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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

#421

Post by MangoToupe »

colpabar wrote: post #264
t-writescode wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the protestors help the media publicity?

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?

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.

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

#422

Post by ecshafer »

rkachowski wrote: post #404
duxup wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You feel that being fired is an appropriate consequence to interrupting a CEO?

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.

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

#423

Post by yieldcrv »

nashashmi wrote: post #153
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.

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.

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

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

#424

Post by evil-olive »

gruez wrote: post #370
thisislife2 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 execu…

>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".

> 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 Seán 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_accusatio...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre

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

#425

Post by MangoToupe »

colpabar wrote: post #378
squigz wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> 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

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

#426

Post by ecshafer »

mikestew wrote: post #340
nashashmi wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

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

#427

Post by tormeh »

mikestew wrote: post #340
nashashmi wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

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

#428

Post by jameshilliard »

roughly wrote: post #110
bArray wrote: 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…

> 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.

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.

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

#429

Post by derektank »

everdrive wrote: post #254

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?

Yes, they do

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-government-top-...

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