Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by SilverElfin » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

hashim wrote: post #560

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after they invaded Poland This is an interesting comparison—thank you. That said, did the Poles launch cross-border attacks on German civilians? The closest I can come up with is Bloody Sunday [1], which was an attack on ethnically German civilians, but not a cross-border incursion. (Granted, we can only observe this ex…

Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian land before being handed over by colonial powers and then "won" in subsequent "wars" (read: massacres) on the barely-armed villagers living there? The Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes. Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with th…

> when the entire land was previously Palestinian land

No such thing as Palestinian. Just Islamic Arab. Choosing to label yourself the same as one name for the land doesn’t make the land yours. But also - who do you think occupied the land previously?

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

#672

Post by catigula » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

Joeboy wrote: post #661

catigula wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you realize how silly that word has become. In reality, groups of people via culture or whatever other mechanism do generate certain things that are undeserving or deserving of censure. For example, due to cultural reasons, 1930-1940s Germany produced a high preponderance of Nazis, so we destroyed them. I'm not suggesting cultural destruction is possible or desireable (maybe it is, but it's not my purview),…

I think word is sometimes used as a cudgel to derail reasonable discussion. I still think it has its place and at this point, yeah I'm going to say you're unambiguously an antisemite.

[flagged]

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

#673

Post by hashim » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #641

hashim wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 killin…

That's funny. In mid-October 2023 the narrative was "It doesn't matter who killed more" and now that so many Palestinians are dying - both by Israeli bombs and by Hamas rockets (1/3 to 1/5 fall back into the densely-populated Gaza strip) - the narrative is "Hamas has killed less Israelis than Israel has killed Palestinians". The pro-Palestinian narrative adapts and changes as per the tides of war and the media. The I…

No, the Palestinian narrative for those of us actually knowledgeable of history has not changed since 1948. As for Israel being consistent - how are those hostages doing? Cause it definitely doesn't care about any of them now (those it hasn't killed itself), and Netanyahu and others in the cabinet have admitted they want to occupy the land once more.

I'm not American, but you must be if you think racism magically stops outside of America. The racism most Americans and Zionists have towards brown people and the Islamophobia they have towards Muslims are some of their most prejudiced, and at least equal to any form of anti-Semitism you've ever experienced, but for some reason, you only believe in one of those. To be clear, "brown people" don't have to be "brown" just like black people aren't all black, it's a generic term that indicates a rough place of origin, and the point that you're clearly trying to obscure is that racism towards Palestinians is still racism no matter what colour they actually are.

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

#674

Post by phatfish » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

EchoReflection wrote: post #633

"Microsoft condones Hamas attack on Oct 7th." "Microsoft changes company slogan to 'Allah Akbar Surveillance for the Future of Glorious Jihad" "Microsoft Pledges Billions of Dollars to Help Hamas Rebuild Tunnels That Were Used to Invade Israel". I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...I guess people need income/have families to think about, but still... Preventing Israel from using MS tec…

> I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...

I suspect the sensible ones are keeping a low profile and praying for it all to be over, much like the Palestinians (except they are starving in a wasteland not working for Microsoft).

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

#675

Post by SilverElfin » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

basilgohar wrote: post #342

ars wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the fist place? That was 3,000 or so years ago.

There was never a country called Israel until 1948. It was always Palestine. The idea of a nation called Israel is the invention of Zionists in the 19th and 20th century.

Ancient Israelites existed approximately 2000 years before your incorrect claimed timeline. Today’s Jews are descendants of Israelites.

It is also trivially simply to disprove “It was always Palestine”. It was made up by Romans. Again, much later than when Jewish people lived there.

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

#676

Post by fsckboy » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

t_mahmood wrote: post #382

dmix wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asking whether Microsoft engineers routinely poke around their customer’s private clouds (including ones used by foreign intelligence agencies) to make sure everything is kosher?

Well, MS reviewed previously, and said they've seen nothing wrong, now they are saying some employees (coincidentally, Israeli) might have not been all transparent ... > The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review. You…

>It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.

let's please hear your complete list of evil entities, just curious who else it includes. you can go out in concentric circles from israel, or just start with the most evil worldwide and go till you get to israel and microsoft.

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

#677

Post by hashim » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #620

hashim wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian land before being handed over by colonial powers and then "won" in subsequent "wars" (read: massacres) on the barely-armed villagers living there? The Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes. Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with th…

> Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian That's how borders work. (Anything else is, by definition, a border dispute.) If the Armia Krajowa had bulldozed into Lithuania on the logic that they lost it due to foreign meddling, they would have tarnished their record. (Despite the claim being true.) > Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements a…

So the problem is that you don't believe Palestinians are on their "own turf", because Israel "legally" won it from the villagers there in 1948 after having the British install them to it. Got it. Once again, the Palestinian homeland is exactly where the kibbutz (which is a military camp and outpost) was, mere miles from Gaza, and all of the people involved were actively standing members of the IDF (i.e. the occupying army akin to the Americans in Vietnam). You keep calling it a terrorist attack while appearing completely clueless that it's a largely meaningless political term. We considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist while he was locked up for 30 years, and for the UK at least he was only removed from that list in 2013.

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

#678

Post by babu657 » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #602

holmesworcester wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The West Bank is occupied by Israel and Israel has overall control, but it is broken up into a whole bunch of tiny administrative regions, some of which are administered by the PA and some of which are administered directly by Israel.

Gee i wonder what happens if Israel just let the west bank be. Wait…i know what will happen

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

#679

Post by SilverElfin » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #667

zdragnar wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are fighting human animals What else do you call people who rape and murder civilians, then parade their dead bodies around to cheering crowds? Hamas will never have any sympathy from most people who watched the October 7 attack footage.

Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem I have ZERO issue with the IDF killing Hamas. That's what you do in a war . But we have ample evidence that Israel and the IDF is not making any effort to not kill random Palestinians. They made some stupid AI algorithm to feed data into in order to generate target lists. They accepted something like 10:1 "innocent p…

> Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem

Well, it is difficult to distinguish between the two when you’re hunting down terrorists who hide among civilians. But also, let’s not forget - the civilian population of Gaza VOTED for Hamas. In polls they still show support for Hamas even after October 7. There are videos of those civilians cheering in the streets while the naked bodies of raped / murdered women were paraded down the street by Hamas terrorists. I don’t think you can pretend “random Palestinians” are entirely innocent either.

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

#680

Post by xg15 » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

dark_mode wrote: post #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 h…

"Finding out" in the "shocked! shocked!" Casablanca sense.

The IDF's "Wolf" system have been well known for years.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facia...