansing"
| type of rhetoric:
|
| > At the UN-backed 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism,
| the majority of delegates approved a declaration that
| accused Israel of being a "racist apartheid state" guilty
| of "war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing".
| Reed Brody, the then-executive director of Human Rights
| Watch, criticised the declaration, arguing that "Israel has
| committed serious crimes against Palestinian people but it
| is simply not accurate to use the word genocide", while
| Claudio Cordone, a spokesman for Amnesty International,
| stated that "we are not ready to make the assertion that
| Israel is engaged in genocide"
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accus
| atio...
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
| hashim wrote:
| What concerns me is that Project Nimbus is a public project
| that is still actively being enabled by Google and Amazon.
| Secret projects are one thing, but largely meaningless,
| because companies, people and governments have shown they
| don't even care when they're in the open.
| ilt wrote:
| It has come a tad too late to be called a good thing.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| The problem is that if you're very very bad, you can do a good
| thing and still be very bad.
| hashim wrote:
| What other reasons are Microsoft very very bad? Genuinely
| curious about what your definition of "very, very bad" is and
| whether it aligns with mine.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| Search for "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".
| hashim wrote:
| So the criticisms from the 90s that I mentioned in my
| other comment? Yeah, I prefer to live in the modern
| world. It isn't Microsoft that needs to be hit with
| antitrusts in 2025. It's Apple and Google. Live moves on,
| and in 2025, Microsoft is one of the more ethical tech
| companies around, unless you're one of the many sheltered
| people in tech that think targeted advertising is
| manifest evil that's on par with enabling a genocide.
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| I'm 40. For me, the modern world didn't just start in
| 2019. And the list is additive. The fact that Microsoft
| has been on it since the 90s doesn't stop me from also
| listing Google, Apple, and Amazon.
| hashim wrote:
| Modern by definition means the modern day, I'm not sure
| what 2019 was but we don't get to redefine terms for our
| own use. The list is only "additive" if the criticisms
| still apply. Your presumably best example was a corporate
| strategy from the 90s. Companies, just like (most)
| people, change. 2025 Microsoft is pro-Linux and a much
| better force for good than most other tech companies, yet
| almost invariably I find the people triggered by the
| mention of Microsoft tend to be relatively quiet about
| and/or active consumers of Apple, Amazon, Google et al.
| inkysigma wrote:
| I think you're selling this too far with "one of the more
| ethical tech companies around" and "a force for good".
| You'll have to clarify what exactly that comparison is
| based on.
|
| I'm not a total fan of Apple here but it's weird to
| contrast them with Apple in this case when they don't
| enable a genocide (having a closed ecosystem is a UX
| decision compared to genocide). You mention that
| Microsoft is now "pro-Linux", but if that's your measure,
| many other tech companies contribute significantly more
| to the Linux kernel. https://lwn.net/Articles/1031161/
|
| With respect to anti-trust, some of their bundling
| decisions absolutely deserve to be scrutinized (e.g.
| Teams).
|
| Furthermore, Microsoft is still doing business with the
| IDF. If your bar is "enabling a genocide" (presumably by
| being in contract with the IDF), I don't think that's
| changed too much, just the most egregious example of
| cloud services in service of that are being challenged
| (Unit 8200 stuff). It looks like that work is now moving
| the AWS though.
| hashim wrote:
| You're right, I was operating on the assumption this was
| the last of their ties before I'd properly read the
| article and looked into the issue, unfortunately it looks
| like it's still on the boycott list until they actually
| divest from Israel military at the very least. Apple is
| therefore not as unethical as the genocide-supporting
| companies, but it's still far more unethical than most
| people in tech tend to acknowledge - their pricing
| practices are akin to price-gouging, including
| extortionate markup on like-for-like hardware and locking
| you into their own accessories before the EU forced them
| to standardise, and the whole "walled garden" ecosystem
| was never anything but an excuse to limit what consumers
| can do with them. They almost single-handedly raised the
| prices of mobile phones for the vast majority of people
| because other manufacturers saw what their consumers were
| letting them get away with. And that's before we even get
| started on the sweatshops.
| worik wrote:
| > What other reasons are Microsoft very very bad
|
| Their laziness, greed and business acumen have left us in
| the position that the world's dominant personal OS is
| insecure, unreliable and running a protection racket with
| virus detection (and virus writers)
|
| This is an ongoing rolling clusterfuck, and is entirely due
| to MS
| ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote:
| That's a very dishonest framing. The article contains some not
| particularly subtle relativizations in various places, e.g.,
| "ability to use SOME of its technology," which make it clear
| that Microsoft is not reacting decisively here in any way, but
| is trying to muddle through somehow and make a few publicly
| visible concessions.
