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Israel is reportedly storing Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft servers
- nelox 1y agoEngadget frames Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian telecommunications as extraordinary, but such practices are common in national security contexts. The U.S. National Security Agency, for example, collects vast amounts of metadata and content under laws like FISA and EO 12333. Surveillance of hostile entities is standard policy in many democracies. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-foreign-data-collection/2013/07/21/8d4e24ca-f20a-11e2-a2e3-2e7344e6a195_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-f... Israel faces real and ongoing threats from groups such as Hamas, which has a record of carrying out attacks on civilians and is officially designated a terrorist organisation by the U.S., EU and others (https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illicit-finance/terrorist-organizations-and-programs https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illici...). Monitoring communications within the territories controlled by such entities is a rational, defensive measure. As for storage on Microsoft servers, Israel, like many governments, uses U.S.-based cloud services with strict contracts and data protections. The U.S. government itself stores classified data on Microsoft Azure through its government cloud services (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/government/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/government/). The implication that Microsoft’s involvement is unusual or illicit is misleading. Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context. The article omits this.
- nielsbot 1y ago> Engadget frames Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian telecommunications as extraordinary, but such practices are common in national security contexts It's still bad > Israel faces real and ongoing threats from groups such as Hamas Israel helped put Hamas in power, FWIW. Maybe instead of stealing Palestians' land, Israel should give them citizenship and voting rights. It's the moral thing to do. > Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context Criticism of Israeli policy should account for their colonialism and war crimes. It's a moral issue. The rest be damned.
- spwa4 1y ago[flagged]
- laimewhisps 1y ago[flagged]
- spwa4 1y ago[flagged]
- laimewhisps 1y ago[flagged]
- spwa4 1y ago[flagged]
- laimewhisps 1y ago[flagged]
- nielsbot 1y agoYour comment is all paranoia and tired Habara tropes. > Your demand is nothing short of the end of Israel Israel as an apartheid state. > you're asking millions of people to live under constant physcial threat And yes that's exactly what Israel (with US support) has done to Gaza and the West Bank. > the end of self-determination of a large population that cannot even run away This is not a request for Israelis to run away or leave. > to say nothing of the cost Sure, fall back to "practical issues" > On top of that, the muslims of the middle east have been eradicating minorities, and a lot of them, since the end of WW1 Smear an entire religion now. Also, "we can commit war crimes and steal land because they would do that same". Fear not based in reality. > become a minority without self determination is nothing short of asking them to die Sorry but being a minority in a democracy is not a death sentence. That's absolute racist hysteria. > Palestine, if truly left to itself, would face immediate economic collapse They must be subject to occupation, control, starvation and murderous war crimes because they'd be poor on their own! Never mind that the reason for Gaza's poverty is the Israeli embargo. Nothing gets in our out of Gaza without Israel's permission. We haven't even started on the cruelty and dispossession happening illegally, with the government's support, in the West Bank.
- Daishiman 1y ago> Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context. The article omits this. The context of being an occupying power also factors into this too?
- westpfelia 1y agoWhat the NSA is doing should be considered illegal wiretapping. None of this is ok. And trying to justify it is insane. Look at the Snowden leaks. Lets you know everthing you need to know about what our "spy" agencies are actually doing.
- nelox 1y agoArguing that “none of this is ok” overlooks the security context in which states operate. Israel is not conducting indiscriminate mass surveillance of its own citizens. It is monitoring communications in territories largely controlled by designated terrorist organisations such as Hamas (see: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illicit-finance/terrorist-organizations-and-programs https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illici...). That is not equivalent to the NSA intercepting Americans’ domestic calls. Even Snowden’s own disclosures differentiated between the problematic scope of domestic collection and the more accepted targeting of hostile foreign entities (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco...). You may oppose both, but equating them as equally unjustified weakens the argument. Israel has experienced decades of terror attacks, rocket fire and armed conflict originating from Gaza and the West Bank. That fact matters. Countries routinely intercept communications from adversarial regions, whether it’s the NSA, GCHQ, or Shin Bet. Calling this “insane” suggests a disregard for the protective responsibilities of a state.
