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Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians
- creatonez 1y agoAfter 2 years of genocide, and massive dissent from their own employees repeatedly warning that this was happening... Those who make holocaust tabulation machines belong in prison.
- hashim 1y agoWell, to their credit, they've also seen that IBM, Volkswagen and Ford were still allowed to do plenty of business with no repercussions whatsoever (that I know of).
- srameshc 1y ago> Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform You can spy but data is all mine.
- sionisrecur 1y agoWhat's the protocol when a client stores data that violates their terms of service? Delete it immediately? Retain it until the client can retrieve a backup? Deny access until they sign a new contract?
- IlikeKitties 1y agoI suspect that really depends on the content. What does Microsoft do when it's CSAM? They can't legally posses it but can't legally delete it because that would be destroying evidence. I'm sure there's a process.
- moi2388 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Cenk 1y ago> 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands
- Aeolun 1y agoIt bothers me more that it was held in the Netherlands than that it was held on Azure servers. It’s a fucking disgrace to any government to be facilitating anything like this, and the Netherlands seems extra complicit.
- dh2022 1y agoWhat makes you think Netherlands government knows what data resides within its borders?
- Aeolun 1y agoI don’t necessarily expect them to know what resides within their borders, I merely expect them to act against atrocities. It is no accident that all this data was located in the Netherlands.
- jfengel 1y agoWould it have been different elsewhere in Europe?
- Antibabelic 1y agoIt was located in the Netherlands because the Netherlands has excellent privacy and data protection laws. It's the same reason so much cybercrime is traced back to Dutch servers.
- bilekas 1y agoBut why do you think the Netherlands govt was in anyway involved in this? I host some bsremetal in the Netherlands but I don't need to report to the government what I store..
- tiahura 1y agoA little more surveillance might have prevented Oct 7.
- emsign 1y agoOr following up the reports of suspicious behavior in Gaza by your own IDF border troops days before the terror attack.
- n1b0m 1y agoA lack of surveillance wasn’t the problem. It was not believing the intelligence. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-milita...
- mrits 1y agoSuch a Monday quarterback's perspective. There is always plenty of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack
- yamazakiwi 1y agoThe amount of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack on specific places at specific times is contextual and not comparably equal. Every time I hear or read that expression, I stop taking the comment seriously because it attempts to shut down dialogue with a cute, esoteric phrase instead of fostering a discussion about a serious retrospective.
- nemomarx 1y agoNot moving troops and police away from the border might have prevented Oct 7th. I think they were more focused on the West Bank at the time.
- michens 1y ago[flagged]
- codeulike 1y ago“I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the Guardian,” [Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith] wrote, noting that it had brought to light “information we could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments”. He added: “Our review is ongoing.” Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to privacy commitments.
- AnonymousPlanet 1y agoIt could also mean "now that someone else has seen it, we can finally act on what we have only privately seen but couldn't admit seeing"
- scuff3d 1y agoMore likely MS was well aware of what was going on and didn't care until the Guardian forced their hand.
- ms7m 1y ago> 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. Highly likely, or at least a bit naive -- Completely reasonable to have local staff for a contract this big, but Microsoft should have independently 'double-checked' sooner
- scuff3d 1y agoThe head of that Israeli unit met directly with the CEO of MS. I don't buy a second the execs at MS didn't know what was going on. Blaming the local contractors is just MS throwing people under the bus. I've worked for big corporations for nearly 20 years, I've seen this more times then I can count. Higher ups always happy to turn a blind eye to a bad situation as long as it's making the company money, and then immediately throwing subordinates under the bus when it bites them in the ass.
- buyucu 1y agoA small step, mostly for PR I guess, but still better than nothing. There should be no tech for genocide!
- throwaway_fjmr 1y ago[dead]
- albulab 1y ago[flagged]
- hdlothia 1y agoKinda bullish for azure that the idf chose it over aws
- igleria 1y agoNot sure about that. To many companies or individuals, it might make them choose another provider. Unless... they already are Azure customers, in which case they might probably want to avoid the cost of moving from a cloud provider
- tasn 1y agoIsrael (like many governments) is very Microsoft Windows centric, so if I had to guess it wasn't chosen due to technical merits but instead based on existing business relationships. Note: I've used Azure and it sucks. :)
- dmix 1y agoAzure’s web app for managing servers is a nightmare Uses the same awful UI/plaform as their Xbox account settings Microsoft always somehow succeeds in spite of the quality of everything they build.