|
| Furthermore, why do you think the reactions are knee-jerk? That
| implies a rather biased attitude on your part.
| tmtvl wrote:
| If we tally up all the good things Microsoft did and weighed
| them to some of the bad things, it'd be like weighing a few
| grains of sand versus Mount Olympus.
| bArray wrote:
| The issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of
| civilians, not the death of Hamas, the widely recognised
| terrorist. I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want
| to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
|
| In which case, is it prudent to remove the IDF's ability to
| successfully target the correct people? Precise military
| intelligence is absolutely necessary for minimising civilian
| casualties.
| roughly wrote:
| > I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill
| civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
|
| I think it's this second assertion that relies on facts not in
| evidence. Previous Guardian reporting on IDF use of compute for
| targeting indicated they were using it to increase, not
| decrease, the number of approved targets.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Quantity doesn't correlate with accuracy. OP's point was that
| surely having more intelligence means you are more accurate
| and thus less collateral damage.
| bArray wrote:
| Exactly. And an increase in accurate targets would lead to
| the faster removal of Hamas, and the process of repair can
| begin faster.
| roughly wrote:
| Again, prior reporting on the IDF's computational efforts
| do not indicate that less collateral damage was a driver -
| quite the contrary, the algorithm was being used to pad out
| targeting lists:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-
| ai...
|
| You're describing what ought to be, not what currently is.
| jameshilliard wrote:
| Hamas is quite open about their desire to increase civilian
| casualties by deliberately using civilians as human
| shields(which is of course a war crime). It's clearly part of
| their overall strategy.
| elcritch wrote:
| This shouldn't be a controversial statement. It's well
| documented that Hamas utilizes this strategy by their own
| statements. On the Israeli side it's much harder to
| determine what tactics some (military) groups utilize.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Israel claims that they "don't want to kill civilians" but
| historically have not substantially changed course when the
| killings became grotesquely excessive. It's also arguably true
| that they have never even sincerely investigated any issues.
|
| Israel just gets more aggressive in the murder and bombing.
| rozap wrote:
| [edited to remove snark] there is a ton of evidence to the
| contrary, that the killing of civilians is intentional and
| systematic. that's why the ICC (finally) determined it is a
| genocide.
| rashkov wrote:
| The ICC did no such thing, you're probably thinking of the
| ICJ, which also did no such thing according to one of the
| judges that ruled on that decision:
|
| "I'm glad I have a chance to address that because the court's
| test for deciding whether to impose measures uses the idea of
| plausibility. But the test is the plausibility of the rights
| that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South
| Africa" she told the BBC show HARDtalk.
|
| "The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible
| right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had
| the right to present that claim in the court," Donoghue said.
| "It then looked at the facts as well. But it did not decide--
| and this is something where I'm correcting what's often said
| in the media--it didn't decide that the claim of genocide was
| plausible."
|
| "It did emphasize in the order that there was a risk of
| irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected
| from genocide," she added. "But the shorthand that often
| appears, which is that there's a plausible case of genocide,
| isn't what the court decided."
|
| Donoghue's term on the bench expired a few days after the
| court delivered its initial ruling on Jan. 26.
|
| https://www.jns.org/former-top-hague-judge-media-wrong-to-
| re...
| komali2 wrote:
| It is interesting to me that all this sweat and tears are
| spent deliberating over the use of a word in faraway courts
| while all of us can see with our eyes the horrors
| Palestinians are subjected to by the occupying IDF. "We
| didn't say there was a genocide! We acknowledged the
| plausibility of the possibility that potentially maybe an
| investigation might perhaps occur into the possibility of
| maybe Palestinians being able to experience a genocide by
| someone."
|
| It reminds me of a conversation I had with an Israeli a few
| weeks back. He asked me, "if what Israel is doing is so
| bad, why does nobody stop it?"
|
| A great question. I don't know. And the bodies of children
| continue to pile up.
| rashkov wrote:
| If you want to redefine genocide to mean "a very bad
| thing" then go ahead, but doing so would hollow out the
| term.
|
| There's nothing stopping people from discussing the
| events in Gaza as a tragedy and a war crime, but
| activists are intent on attaching the word genocide to
| this. Referring to it as a genocide has become a litmus
| test to be considered pro-Palestinian.
| notmyjob wrote:
| To be fair, the UN working group that declared it
| genocide was completely precise in how they defined it
| and the criteria they used. Totally fair to disagree
| either with the existence of that working group, their
| definition of genocide, or with the facts they cite as
| evidence, but to pretend it's just a bunch internet
| activists playing rhetorical tricks is clearly
| subterfuge.
