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

theguardian.com

221–230 of 894 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal definitions are often up for discussion and debate. That’s a large part of what lawyers do, in fact. Anyway I have no comment on the specific claim being made here, I just really dislike it when discussion is stifled by saying “I’m right and no one can ever disagree”.

That's like debating the definition of homicide or rape. There is no nuance here.

Exactly. I think people socialized into certain conversational norms in politicized online spaces, ridiculously overestimate plausibility of the rhetorical gambit of going "gee, who's to say?" when attempted out in the wild.

I think one strength of the liberal academic tradition is that whether it's philosophy, whether it's law, you get introduced to the "whose to say" archetype early on and get inoculated against it. It's not just that the concepts are well enough established that they're resilient against such skepticism, but even in cases of uncertainty, routine amounts of conceptual uncertainty are not a deal-breaker to investigating and understanding urgent moral issues.

A real argument in the negative would be along the lines of "here's how food truck inspection policies are tied to well-established norms that better explain the outcome of famine than intent to destroy". A not real argument is spontaneous, mid-debate discovery of the transience of linguistic meaning, discovered just in time to skirt the question of genocide.

The trouble with this form of skepticism is it can only ever be hypothesized, never actually consistently embodied by real people. Long before navigating to hacker News, you would look at your computer and be paralyzed by fundamental puzzles like "what is electricity", "what is information", "is there really an external world" and so on. It wouldn't have been discovered mid conversation about genocide.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Privacy ayatollah? Is that like an infosec shah?

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...

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

#223
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are thinking of "Palestinians" as a collective group, synonymous with a group of extremists who have done horrible things Just as most of the citizens of Iran are victims of an Islamic totalitarian government, just as many Germans were victims of the fascist dictatorship that took hold of their nation, most human beings living near the southeast bit of the Levantine Sea are victims of actions outside their contro…

So, do we owe Germany an apology after we obliterated it to stop the nazis? Or is it kind of logical that when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power and cheer for them as they return from murder and rape, you hide the hostages they took and refuse to do anything to stop them, then maybe you aren't completely innocent?

>when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power [with the financial backing of Netanyahu]

I think you omitted part of it.

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

#224

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.

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.

Did the protestors help the media publicity?

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

#225
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Do you also suggest Jewish families get back land and businesses that they lost in countries in the region in the process?

Because more Jews were squeezed into Israel than Arabs who were squeezed out.

These Jews also lost everything.

And unlike Israeli Arabs who at least from the declaration of Israel got an invitation to stay there as citizens, this option was not offered to the Jews of surrounding nations.

Furthermore, if you want to go back in history, note that Israel was not originally suggested because of WW2 and Holocaust, but decades before because of Muslim harassment of the Jewish minorities in their countries.

Just like Pakistan was created as a national home for Muslims to protect them from Hindus.

Feel free to see for yourself and also to ask why absolutely nobody in UN or the "unbiased" media or schools has told you this before...

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

#226
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The word genocide has a legal definition, it’s not up for discussion or debate. What is happening in Gaza is a genocide according to genocide scholars.

If you're referring to the "International Association of Genocide Scholars" (IAGS), all it takes to join that organization is $30 and self identifying as a genocide scholar. Furthermore the resolution was passed with a total of 129 voting members, and about 107 voting in favor, out of over 500 total members.

Here's a letter from 514 verified scholars and legal experts calling on IAGS to retract their resolution, along with their rebuttal of the substance of the resolution:

https://www.scholarsfortruthaboutgenocide.com/

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

#227
post #147
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 immed…

If they weren’t intended to be thrown under the bus, they’d be called… superordinates? I guess?

And if they all just took the bus together they'd be coordinates?

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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".

1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactiv...), 70% of the dead are women and children (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.

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

#229
> 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?

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

#230
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They fired staff who protested against the firm’s ties to the IDF.

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-emplo…

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.

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