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoIf the AI systems of these companies had 1/3 their hype, their craptastic admin consoles for their 100 billion dollar cloud companies would improve. ... any day now. aaaaaany dayyyy now. Yeah.
- NooneAtAll3 1y agowhy would that imply bullying?
- madaxe_again 1y agoBullish, as in, not bearish.
- pbiggar 1y ago[flagged]
- throwaway_fjmr 1y ago[dead]
- zeroonetwothree 1y ago[flagged]
- UtopiaPunk 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- vFunct 1y ago[flagged]
- baobun 1y agoMore likely AWS, according to OP. I bet Bezos won't mind EU reputation as much. But I bet the IDF hedge their bets.
- yard2010 1y ago[flagged]
- throw744849599 1y agoIBM has a long tradition to provide computers for such use cases ;)
- slt2021 1y agoFun fact, that the famous Holocaust five digit number is still used today in IBM mainframe RACFs, this is coming from the punch cards era, when the census data was tabulated in Nazi Germany with the help of Thomas Watson. I worked at a large US bank, and we used IBM mainframes at the core, including user identity. Every employee had a five digit number as login, no different than Holocaust prisoner number, with a prefix, indicating user account type (employee, non-employee, service acct, etc). My IBM number was 23579
- skinkestek 1y ago[flagged]
- petesergeant 1y ago> the current suffering could stop tomorrow if they simply Who is the "they" in this sentence, exactly?
- skinkestek 1y agoThe Gazans obviously. Who else?
- _blk 1y agoSeems to be fairly equivalent to ABC pulling Kimmel and reinstating it a few days later.
- aaomidi 1y agoAfter they fired how many protestors?
- pbiggar 1y agoThere was an interesting point in the earlier article on this, where Microsoft tried to push their Israeli employees under a bus. They claimed their Israeli employees had lied to them about the use of Azure for war and civilian harm because they held more allegiance to their army than to Microsoft. Now obviously, this was a lie, but the implication is staggering: Microsoft can't trust it's own employees in Israel, and believes they're lying to the mothership! And if microsoft can't trust them, surely no one else should either!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- vFunct 1y ago[flagged]
- ngruhn 1y ago[flagged]
- Aeolun 1y agosome muslims believe it is acceptable to kill children. These are individuals. The israeli democratically elected government feels it is acceptable to children, and has, for the past two years employed a campaign of systematic destruction against the palestinian children. The majority of citizens agree with this. That’s… I don’t know how to describe it.
- woodruffw 1y agoI think a significantly more parsimonious explanation is that Israel is an extremely flawed democracy, and that its political leadership (namely Netanyahu) are not directly accountable to the public will. Polling in Israel appears to reflect this[1]. This is a recurring theme in MENA politics: even the most democratically "colored" countries in the region consistently put political preservation over long team regional interests. Israel's recent version of this is arguably the most despicable in terms of outcomes, but it's not particularly unique. [1]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/breaking-with-pm-74-of-israelis-back-war-ending-deal-to-free-all-hostages-poll/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/breaking-with-pm-74-of-israeli...
- jajuuka 1y agoWow, they actually are pulling back. That is really surprising. Wonder if they see the winds changing on this issue and want to get on the right side of history. Big props to everyone at Microsoft who spoke out about this and risked or lost their jobs because of it. They kept that fire lit on their ass.
- rhetocj23 1y agoSentiment toward Israel outside of USA has changed. The leaders of the developed nations of Europe have gone against Trump and publicly stated their recognition of Palestine.
- some-guy 1y agoIt has changed quite a bit here in the US too, even among the Jewish population. Our synagogue is very divided on this, mainly between the young and the old.
- sieep 1y agoVery true. I've gone on dates with a couple Jewish women over the past two or three years & they've all staunchly supported Palestine which surprised me a bit.
- Aeolun 1y agoWhy would that surprise you? I think the opposite opinion is a lot more surprising. One in every 50 children in Gaza was killed by the Israeli military. That’s like killing a child in every second classroom in the US…
- sieep 1y agoThat's a fair point. My gut reaction is that people will default to tribalism, but I think this has been a different situation than most others (and going on a lot longer).
- 1y ago
- moogly 1y agoNo one left to surveil, I guess.
