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While i strongly disagree with the usa's sanctions on the ICC, i'm very surprised that the ICC has to rely on american cloud providers. It seems like a court,

While i strongly disagree with the usa's sanctions on the ICC, i'm very surprised that the ICC has to rely on american cloud providers. It seems like a court, especially one dealing with international crimes where international esponage seems quite likely, should have in-house tech. It seems like being fully independent would be really important. Sort of in the same way i would expect e.g. the eu gov not to be dependent on a foreign cloud provider either (have no idea if they are or not)

miohtama 1y ago
Let's call it lessons learnt
- bawolff 1y ago
  Given we are still here despite how bush treated the ICC, i'm not sure the lesson will be learned
- usrnm 1y ago
  It is a lesson all right. Whether or not it's learnt remains to be seen
- spwa4 1y ago
  The current prosecutor, Karim Khan, is the one that introduced the dependency on Microsoft platforms. He has not made any initiative to undo this, in fact as pointed out here, he's increasing that dependency further with internet services. So calling this lessons learnt makes no sense. He hasn't learnt his lesson and is not displaying any intention to start now (given that he comes from a British/Pakistani family of conservative party politicians, which is also a family of sex offenders, that seems about par for the course) It's weird how one needs to keep explaining to US and EU people: almost all governments do not take decisions based on how they'll affect people and/or the government involved. Different governments have different priorities. The decisions of the UN are targeted towards keeping their members happy and paying. The vast majority of governments worldwide are governments that were conquered by a group or even a family. These people see controlling government as a business and the business is to use control of the government to extract the maximum for that family. And joke all you want about Trump, it can be 1000x worse, and it generally is. The ICC isn't that bad, but it's pretty bad. If you want to know what the ICC is (and isn't) about, read about how they went about prosecuting a Dutch citizen (their host country). It reads like a Blackadder script. The guy was accused, the Dutch government threatened, suddenly the accusation got dropped, he got knighted by the Queen in a New Year ceremony, got a pay rise. The ICC got a new building. Google "DutchBat".
  - bramhaag 1y ago
    You may dislike the ICC, but please don't spread misinformation about them. The ICC has never prosecuted a Dutch citizen (or anyone, for that matter) over war crimes committed during the Bosnian War. The events of Dutchbat happened in 1995, 3 years before the Rome Statue (the treaty that established the ICC) was accepted. The ICC has no retroactive jurisdiction as per the Rome Statue (Article 11(1)) [1]: The Court has jurisdiction only with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of this Statute. The ICTY was established by the United Nations to prosecute crimes committed during the wars in Yugoslavia, but as the ICTY only focused on carried out atrocities (instead of failure to defend an area), no Dutchbat members were prosecuted there either. The ICTY did prosecute Krstić, the commander who led the Srebrenica massacre that Dutchbat failed to defend against. There were some civil cases against Dutchbat, the Dutch state and the United Nations. Dutch courts held the state responsible to some degree in all cases. Unsurprisingly, the rest of your story is also false. There are no credible reports of the Dutch government threatening anyone to drop cases related to Dutchbat. Some Dutchbat officers were awarded military honors, but they were not knighted, nor did their pay increase as a result of their actions in Srebrenica. The ICC moved to a new building in 2016, this was again not a result of anything that happened in Yugoslavia. [1] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Statute-eng.pdf https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Sta...
    - spwa4 1y ago