| istjohn wrote:
| The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on
| the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East
| Jerusalem determined that it is a genocide in a report
| released September 16: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-
| releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
| rashkov wrote:
| The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry
| (COI) is not a legal body, which would be the sort of
| body that is able to make a genocide determination. It
| also does not speak on behalf of the UN, given that it an
| independent commission of inquiry.
|
| I am curious to see what the ICJ ruling in South Africa's
| case will be. That would be an actual legal body charged
| with making a genocide determination.
| perfmode wrote:
| Evidence indicates the intention is to kill indiscriminately,
| hence the genocide determinations.
| bArray wrote:
| I would be interested to read the evidence for myself if you
| have sources?
| dunekid wrote:
| Would you accept it even if it was shown? Or would you go
| on with adjacents to say how it is not evidence? Get new
| points from the ITF. Maybe hold them to the a fraction of
| accountability that you throw around.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Precise military intelligence is absolutely necessary for
| minimising civilian casualties.
|
| Whatever they've been doing on that front doesn't seem to be
| working so far...
| zawaideh wrote:
| It is a genocide. They are targeting civilians.
| davidjeet wrote:
| Proof? Or just what is convenient for you to believe?
|
| If anything, quite the opposite. Think about this logically -
| why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal
| was to annihilate a population?
| rcpt wrote:
| It's already been linked in the thread
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_th
| e...
| dunekid wrote:
| >why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal
| was to annihilate a population
|
| A question suited for ITF and Netanyahu maybe? Ask them
| spend less. He gets to prolong this Genocide, then he gets
| to stay out of trial for his previous crimes. Maybe ITF is
| not in a hurry.
| zawaideh wrote:
| For those looking for direct sources on the findings of
| genocide in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal
| conclusions from human rights organizations, international
| courts, and genocide scholars:
|
| 1. UN Commission of Inquiry: Concluded that Israel has
| committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. * Report:
| https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-
| has-c... * Press Conference:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA
|
| 2. Amnesty International: Concluded that Israel is
| committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. *
| Statement: https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-
| genocide-aga...
|
| 3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human
| Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their
| conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. * Report
| ("Our Genocide"):
| https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
|
| 4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January
| 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the
| Genocide Convention. * Case Details: https://www.icj-
| cij.org/case/192
|
| 5. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: Issued an
| "Active Genocide Alert" in October 2023, warning of the
| high risk of genocide. * Alert:
| https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-genocide-
| alert-1/acti...
|
| Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge
| that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in
| history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground.
| Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning,
| yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian,
| "human" source validates their lived experience.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Genocide is not the same as extermination. The goal of
| expulsion is to obtain land. Surveillance programs
| facilitate ethnic cleansing by countering resistance.
| basilgohar wrote:
| It is the IDF and Israel governments explicit goal, as stated
| by high up government officials and leaders, to eradicate all
| Palestians in Gaza. A cursory view into their own Hebrew media
| make this abundantly clear.
|
| They are committing a genocide in both word and deed.
| js212 wrote:
| A few government officials have said this. No one part of the
| War Cabinet has said this and it is definitely NOT the
| explicitly goal of the IDF.
|
| This is entirely made up.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| >I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There
| will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is
| closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting
| accordingly.
| jameshilliard wrote:
| > I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.
|
| For some additional context this initial complete siege
| lasted for roughly two weeks.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > We are fighting human animals
|
| What else do you call people who rape and murder
| civilians, then parade their dead bodies around to
| cheering crowds?
|
| Hamas will never have any sympathy from most people who
| watched the October 7 attack footage.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and
| Hamas members is _literally the entire problem_
|
| I have ZERO issue with the IDF killing Hamas. _That 's
| what you do in a war_. But we have ample evidence that
| Israel and the IDF is not making any effort to not kill
| random Palestinians.
|
| They made some stupid AI algorithm to feed data into in
| order to generate target lists. They accepted something
| like 10:1 "innocent palestinian":"literal terrorist"
| ratios. They have no qualms about killing a 10 innocent
| Palestinians to kill a single Hamas terrorist
|
| This is unacceptable.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| > Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and
| Hamas members is literally the entire problem
|
| Well, it is difficult to distinguish between the two when
| you're hunting down terrorists who hide among civilians.
| But also, let's not forget - the civilian population of
| Gaza VOTED for Hamas. In polls they still show support
| for Hamas even after October 7. There are videos of those
| civilians cheering in the streets while the naked bodies
| of raped / murdered women were paraded down the street by
| Hamas terrorists. I don't think you can pretend "random
| Palestinians" are entirely innocent either.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| It's very easy to distinguish a children from a
| terrorist, children are no terrorists, also, children
| didn't vote anybody. However, the IDF is killing
| thousands of children in the most horrible ways.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _issue that people have with Israel 's actions is the death
| of civilians, not the death of Hamas_
|
| Would note that this issue has sufficiently polarised that
| there are thoughtful people in _e.g._ New York who think it's
| an atrocity for even Hamas fighters to be killed. (Same as
| there are folks who think every Palestinian is safely presumed
| a terrorist until proved innocent.)