- skinkestek 1y ago[flagged]
- underdeserver 1y agoEstimates of deaths are around 60,000, of a 2 million strong population.
- moogly 1y agoI could write things here about those officially reported deaths (not estimates, which are much higher, but no one really knows and very likely never will), or the internal diaplacement, but since there might be at least 1 Palestinian still alive digging in the rubble somewhere, literalists like you would still feel the need to overcorrect. I thought the defeated tone of my post made it clear that it was not meant to be taken that literally. I guess not.
- Hikikomori 1y agoThat's about the latest number from Gaza health ministry that stopped counting well over a year ago as Israel had destroyed all but one hospital. It doesn't even count the people left in rubble from destroying 80% of all buildings.
- amscanne 1y agoThis is nonsense. The Gaza health ministry continues to report estimates, of which are substantial portion are missing and presumed dead.
- hashim 1y agoIf you think that figure is remotely accurate despite the fact Israel has decimated all hospitals, leveled entire areas, wiped out entire families and is starving those that are still alive to do the counting, you're being naive, and that's a generous interpretation. Once Israel finally allow the UN in, that figure is going up by a factor of at least 2 or 3. The true cost of most genocides are only counted years after it's over, when it's too late.
- leosussan 1y agoHonestly, respect to the big M.
- oefrha 1y agoMilitary spy agency involved in ongoing war stores 11.5PB of data, Microsoft commissioned external review founds no evidence that military spy agency is using said data to target and harm people, only to backtrack after media breaking more project details? Come the fuck on. What’s the point of these performative external reviews? Just thugs hired to say whatever their customer wants them to say.
- sharpshadow 1y agoIt would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own state after this.
- barbazoo 1y agoAnd their own datacenter!
- skinkestek 1y ago[flagged]
- cowpig 1y agoYou are thinking of "Palestinians" as a collective group, synonymous with a group of extremists who have done horrible things Just as most of the citizens of Iran are victims of an Islamic totalitarian government, just as many Germans were victims of the fascist dictatorship that took hold of their nation, most human beings living near the southeast bit of the Levantine Sea are victims of actions outside their control. They're collectively paying the price for horrific violence on both sides of an ugly, tragic conflict that they have no power over. Giving those victims some sovereignty and peace would not be "rewarding" extremists, it would be taking a tiny step towards sanity.
- skinkestek 1y agoSo, do we owe Germany an apology after we obliterated it to stop the nazis? Or is it kind of logical that when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power and cheer for them as they return from murder and rape, you hide the hostages they took and refuse to do anything to stop them, then maybe you aren't completely innocent?
- buellerbueller 1y ago>when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power [with the financial backing of Netanyahu] I think you omitted part of it.
- bhouston 1y agoGood on Microsoft! This is really amazing.
- eej71 1y ago[flagged]
- baobun 1y agoAll: Please actually read the article before posting conclusions based on the headline or a quick skim. Most of this thread is confused.
- throwaway314155 1y agoThis is off-topic, but I'd like to hijack your comment to remind everyone that your comment is _technically_ against the rules. I hope this particular example reveals that the rule against "RTFA" is misguided and should be changed or removed because it creates a culture where people are deliberately misinformed seeking only a summary in the comment section (if that) and some kind of hot take to fume about.
- notmyjob 1y agoI agree but there are some dodgy links that make it through and a good way to lower risk is being hesitant to click random links, or at least not being the first person to do so.
- hashim 1y agoArticles should probably come with a similar delay that comment replies do, to prevent comments in the first few minutes after it's posted.
- lupusreal 1y agoWow! This is fantastic news, I wouldn't have bet on Microsoft ever doing something like this. I pray it's just the start and other American companies start to do the same.
- politelemon 1y agoI am seeing several kneejerk "Microsoft bad" reactions here, which HNers don't do for many other companies. I encourage many of you to read what is written. They listened to their internal staff and stakeholders and public pressure, and did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down. That is a good thing.
- n1b0m 1y agoThey fired staff who protested against the firm’s ties to the IDF.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoThat's a funny way to say "they fired staff that vandalized company property, broke into the CEO's office, and used an internal company website to publish and promote anti-company propaganda". That will get you fired from bussing tables or washing dishes, let alone a six-figure job at MS. Edit: Source on the last one; the first two were widely reported on in media: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/fired-microsoft-employee-encouraged https://lunduke.substack.com/p/fired-microsoft-employee-enco...