- laimewhisps 1y ago[flagged]
- 7952 1y agoFunny to talk about "context" while narrowing the frame of reference. Another piece of context is polling showing that a majority of Israeli citizens support the forced expulsion of Gazan citizens and even Arab Israeli citizens.
- underdeserver 1y agoLink to that poll?
- text0404 1y agohttps://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-magazine/.premium/yes-to-transfer-82-of-jewish-israelis-back-expelling-gazans/00000197-12a4-df22-a9d7-9ef6af930000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-ma...
- golemiprague 1y ago[dead]
- laimewhisps 1y agoIsrael faces a "threat" from the people it's been ethnically cleansing for 80 years. Also, this is in the West Bank, so has nothing to do with Hamas (not that it would be ok to do this in Gaza). That the U.S. and EU also violate human rights at scale, doesn't make it ok for Israel to do the same. Only they go one step further and actually murder people based on the information they've spied.
- CLPadvocate 1y agoI think your confusion results from the fact that "Palestinians" was the name used to call the Jews basically for nearly two thousand years, until the early 20th century. And, yes, they have been ethnically cleansed by arabs basically since the arab invasion in the 7th century. The arabs themselves never wanted to be called Palestinians - they used the name "Syrian Arabs". Yassir Arafat, former leader of the PLO, was one of the most prominent opponents of the word "Palestinians" with regard to the arab population - he only changed his mind as Jordan and Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, because he wanted to distance himself from these "traitors". One of the problems he (and also most arabs) had with the word "Palestina" - it has exactly ZERO relationship to arabs and to Arabic languages. It's a greek word with actually Hebrew roots. It means "land of the Philistines" - and the Philistines, according to many historians, are a mixed group of people, mostly from western Mediterranean (modern-day Italy, France, Spain, northern Africa), also called "the sea people", or, in other words - pirates. The Romans introduced this name to the region to wipe out the original names Judea and Samaria (which IS actually a sign of a genocide).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- laimewhisps 1y agoThe Palestinians are native, the Ashkenazis are European. Your hasbara doesn’t work anymore.
- CLPadvocate 1y agoYou definitely need to learn to read and to understand words. Otherwise you make an impression of a degenerated parrot with a really limited vocabulary. And now to your points - the word "Aschkenaz" IS actually of middle-eastern origin. It describes people who lived in the area of modern day eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, and north-western Iran - similar to the area where Kurdish people live today. The meaning of the word changed over time, and yes - nowadays it does have some relationship with Europe - it describes Jewish people who were driven out of Judea and Samaria by Romans and later settled in the middle and eastern Europe. So - yes - they are by definition Palestinian refugees with a right to return to their native lands. But, of course, they are only one group of the Jewish people and not even the only one who lived in Europe. There are also displaced Jews and their descendants in Irak, Iran, northern Africa, India, even in China and Japan. But in the end, every one of them, including the "European" Aschkenazim still have substantially better claims to the land of Israel than the Arabs who are by definition just invaders in that region.
- arp242 1y agoIsrael relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44810708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44810708 - Aug 2025 (36 comments) (was flagged, because of course)
- nielsbot 1y agoIt would be nice of Microsoft would decline this business. Wonder if we can muster enough public pressure to force them to.
- gbil 1y agoToo many connections on too many levels for this to happen, from MS having a huge R&D office in Israel to political connections between the countries involved etc.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SanjayMehta 1y agoIf they had been using a NAS, the outrage would have been against the NAS manufacturer? I don’t understand the point of this article.
- laimewhisps 1y ago[flagged]
- SanjayMehta 1y agoAs CEO his responsibility is to his shareholders and employees to turn a profit. What next? We are anti-cat, so you can only store dog pictures?
- laimewhisps 1y agoHe has to operate both within the confines of the law and the values espoused by their brand. This is neither, it's facilitating a crime against humanity and engaging in mass surveillance.
- SanjayMehta 1y agoLaws, yes. Values are subjective.
- laimewhisps 1y agoSpying on civilians and genocide are bad for the brand.
- SanjayMehta 1y agoBy this logic every government (especially the US and almost all European governments) in the world is guilty Every vendor who even supplied a paperclip to any such government is guilty. Where do you draw the line?