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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

#231

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.

M$ is bad, just not cause of this

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

#233

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), 70% of the dead are women and children (tried adding links but doesnt seem to let me), 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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the current suffering could stop tomorrow if they simply Who is the "they" in this sentence, exactly?

The Gazans obviously. Who else?

Who else? The people actually holding the hostages, perhaps.

Because you surely mistakenly implied here that All Gazans categorically are responsible for the hostage-taking and "deserve" to be killed as a consequence of that.

Your use of language betrays your feelings. You are disgusting.

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

#235
> 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.

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

#236
post #97

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…

[flagged]

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

#237
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?

Can you make this a bit clearer for me? Quantify it? How much hardship should someone endure to make up for voting for Hamas? Losing a home? A limb? A friend? A child?

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

#238
post #97

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…

> 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...

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

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 ab…

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.

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

#240
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But isn't that what Hamas did? Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women? Shoot up clinics and murder the entire staff and patients?

Taking your post at face value (which nobody should), the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head, or setting up snipers near hospitals or UN Aid stations - both things which are confirmed by foreign doctors and aid workers.
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