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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

#271
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right of return for all Palestinians and their descendants, worldwide.

Also for the 850K middle eastern Jews that were kicked out of their countries by arabs?

If committing genocide puts the genociders in a tough spot, then I’m actually cool with that

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One protestor was fired after interrupting a CEO's speech.

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.

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

#274

“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…

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...

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.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women? It's important to note that these things never happened, and you're still repeating them years later. The only baby that died on 10/7 was a 10 month old hit by crossfire. I have no idea of the third, and though I feel sure it's wrong judging by the rest of what you have said, I feel obligated to check. Try it.

There are videos.

Not only collected by Israel but also by the wider OSINT community.

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#277
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy ayatollah? Is that like an infosec shah?

Data pope?

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.

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

#278

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.

No? No one should service them

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#280

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?

> 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.

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.
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