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Inconvenient truth is that anyone who remained in Gaza, in
| active IDF ops area, is not a civilian. Civilians left these
| areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times. Unless it's
| a little child that's not capable of lifting a firearm, this
| person is Hamas at this point.
|
| If you have better way to differentiate, I will happily pass it
| to IDF. Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked
| your own life.
| dunekid wrote:
| >Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many,
| many times.
|
| Where to?
|
| Hind Rajab ,literally a child, was brutally killed when
| fleeing their home, after being asked of course. The
| ambulance which came to rescue was blown up by the ITF. The
| Whole world has seen it all, ITF proudly displays it. Maybe
| it is time to update the Hasbara points.
|
| >Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your
| own life.
|
| Why? ITF certainly risks many children's life, just for sport
| often.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| You can easily find telegram channels that show what regular
| Israeli soldiers are up to, they post it themselves like
| they're proud of it. Take a look at it and see what you think
| then.
| joe463369 wrote:
| > I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill
| civilians
|
| They should probably stop shooting them then.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| hasn't the death toll surpassed the number of hamas members?
| propagandist wrote:
| The state you are referring to literally calls Palestinians a
| demographic threat.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Reading the article you'll see that much of the surveillance is
| against the West Bank population, which has nothing to do with
| Hamas or Oct 7.
|
| Israel has been very effective at blurring that distinction,
| using that attack from Gaza as the pretext to accelerate land
| theft in the West Bank.
| oulipo2 wrote:
| Too little too late, but anything we can do to stop this
| genocide...
| nicce wrote:
| I doubt it can be stopped anymore without physical intervetion.
| eggy wrote:
| >"According to sources familiar with the huge data transfer
| outside of the EU country, it occurred in early August.
| Intelligence sources said Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data
| to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel
| Defense Forces (IDF) nor Amazon responded to a request for
| comment."
|
| So was the data moved in August to Amazon (AWS)? I am sure the
| $3.8bn USD the US gives annually will pay for it anyway. Because
| it is given as a loan, no accountability is required if it were a
| grant to Israel, and then the US forgives the loan, so there's
| not payback or interest for borrowing.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I guess time to buy more Oracle or Google stocks? They can easily
| provide more than needed, especially Oracle which is very
| friendly to Israel and Ellison is a big supporter of IDF (large
| donations to "Friends of the IDF" non-profit).
|
| Here is a link in case anyone wants to donate
| https://www.fidf.org to this amazing organization.
| amdivia wrote:
| No? No one should service them
| greenie_beans wrote:
| makes sense to do if you support genocide
| hersko wrote:
| https://www.jfeed.com/analysis/gaza-nutella-cafe-reality
| kmijyiyxfbklao wrote:
| >Is there famine? In some selected areas, yes, but for the
| ones with money, this reality never came.
|
| Seems like what Israel is doing disproportionately affects
| poor people.
| dunekid wrote:
| Wow nice, I wish i could donate, but US Taxpayers already cover
| for me. What do the donors get? Like souvenirs? Funding
| Genocidal ITF to kill more children and bomb more hospitals has
| to have its perks.
| dark_mode wrote:
| > The decision brings to an abrupt end a three-year period in
| which the spy agency operated its surveillance programme using
| Microsoft's technology.
|
| Are we supposed to believe Microsoft was unaware of the contents
| but decided to terminate coincidentally when reports of what
| they're doing came out?
| dmix wrote:
| Are you asking whether Microsoft engineers routinely poke
| around their customer's private clouds (including ones used by
| foreign intelligence agencies) to make sure everything is
| kosher?
| t_mahmood wrote:
| Well, MS reviewed previously, and said they've seen nothing
| wrong, now they are saying some employees (coincidentally,
| Israeli) might have not been all transparent ...
|
| > The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft
| executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based
| employees may not have been fully transparent about their
| knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part
| of the review.
|
| You think, that is plausible?
|
| To me, Nope, it's just that, the money was too good.
|
| Only after Guardian's report, they realized:
|
| "Oops, we got caught, now do the damage control dance"
|
| And here we are ...
|
| Also, are those employees going to get fired? I doubt. But
| the protestor, standing up for something, did. Who is more
| damaging?