      You're right that I dislike the ICC. It's fake. It gives the illusion to people that "international justice" exists, while enabling governments to point to the ICC and pay and do nothing (or next to nothing). And indeed, as Dutchbat and the entire Yugoslav conflict illustrates, they are HIGHLY selective in what justice they provide. Or the most recent Israel situation: every country in the world gets to decide WHO on their soil can get prosecuted for war crimes. That's part of the ICC charter. Except of course Israel doesn't. Palestine, however, does gets to dictate who doesn't get prosecuted, on the exact same territory. ICC doesn't enforce it's membership agreements against Mongolia, or South Africa where it comes to Putin. And so on. ICC shows everything wrong with the world, and the UN: they're powerless, but promise (I should say "sell") the world. They are an excuse for governments to do nothing. They are highly paid totally ineffective politicians. They are corrupt. They are racist. They let themselves be hired for shouting real loudly at ... whoever you want, really. Sometimes it's even someone who deserves it (like Putin), but mostly it's not. They're behind the times. They are not independent (e.g. not throwing out Mongolia for hosting Putin against the Rome statute or South Africa for very publicly violating the Rome statute and publicly promising to do it again (about Sudan and Putin). They're not independent in legal matters, often publicly cooperating with political maneuvering between countries. And to top it off, they fuck up security in email server. They are an offensive affront in so many ways. They are offensive to the idea of justice. They're offensive to good government. They're offensive to international agreements (or at least to the idea of actually following agreed international agreements). Hell, they're offensive to good computer security practices.
ChocolateGod 1y ago
https://bgp.he.net/dns/icc-cpi.int https://bgp.he.net/dns/icc-cpi.int They're also using Cloudflare for both DNS and a CDN.
anotheracc3 1y ago
ICC doesn't have a country though. Wherever it is based may have to be investigated. Pragmatically though - yeah after Snowden US is not a good choice.
- YZF 1y ago
  The entire west participates in the kind of monitoring. So obviously then China is the right place for the ICC to be hosted. I'm sure the UN can pass that.
jimjimjim 1y ago
Most government organs or government adjacent organizations around the world are fully dependent on Microsoft platforms, especially for email.
- throw310822 1y ago
  That's not the point though. The point is that Microsoft to provide its services should be required to set up a fully local subsidiary and be prepared to lose its control on event of sanctions against that country.
  - lotharcable 1y ago
    I am pretty sure that USA Gov. wouldn't see things that way. Between breaking the law versus keeping ICC happy I think that Microsoft would default on obeying the law. Hosting a email service isn't rocket science. If ICC can't be bothered to do that for themselves that speaks more to their general incompetence then anything else. This isn't the first time they have faced US sanctions, after all.
    - salawat 1y ago
      >Hosting a email service isn't rocket science. If ICC can't be bothered to do that for themselves that speaks more to their general incompetence then anything else. I personally found building a rocket in KSP easier than getting all the external actors required to ensure reliable email delivery (completely self-hosted) lined up. The fact is, most actors will not work with you if you don't have a business acct with your ISP. That's human relationship management, and therefore, hard. Ironically, rocket science is easy by comparison. Use equations, plugin values, solve for X. Calculators and slide rules can get you to another planet easier than you can get a packet to a goddamned Gmail user through all the bloody layers of abstraction. And don't even get me started on the cryptographic material management. Just figuring out how large a key you can actually use and not have DNS mangle it is a bitch. That and bloody SMTP/IMAP proxying configuration if you have multiple domains on your intranet. I embarked on the quest and have put a pin in it, ceasing to go any further until further notice, but as someone who has embarked on that journey, your comment is about the most condescending thing imaginable, and strikes me as being the product of a time where maybe email wasn't as hostile a space as it is today.
tptacek 1y ago
Especially given we're not a signatory to the ICC.
NikolaNovak 1y ago
ICC is a relatively small organization. Expecting every such organization to have full home-grown IT, for the massive diversity, complexity, and constant change of IT services we expect and utilize today, does not seem realistic?

