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Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

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Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#71

Post by bjackman »

timsh wrote: post #41

not trying to justify it even a bit, but shouldn't people in his position (actively acting against the US-supported position) use something more secure? Like proton for starters? I think most of the activists know the drill (not to use gmail/outlook/icloud... in their activism-related communications).

I think that's just another side of the same coin.

Until recently I'm sure people at the heart of the western political establishment saw the US as essentially trustworthy with regard to fundamental things like not stealing their emails.

Just like they wouldn't have expected the executive to deny them access to the product. Now it's clear expectations need to be updated.

Not great news for the US tech industry...

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#72

Post by jeroenhd »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #53
phendrenad2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations. Corporate behavior is well-established science at this point. They almost always do what is in their own financial interests. "Feckless" means "lacking initiative or strength of character". Corporations have one character: Making money. Fighting the government over a few user accounts has no short-term or long-term monetary value. It doesn't even…

50% of people do not support this. That’s a made up number. Trump has barely over 40%. He is an unpopular criminal who has shown time and again he will break the law. What even makes you think a criminal like this would win an election fairly?

Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.

He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.

I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.

As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#73

Post by spwa4 »

conradev wrote: post #44
bigtones wrote: post #7

>> Casper Klynge, a former Danish and European Union diplomat who worked for Microsoft, said the episode was in many ways the “smoking gun that many Europeans had been looking for.” Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.

They’re working on it! And they’re making it open source :) Our goal is to offer a privacy-focused, vendor-neutral alternative to platforms like Microsoft Exchange. https://stalw.art/blog/nlnet-grant-collaboration/

Great, but look at this. This is a joke. Let's see ... the EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year, and have been funding it for 50 years (starting at 0 of course). How much software does the EU expect to get for "between 5000 and 50000 euro"? (one-time). A software engineer in Bangalore can expect to make more than that, even after tax!

The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen.

Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning.

Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal.

Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt).

So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS!

This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that?

And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence.

And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no.

They aren't.

This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum.

The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#74

Post by logicchains »

jeroenhd wrote: post #72
malcolmgreaves wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% of people do not support this. That’s a made up number. Trump has barely over 40%. He is an unpopular criminal who has shown time and again he will break the law. What even makes you think a criminal like this would win an election fairly?

Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body. He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government. I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve a…

Trump won an election but the majority of his voters are anti-Israel; polls show all Republican demographics apart from boomers have a net-negative view on Israel (and a non-trivial amount are outright anti-Semitic).

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#75

Post by freehorse »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #15
NewJazz wrote: post #6

They didn't even resist/appeal the order? It is an EO, not a law. Goes to show just how subservient and feckless Microsoft is. Nominative determinism much?

People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations. Corporate behavior is well-established science at this point. They almost always do what is in their own financial interests. "Feckless" means "lacking initiative or strength of character". Corporations have one character: Making money. Fighting the government over a few user accounts has no short-term or long-term monetary value. It doesn't even…

This is what makes it interesting: banning the professional account of an employee of an organisation based in another part of the world makes the existing trust issues against that company even worse, and enhances the process of orgs in these places to move away from it. Currently microsoft is a stone pillar in the IT infrastructure in a lot of european organisations. I do not think this will be the case in 1-2 years.

So obviously microsoft will lose a lot of money in this. So if the decision is based on them making money, one has to wonder about the less obvious source of money that this decision serves.

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#76

Post by oldpersonintx2 »

belter wrote: post #40
ptero wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do. Some real competition would be good for all sides!

Why stop there? You have a call, its a Rafale: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/no-us-in-nato-thats-ok-rafal...

[dead]

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#78

Post by whatshisface »

boston_clone wrote: post #21
perihelions wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "It is an EO, not a law." Still, backed by pretty solid statutory authority[0] (one created by Democrats and signed into law by Carter, in point of fact). Congress wanted the President to have this power. I'll get scorched for this, but: I never once read a word of complaint about separation-of-powers, when Biden was sanctioning objects left and right for his own, self-declared, national-security emergencies. I don…

You not reading that commentary and it not taking place are two very different things! Plenty of folks expressed constitutionality concerns for several types of actions that the Biden admin took. However, you may find that the enacted sanctions hold up significantly better under meaningful scrutiny than Trump cutting off email for one person investigating the war crimes and evidence of genocide in Gaza at the hands o…

Israel is not a proxy state, they self-determine oftentimes against what their allies have wanted them to do.

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#79

Post by vkou »

boredatoms wrote: post #9
a_bonobo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a bunch of tech execs getting sworn in as lieutenant colonels for the Army Reserve, SF aligns itself with the White House just like Germany's big industry aligned itself with the NSDAP. It doesn't particularly matter whether an order is legal or not, it only matters if the ones in power want it.

What would motivate them to join the army?

Fascism is the last step in the merger between the state and corporate power, the state is currently trying its best to take the country there, and the sycophants who are ready to assist it are getting in line.

And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.

---

[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.

Re: Microsoft suspended the email account of an ICC prosecutor at The Hague

#80

Post by FirmwareBurner »

spwa4 wrote: post #73
conradev wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re working on it! And they’re making it open source :) Our goal is to offer a privacy-focused, vendor-neutral alternative to platforms like Microsoft Exchange. https://stalw.art/blog/nlnet-grant-collaboration/

Great, but look at this. This is a joke. Let's see ... the EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year, and have been funding it for 50 years (starting at 0 of course). How much software does the EU expect to get for "between 5000 and 50000 euro"? (one-time). A software engineer in Bangalore can expect to make more than that, even after tax! The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux…

This, 100X this. The EU wants to have the shiny SW toys the US has spent decades and trillions building, but without forking up the money needed to develop them. They want everything done on cheap labor. Paying rank and file engineers shit tonne of money is not part of European business owner culture (barring few exceptions). You're expected to be grateful you've been given a job.

Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.

China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.

Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.

There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.

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