|
| Oh right, the protestor, because, they ruined the big cake.
|
| Did the unit that breach the contract lose anything? Nope,
| they got enough time to move their data safely, and will
| continue doing the same thing.
|
| It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own
| benefit.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _It 's all evil entities feeding each other, for their
| own benefit._
|
| let's please hear your complete list of evil entities, just
| curious who else it includes. you can go out in concentric
| circles from israel, or just start with the most evil
| worldwide and go till you get to israel and microsoft.
| t_mahmood wrote:
| Thanks, but no, thanks.
|
| If you can give me a counter, why these actions are not
| evil, I'm all ear.
| verteu wrote:
| "Routinely"? No.
|
| When the customer is indicted by the Hague for crimes against
| humanity? Yes, it's difficult to imagine a more clear-cut
| case of professional ethics.
| dark_mode wrote:
| > The decision has not affected Microsoft's wider commercial
| relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and
| will retain access to other services. The termination will raise
| questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive
| military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.
|
| It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral"
| army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to
| provide them services.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most
| moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still
| happy to provide them services.
|
| Well, why wouldn't they? It's Microsoft, they're not exactly
| stewards of privacy.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Doesn't every army conduct "mass surveillance"? What do you
| think all those satellites with cameras are doing orbiting the
| planet?
|
| Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral?
| Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would
| largely mean increased collateral damage.
| dark_mode wrote:
| > Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral?
| Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would
| largely mean increased collateral damage.
|
| The concern is who gets to decide what is or isn't a
| legitimate target? Today's heroes might be tomorrow's
| victims. I'd rather no one have that much power over others.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites
| with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages,
| and possibly hacking their devices?
| holmesworcester wrote:
| And not in a war zone, even. (West Bank is governed by
| Israel.)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The West Bank is occupied by Israel and Israel has
| overall control, but it is broken up into a whole bunch
| of tiny administrative regions, some of which are
| administered by the PA and some of which are administered
| directly by Israel.
| babu657 wrote:
| Gee i wonder what happens if Israel just let the west
| bank be. Wait...i know what will happen
| tguvot wrote:
| Rocket factories, like the one that was discovered week
| ago https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjbqu9qolx
| 3form wrote:
| Given lackluster response to the recent attempts of the
| "democratic" governments to do very much the same to their
| own citizens, I daresay not many are particularly
| impressed.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Additionally, there is observation AI face tracking of all
| movements of Palestinians in the West Bank, who live under
| occupation. While other governments may also conduct
| monitoring of their citizens to varying degrees, the
| distinction is that they are monitoring _citizens_ , not
| using monitoring to enforce military apartheid.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Militaries do that too. Signals Intelligence has been thing
| since radios were used by the military. I bet you that in
| Ukraine the moment you fire up any RF emitter it's showing
| up on someone's spectrum analyzer. And if it's unencrypted
| or a broken encryption they'll probably be decoding and
| logging the transmission.
| samirillian wrote:
| Holy crap you're totally right
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Arguing that mass surveillance is not unethical but actually
| a way to save lives is pretty disingenuous, absurdly so
| considering how little the country wielding it cares about
| collateral damage.
| ycombigators wrote:
| It would be pretty difficult for the IDF to increase their
| level of collateral damage.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Perhaps the actual moral choice isn't attacking blindly or
| mass surveillance of an occupied nation - it's peace?
|
| Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000
| and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn't being
| used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn't
| take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and
| schools is going to kill innocent people.
| amscanne wrote:
| Even the Gaza Health Ministry claims only 68,000, so I
| presume that your 600,000 is a typo.
| tkel wrote:
| Gaza Health Ministry only counts those that show up at
| hospitals. The first big Lancet study a year ago
| estimated 200k. I've seen more recent studies estimate
| higher, with an additional year of killings.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would
| largely mean increased collateral damage.
|
| That would only be true if your goal was not to completely
| obliterate the population you are attacking and bombing, as
| Israel has demonstrated.
| xg15 wrote:
| "Finding out" in the "shocked! shocked!" Casablanca sense.
|
| The IDF's "Wolf" system have been well known for years.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facia...
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Guess those protesting employees who lost their jobs weren't
| fired for nothing, at the very least. Finally.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their
| really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of
| this surveillance was?
| bhouston wrote:
| > I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store
| their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the
| source of this surveillance was?
|
| Why wouldn't countries store secret data in Azure, Google Cloud
| and AWS services? I think that this is quite common.
| everdrive wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not saying
| "this story is bogus," but rather I'm saying that this sort
| of data is probably not the kind of data which is acquired
| through really secret means. Perhaps it was purchased from
| providers, or some other less-secret method.
| bhouston wrote:
| Israel actually had a bunch of rules where Palestinians are
| not allowed to have 5G or 4G networks to ensure that they
| can be monitored.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/israeli-
| restri...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Palestine
|
| And yes it is recording pretty much all calls in Palestine:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-
| isra...
| everdrive wrote:
| I really had no idea, thanks for the links.
| derektank wrote:
| Yes, they do
|
| https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-government-top-...
