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Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

theguardian.com

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Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#161

Post by RajT88 »

skinkestek wrote: post #108
sharpshadow wrote: post #70

It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own state after this.

[flagged]

Other commenters are right, but I'll point out another fallacy you're pushing here.

The current situation is like somebody commits a murder. Then the community rounds up a posse and goes out to kill the murderer. Then kill the murder's family, their neighbors, the residents of the next neighborhood over, raze the neighborhoods and then take all the land for themselves.

Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.

Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#162

Post by komali2 »

ngruhn wrote: post #50
vFunct wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

The op did not say Jews, he said Israelis. Apparently a poll by Haaretz found that 47% of respondents wanted to "kill every man, woman, and child in Gaza." 87% wanted complete expelsure of all Palestinians. So, the op is not quite right to say majority explicitly want to kill children, but regardless, it is frankly gross that you heard a criticism of a nation and immediately jumped to islamophobia.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-ma...

Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#163

Post by throwaway3060 »

lkey wrote: post #120
some-guy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

Do you have a source for this?

Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#164

Post by [deleted] »

meowface wrote: post #123
sc68cal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#165

Post by bhouston »

evolve2k wrote: post #135
politelemon wrote: post #93

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.

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 disgustin…

> 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.

Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#166

Post by petesergeant »

skinkestek wrote: post #149
throw744849599 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM has a long tradition to provide computers for such use cases ;)

[flagged]

> the current suffering could stop tomorrow if they simply

Who is the "they" in this sentence, exactly?

Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#168

Post by skinkestek »

thrownawayohman wrote: post #141
skinkestek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

“Now imagine this scenario and ignore everything else that’s happened for the last 60-70 years and oh yeah, don’t mention the current genocide.”

Let's not ignore the last 60-70 or even 1400 years.

Israelis hit back hard. But they haven't been the ones to declare war on peaceful neighbors.

It wasn't them who stood for thr München massacre or a number of plane hijackings in the 70ies.

It wasn't Israelis who blew up buses in Gaza.

Was it?

We must stop confusing powerful with evil and currently helpless with "innocent".

Re: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

#169

Post by DSingularity »

rhetocj23 wrote: post #33
jajuuka wrote: post #27

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.

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.

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.

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