Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 894 posts

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

#591

Post by dijit »

dunekid wrote: post #565
stackedinserter wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inconvenient truth is that anyone who remained in Gaza, in active IDF ops area, is not a civilian. Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times. Unless it's a little child that's not capable of lifting a firearm, this person is Hamas at this point. If you have better way to differentiate, I will happily pass it to IDF. Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own life.

>Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times. Where to? Hind Rajab ,literally a child, was brutally killed when fleeing their home, after being asked of course. The ambulance which came to rescue was blown up by the ITF. The Whole world has seen it all, ITF proudly displays it. Maybe it is time to update the Hasbara points. >Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own l…

[flagged]

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

#593

Post by SilverElfin »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #208
dotancohen wrote: post #176

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?

Nothing Hamas has done justifies what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians, because collective punishment is a war crime. "But they did it first" is not a valid excuse, especially when trying to excuse mass starvation and bombing population centers.

Is it collective punishment or just really difficult to successful take down terrorists, destroy their weapons, and free hostages when they hide among civilians in a highly dense place? How would you suggest a country like Israel could definitely put an end to Hamas so their citizens are not experiencing risk? And how do you separate the “civilians” from Hamas when they voted for Hamas, support them today, and so on, knowing full well what their goals are (religious supremacy and genocide)?

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

#594

Post by worik »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #299
nailer wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On genetic terms, the Palestinians are virtually identical to Semitic Jews. There's been plenty of slander to try to say they're more arab, but they're essentially close cousins. Which leads one to believe, perhaps a large amount of the jews in the region simply moved on with the times with the new religion taking hold. Essentially Israel/Palestine is a fight between cousins, and one side's inlaws who never actually…

> On genetic terms...

...race is fiction.

Genetic analysis does not match "racial" classifications

"Race" is a social construct

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

#595

Post by joe463369 »

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

They should probably stop shooting them then.

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

#596

Post by darkwater »

serialNumber wrote: post #125
AlfredBarnes wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why build something near or semi near conflict?

Valid question, but just look at the huge amount of R&D / the tech companies in Israel. Even if it’s near conflict, I don’t think companies care

A company doesn't care. An army does.

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

#597

Post by SilverElfin »

buellerbueller wrote: post #217
dotancohen wrote: post #176

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?

Hamas is a terrorist organization. IDF is a state-sponsored military force. I expect those two categories to behave differently from one another. Do you?

Yes, and they are. If Israel really wanted to just commit a genocide or specifically target civilians, they would have been able to act much more quickly and cause a lot more collateral damage. Is there really any doubt about this? They could have literally leveled the entire city with a munitions from air.

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

#598

Post by holmesworcester »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #553
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't every army conduct "mass surveillance"? What do you think all those satellites with cameras are doing orbiting the planet? Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.

Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages, and possibly hacking their devices?

And not in a war zone, even. (West Bank is governed by Israel.)

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

#599

Post by hashim »

SilverElfin wrote: post #586
hashim wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you're honest. This is why the vast majority of Westerners support Israel, its colonialism and its right to kill as many brown people as they can, they just don't say it out loud.

Isn’t it the inverse? Gazans voted for Hamas, and still support them per polls. Hamas’s charter is to destroy Israel in particular but also to subordinate women, subordinate all other religions, undermine Western powers, etc. Their goals and ideology are explicitly in conflict with liberal orders that support things like women’s rights, gay rights, free speech, freedom of religion, and so on.

Do you really think Hamas has killed more Israelis than Israel has killed Palestinians? Do you even know why Hamas exists? Do you have any idea how many years passed between the occupation in 1948 and massacres like the Nakba and Deir Yassin before Hamas was established? Also, no matter how much you want it to, your racism against brown people and fetishisation of "Judeo-Christian civilisation" doesn't justify killing them.

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

#600

Post by efitz »

mlinsey wrote: post #525
efitz wrote: post #473

I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into. I think that the only reasons that a cloud provider should be permitted to use to justify termination of service, are illegal activity (in the country of service),…

I agree with you in most contexts, but "illegal activity (in the country of service)" is a tough one in the context of an invasion, a territorial dispute, or international espionage. Before the current war, Hamas was the governing authority in Gaza, despite the Palestinian Authority being the internationally recognized one. Regardless, whether the surveillance was legal under Israeli law doesn't seem like the correct…

I think that if Azure offers their service in Israel it has to comply with Israeli law; I don’t see why that would not govern in this case.

If Azure were providing service to the US Government then that service would be governed by US law even if the employees using the service traveled abroad; the only exception would be if service was initiated by an employee in another country under the terms for the service provider in that country, but even then likely government has contracts with the provider that would shift jurisdiction back to the US.

Post reply on HN