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm clearly not informed and equally surprised. Thanks for
| letting me know.
| catigula wrote:
| It's okay if they mass surveil and kill other people using
| sweeping AI systems, surely it will never happen to me.
| creatonez wrote:
| After 2 years of genocide, and massive dissent from their own
| employees repeatedly warning that this was happening...
|
| Those who make holocaust tabulation machines belong in prison.
| hashim wrote:
| Well, to their credit, they've also seen that IBM, Volkswagen
| and Ford were still allowed to do plenty of business with no
| repercussions whatsoever (that I know of).
| nerdjon wrote:
| > The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft's
| chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit's then commander,
| Yossi Sariel.
|
| This seemed completely glossed over in the article (never
| revisited beyond this) but seems to imply that Satya must have at
| least known something about what was happening?
|
| Or was he mislead, told partial truths, or something?
|
| Very curious who within Microsoft knew anything about what was
| happening.
| dijit wrote:
| I think people don't tend to realise how authoritarian the
| internal structures of companies are.
|
| They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing
| services because a tenant does something you personally find
| disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's
| someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for
| a member of the EU parliament.[0]
|
| For me, this is more proof (not less) that I shouldn't rely on US
| tech giants. Not because _I_ will be collecting data on a
| population to do god-knows-what with, but because someone
| believes themselves to be the moral authority on what the compute
| I rent should be doing and that moral authority can be outraged
| for the whims of someone completely random, for any reason.
|
| [0]: https://www.aurasalla.eu/en/2025/05/26/mep-aura-salla-
| micros...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I expect this to continue to be _the_ conflict of
| responsibility and capability in the 21st century.
|
| Alfred Nobel was known as a "merchant of death" for enabling
| the use of combat explosives that could do (by the standards of
| the time) preposterous damage to people, but his argument was
| that he just sold the dynamite; he wasn't responsible for the
| anarchists getting it and bombing something twice a week in New
| York. And even then, his conscience weighed on him enough that
| he endowed a Peace Prize when he died.
|
| The story is different when the data conversion is being done
| on machines you own, in buildings you own, in a company you own
| (for practical reasons in addition to moral / theoretical; if
| someone wants to _stop_ those computations, they 're now going
| after _your stuff,_ not trying to stop a supply-chain).
| themafia wrote:
| > is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you
| support?
|
| That's why I never find it "fine." It's only a matter of time
| before corporate power finds it's way to your hobby horse. I
| thought part of the "hacker vibe" was being highly suspicious
| of any form of authority.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| >They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising
| removing services because a tenant does something you
| personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what
| happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed
| Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.
|
| Not that I necessarily agree with what they did here, but I
| would like to point out that one alternative which has been
| employed previously would be to silently forward her e-mails to
| the NSA or state department. Refusing to offer their services
| is probably the most ethical thing that MS has ever done on
| behalf of the US federal government.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Impressive.
|
| I often think of Microsoft as the new IBM, and it's startling to
| me to watch them buck that reputation.
| hashim wrote:
| They could never be that while Amazon and Google still run
| Project Nimbus.
| hashim wrote:
| As someone who's been boycotting Microsoft in line with the BDS
| movement, I welcome this (belated) move, but seeing Bill Gates on
| stage laughing (maybe nervously) at Ibtihal Aboussad's (now
| validated) protest still makes me uneasy about a guy who I
| previously followed and liked to a reasonable extent, and I'll
| still probably hold off on watching his most recent
| documentaries. It makes me wonder how comfortable you have to be
| (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens
| of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that.
| Hell, even Ballmer had the sense to keep a straight face.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed
| philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands
| of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that_
|
| Laughing at someone yelling on stage can be entirely orthogonal
| to what they're saying. (And it's not like that outburst did
| anything.)
| hashim wrote:
| The article you're commenting on quite literally mentions
| that employee pressure, of which Ibtihal Aboussad's was the
| most vocal and memorable in the media, played a significant
| role in the decision.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _article you 're commenting on quite literally mentions
| that employee pressure_
|
| Fair enough. I'm not buying it--the timeline doesn't work,
| and the broader literature on disruptive protest is mixed,
| leaning towards negative.