miohtama 1y ago

Let's call it lessons learnt

bawolff 1y ago
Given we are still here despite how bush treated the ICC, i'm not sure the lesson will be learned
usrnm 1y ago
It is a lesson all right. Whether or not it's learnt remains to be seen
spwa4 1y ago
The current prosecutor, Karim Khan, is the one that introduced the dependency on Microsoft platforms. He has not made any initiative to undo this, in fact as pointed out here, he's increasing that dependency further with internet services. So calling this lessons learnt makes no sense. He hasn't learnt his lesson and is not displaying any intention to start now (given that he comes from a British/Pakistani family of conservative party politicians, which is also a family of sex offenders, that seems about par for the course) It's weird how one needs to keep explaining to US and EU people: almost all governments do not take decisions based on how they'll affect people and/or the government involved. Different governments have different priorities. The decisions of the UN are targeted towards keeping their members happy and paying. The vast majority of governments worldwide are governments that were conquered by a group or even a family. These people see controlling government as a business and the business is to use control of the government to extract the maximum for that family. And joke all you want about Trump, it can be 1000x worse, and it generally is. The ICC isn't that bad, but it's pretty bad. If you want to know what the ICC is (and isn't) about, read about how they went about prosecuting a Dutch citizen (their host country). It reads like a Blackadder script. The guy was accused, the Dutch government threatened, suddenly the accusation got dropped, he got knighted by the Queen in a New Year ceremony, got a pay rise. The ICC got a new building. Google "DutchBat".
- bramhaag 1y ago
  You may dislike the ICC, but please don't spread misinformation about them. The ICC has never prosecuted a Dutch citizen (or anyone, for that matter) over war crimes committed during the Bosnian War. The events of Dutchbat happened in 1995, 3 years before the Rome Statue (the treaty that established the ICC) was accepted. The ICC has no retroactive jurisdiction as per the Rome Statue (Article 11(1)) [1]: The Court has jurisdiction only with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of this Statute. The ICTY was established by the United Nations to prosecute crimes committed during the wars in Yugoslavia, but as the ICTY only focused on carried out atrocities (instead of failure to defend an area), no Dutchbat members were prosecuted there either. The ICTY did prosecute Krstić, the commander who led the Srebrenica massacre that Dutchbat failed to defend against. There were some civil cases against Dutchbat, the Dutch state and the United Nations. Dutch courts held the state responsible to some degree in all cases. Unsurprisingly, the rest of your story is also false. There are no credible reports of the Dutch government threatening anyone to drop cases related to Dutchbat. Some Dutchbat officers were awarded military honors, but they were not knighted, nor did their pay increase as a result of their actions in Srebrenica. The ICC moved to a new building in 2016, this was again not a result of anything that happened in Yugoslavia. [1] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Statute-eng.pdf https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Sta...
  - spwa4 1y ago
    You're right that I dislike the ICC. It's fake. It gives the illusion to people that "international justice" exists, while enabling governments to point to the ICC and pay and do nothing (or next to nothing). And indeed, as Dutchbat and the entire Yugoslav conflict illustrates, they are HIGHLY selective in what justice they provide. Or the most recent Israel situation: every country in the world gets to decide WHO on their soil can get prosecuted for war crimes. That's part of the ICC charter. Except of course Israel doesn't. Palestine, however, does gets to dictate who doesn't get prosecuted, on the exact same territory. ICC doesn't enforce it's membership agreements against Mongolia, or South Africa where it comes to Putin. And so on. ICC shows everything wrong with the world, and the UN: they're powerless, but promise (I should say "sell") the world. They are an excuse for governments to do nothing. They are highly paid totally ineffective politicians. They are corrupt. They are racist. They let themselves be hired for shouting real loudly at ... whoever you want, really. Sometimes it's even someone who deserves it (like Putin), but mostly it's not. They're behind the times. They are not independent (e.g. not throwing out Mongolia for hosting Putin against the Rome statute or South Africa for very publicly violating the Rome statute and publicly promising to do it again (about Sudan and Putin). They're not independent in legal matters, often publicly cooperating with political maneuvering between countries. And to top it off, they fuck up security in email server. They are an offensive affront in so many ways. They are offensive to the idea of justice. They're offensive to good government. They're offensive to international agreements (or at least to the idea of actually following agreed international agreements). Hell, they're offensive to good computer security practices.

ChocolateGod 1y ago

https://bgp.he.net/dns/icc-cpi.int https://bgp.he.net/dns/icc-cpi.int They're also using Cloudflare for both DNS and a CDN.

anotheracc3 1y ago

ICC doesn't have a country though. Wherever it is based may have to be investigated. Pragmatically though - yeah after Snowden US is not a good choice.

YZF 1y ago
The entire west participates in the kind of monitoring. So obviously then China is the right place for the ICC to be hosted. I'm sure the UN can pass that.

jimjimjim 1y ago

Most government organs or government adjacent organizations around the world are fully dependent on Microsoft platforms, especially for email.

throw310822 1y ago
That's not the point though. The point is that Microsoft to provide its services should be required to set up a fully local subsidiary and be prepared to lose its control on event of sanctions against that country.
- lotharcable 1y ago
  I am pretty sure that USA Gov. wouldn't see things that way. Between breaking the law versus keeping ICC happy I think that Microsoft would default on obeying the law. Hosting a email service isn't rocket science. If ICC can't be bothered to do that for themselves that speaks more to their general incompetence then anything else. This isn't the first time they have faced US sanctions, after all.
  - salawat 1y ago
    >Hosting a email service isn't rocket science. If ICC can't be bothered to do that for themselves that speaks more to their general incompetence then anything else. I personally found building a rocket in KSP easier than getting all the external actors required to ensure reliable email delivery (completely self-hosted) lined up. The fact is, most actors will not work with you if you don't have a business acct with your ISP. That's human relationship management, and therefore, hard. Ironically, rocket science is easy by comparison. Use equations, plugin values, solve for X. Calculators and slide rules can get you to another planet easier than you can get a packet to a goddamned Gmail user through all the bloody layers of abstraction. And don't even get me started on the cryptographic material management. Just figuring out how large a key you can actually use and not have DNS mangle it is a bitch. That and bloody SMTP/IMAP proxying configuration if you have multiple domains on your intranet. I embarked on the quest and have put a pin in it, ceasing to go any further until further notice, but as someone who has embarked on that journey, your comment is about the most condescending thing imaginable, and strikes me as being the product of a time where maybe email wasn't as hostile a space as it is today.

tptacek 1y ago

Especially given we're not a signatory to the ICC.

NikolaNovak 1y ago

ICC is a relatively small organization. Expecting every such organization to have full home-grown IT, for the massive diversity, complexity, and constant change of IT services we expect and utilize today, does not seem realistic?