|
| What clearly swung the odds was the _Guardian_ reporting on
| the frankly brazen meetings Microsoft executives decided to
| take. Without that reporting, this wouldn 't have happened.
| With that reporting and absent the employee protests, this
| would have still likely happened.
| hashim wrote:
| Does that "literature" include history itself? I can't
| think of a single movement for good in history that
| accomplished its goals without pissing people off.
| Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power
| - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by
| definition.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Does that "literature" include history itself?_
|
| Literally how these things are studied.
|
| > _can 't think of a single movement for good in history
| that accomplished its goals without pissing people off_
|
| Disruptive protest takes the form of interrupting
| ordinary peoples' lives. (In contrast with targeted
| protest, which seeks to directly disrupt the problematic
| conduct.)
|
| They are effective at raising awareness of an issue and
| rallying the base. Among those who are already aware and
| have _not_ yet committed to a side, however, they tend
| (broadly) to decrease sympathy.
|
| > _Resisting any form of power tends to result in that
| power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset
| by definition_
|
| Of course. I'm talking about broader views.
|
| Sympathy for Israel went _up_ after the Columbia protests
| because (a) nobody was surprised that there was a war in
| Gaza and (b) folks breaking into a building and
| disrupting public spaces doesn 't naturally elicit
| sympathy from undecideds. (It also crowds out coverage of
| the actual war.)
| zhengiszen wrote:
| Nice
| efitz wrote:
| I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don't think
| that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary
| decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of
| dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
|
| I think that the only reasons that a cloud provider should be
| permitted to use to justify termination of service, are illegal
| activity (in the country of service), non-payment, or attempting
| to harm or disrupt the service.
|
| I am in no way condoning anything that Israel is doing, just like
| I wasn't condoning what people on Parler were saying when AWS
| axed them in 2021.
|
| No matter how much you like what the people in charge are doing
| today or who they're doing it to, sooner or later someone will
| take the reins who decides that you are the target.
|
| Same with banks, credit card companies, etc. if you are
| incorporated and your business is to support commerce, you should
| keep your thumb off the scale.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| MS is saying they violated terms of service. Are you saying
| common carriers shouldn't have terms of service?
| khnov wrote:
| So you think making a genocide is not illegal ?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Look how carefully they worded that to make a carve-out for
| this very case: "in the country of service". As in, Gaza is
| now part of Israel, and according to Israeli laws, Israel is
| not doing any genocide on Palestinians.
| mlinsey wrote:
| I agree with you in most contexts, but "illegal activity (in
| the country of service)" is a tough one in the context of an
| invasion, a territorial dispute, or international espionage.
|
| Before the current war, Hamas was the governing authority in
| Gaza, despite the Palestinian Authority being the
| internationally recognized one. Regardless, whether the
| surveillance was legal under _Israeli_ law doesn 't seem like
| the correct standard.
| efitz wrote:
| I think that if Azure offers their service in Israel it has
| to comply with Israeli law; I don't see why that would not
| govern in this case.
|
| If Azure were providing service to the US Government then
| that service would be governed by US law even if the
| employees using the service traveled abroad; the only
| exception would be if service was initiated by an employee in
| another country under the terms for the service provider in
| that country, but even then likely government has contracts
| with the provider that would shift jurisdiction back to the
| US.
| freeopinion wrote:
| The concept of common carriers in not a wartime concept. Should
| occupied Ukranians keep providing service to their occupiers on
| principle?
|
| Aside from the common carrier concept, operating a significant
| war-supporting facility makes you a significant target. And I
| don't just mean a target for criticism. Datacenters risk a
| security threat on a whole new level if taking them out is
| important to war operations.
|
| Would you criticize a commercial port in the Black Sea if it
| turned away Russian warships? Harboring Russian warships makes
| it extremely likely that your port could become the target of
| missile strikes. If you want to remain an innocent bystander,
| don't harbor combatants.
|
| This is not a statement in support of any side of any war.
| joe463369 wrote:
| > I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don't
| think that it is a good thing when a company can make an
| arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put
| millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of
| person hours into.
|
| Exactly! The IDF have put a lot of effort in to this genocide.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Just to be clear: "illegal under international law" isn't good
| enough? It has to be sovereign entities' own laws? As in, a
| cloud provider should have no power to refuse service to any
| government?
| danbruc wrote:
| What would happen in a hypothetical scenario where Microsoft cut
| off everything [1] they can for all of Israel - no Azure, no
| Office, no Outlook, no Exchange, no SQL Server, no Windows, no
| Xbox, no ...? Depending on how many things they can make
| unusable, I would imagine that this would be pretty bad, probably
| even causing some deaths because of affected infrastructure.
|
| [1] Not sure what they could actually make unusable by revoking
| licenses, blocking logins, and whatnot. It probably also matters
| how quickly the effects are felt, Azure would be gone immediately
| but I am not sure how often Office checks whether its license has
| been revoked, if at all. If license checks make things stop
| working over weeks and months, it would still not be pretty, but
| it would provide at least some time to prepare and avoid the
| worst.
| CommanderData wrote:
| That would never happen.
|
| Israel has too much influence over the US.
| danbruc wrote:
| That is why the comment says _hypothetical scenario_. ;-)
| snickerbockers wrote:
| IDK but Mossad is quite possibly the world's most effective spy
| agency and SV software corporations rarely have effective
| safeguards to protect against rogue employees so we must
| conclude that there are many sleeper agents planted throughout
| major corporations on behalf of just about every intelligence
| agency in the world including but not limited to mossad.
|
| I have not seen any hard evidence of this nor have i ever
| suspected a fellow employee at any of my employers of being a
| double-agent loyal to a state intelligence agency but it's easy
| enough to do that there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands
| of sleeper agents all over santa clara and redmond.
| trhway wrote:
| >Unit 8200, the military's elite spy agency, had violated the
| company's terms of service by storing the vast trove of
| surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
|
| reliance of everything/everybody on cloud platforms already mind-
| boggling.
|
| One can extrapolate it further - in a near future conflicts both
| sides may have their data, weapons control systems, etc. running
| inside the same Big Cloud Provider ... in this case would they
| need actual physical weapons systems? or may be it would be
| easier to just let those weapons control systems duke each other
| out in the virtual battle space provided as a service by the same
| Big Cloud Provider.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Too little, too late. The whole world knows that Microsoft has
| blood on its hands.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| My first reaction was "good on Microsoft". Then I read how it was
| only after a Guardian report exposed this was happening that MSFT
| took action. They were perfectly content to provide the services
| so long as it wasn't widely known.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Looks like the contracts are not going to AWS or Google but to
| Nebius (founded by Volozhin, who founded of Yandex).
|
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nebius-to-build-a...
|
| "Google and Amazon, both of which already hold the $1.2 billion
| Nimbus contract with the Israeli government, originally received
| a preliminary tender for the supercomputer but ultimately
| withdrew from contention."
| EchoReflection wrote:
| "Microsoft condones Hamas attack on Oct 7th."
|
| "Microsoft changes company slogan to 'Allah Akbar Surveillance
| for the Future of Glorious Jihad"
|
| "Microsoft Pledges Billions of Dollars to Help Hamas Rebuild
| Tunnels That Were Used to Invade Israel".
|
| I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en
| masse...I guess people need income/have families to think about,
| but still... Preventing Israel from using MS tech to protect
| itself from terrorist attacks is pretty disgusting. Highly
| recommend Douglas Murray's (extremely disturbing and sad) book
| "On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Western
| Civilization" (warning: includes horrific accounts of extreme
| violence against Israeli civilians)
|
| https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/on-democraci...
|
| https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Democracies-and-Death-Cults-Au...
| phatfish wrote:
| > I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en
| masse...
|
| I suspect the sensible ones are keeping a low profile and
| praying for it all to be over, much like the Palestinians
| (except they are starving in a wasteland not working for
| Microsoft).
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Cue the victimhood - how unfair it is that the IDF gets singled
| out for doing what every military does - how Israel is the real
| victim here.
| doubleorseven wrote:
| it's a jing jang thing. soon there will be some one else who
| will be a tastier roast. but as an Israeli im really impressed
| they were able to use so much compute before someone checked
| their activity report. I mean this was not just parking space
| they were using, stakes were high! it's 2025 and (still) money
| talks.
| zawaideh wrote:
| Every single one of these companies that have enabled the
| genocide should be help accountable. Maybe some are trying to
| claim plausible deniability.
|
| --
|
| For those looking for direct sources on the findings of genocide
| in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal conclusions from
| human rights organizations, international courts, and genocide
| scholars:
|
| 1. UN Commission of Inquiry: Concluded that Israel has committed
| genocide in the Gaza Strip. * Report:
| https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c... *
| Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA
|
| 2. Amnesty International: Concluded that Israel is committing
| genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. * Statement:
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-genocide-aga...
|
| 3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in
| the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel
| is committing genocide. * Report ("Our Genocide"):
| https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
|
| 4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024
| that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide
| Convention. * Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
|
| 5. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: Issued an "Active
| Genocide Alert" in October 2023, warning of the high risk of
| genocide. * Alert: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-
| genocide-alert-1/acti...
|
| Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that
| this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history,
| often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their
| testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are
| frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source
| validates their lived experience.
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