- bArray 1y agoThe 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 casualties.
- roughly 1y ago> I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas. I think it’s this second assertion that relies on facts not in evidence. Previous Guardian reporting on IDF use of compute for targeting indicated they were using it to increase, not decrease, the number of approved targets.
- flumpcakes 1y agoQuantity doesn't correlate with accuracy. OP's point was that surely having more intelligence means you are more accurate and thus less collateral damage.
- bArray 1y agoExactly. And an increase in accurate targets would lead to the faster removal of Hamas, and the process of repair can begin faster.
- roughly 1y agoAgain, prior reporting on the IDF’s computational efforts do not indicate that less collateral damage was a driver - quite the contrary, the algorithm was being used to pad out targeting lists: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai... You’re describing what ought to be, not what currently is.
- jameshilliard 1y agoHamas is quite open about their desire to increase civilian casualties by deliberately using civilians as human shields(which is of course a war crime). It's clearly part of their overall strategy.
- oulipo2 1y agoToo little too late, but anything we can do to stop this genocide...
- nicce 1y agoI doubt it can be stopped anymore without physical intervetion.
- hashim 1y agoAt least, not without the Palestinians being virtually wiped out, cause that's how long we'll be waiting for Israel to do the right thing. We don't even know for sure how many are dead, but the vast majority of deaths during genocides are counted after it's over, least of all when there's so much rubble and so many whole families have been wiped out.
- nakamoto_damacy 1y ago[flagged]
- hashim 1y ago[flagged]
- eggy 1y ago>"According to sources familiar with the huge data transfer outside of the EU country, it occurred in early August. Intelligence sources said Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) nor Amazon responded to a request for comment." So was the data moved in August to Amazon (AWS)? I am sure the $3.8bn USD the US gives annually will pay for it anyway. Because it is given as a loan, no accountability is required if it were a grant to Israel, and then the US forgives the loan, so there's not payback or interest for borrowing.
- albulab 1y ago[flagged]
- myth_drannon 1y agoI guess time to buy more Oracle or Google stocks? They can easily provide more than needed, especially Oracle which is very friendly to Israel and Ellison is a big supporter of IDF (large donations to "Friends of the IDF" non-profit). Here is a link in case anyone wants to donate https://www.fidf.org https://www.fidf.org to this amazing organization.
- amdivia 1y agoNo? No one should service them
- greenie_beans 1y agomakes sense to do if you support genocide
- hersko 1y agohttps://www.jfeed.com/analysis/gaza-nutella-cafe-reality https://www.jfeed.com/analysis/gaza-nutella-cafe-reality
- kmijyiyxfbklao 1y ago>Is there famine? In some selected areas, yes, but for the ones with money, this reality never came. Seems like what Israel is doing disproportionately affects poor people.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jewjitsu 1y ago[flagged]
- greenie_beans 1y agook IDF bot. anybody with a brain knows that criticizing israel's genocide against palestinian people is not antisemitic. such an overdone, false trope
- dark_mode 1y ago> The decision brings to an abrupt end a three-year period in which the spy agency operated its surveillance programme using Microsoft’s technology. Are we supposed to believe Microsoft was unaware of the contents but decided to terminate coincidentally when reports of what they're doing came out?
- dmix 1y agoAre 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?
- t_mahmood 1y agoWell, 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 think, that is plausible? To me, Nope, it's just that, the money was too good. Only after Guardian's report, they realized: "Oops, we got caught, now do the damage control dance" And here we are ... Also, are those employees going to get fired? I doubt. But the protestor, standing up for something, did. Who is more damaging? Oh right, the protestor, because, they ruined the big cake. Did the unit that breach the contract lose anything? Nope, they got enough time to move their data safely, and will continue doing the same thing. It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
- fsckboy 1y ago>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.
- grumple 1y ago[flagged]
- groos 1y agoHave you not seen any news coming out of Gaza for the past two years? It's a desolate flattened lunarscape. Israel never had any intent of avoiding civilian deaths. Quite the contrary in fact and they still have their eyes on the West Bank.
- grumple 1y ago> It's a desolate flattened lunarscape. Israel never had any intent of avoiding civilian deaths. So you think they managed to destroy so many buildings and only killed ~65k people (about half militants) out of 2 million by not avoiding civilian deaths? If half the buildings are destroyed, we would expect a million dead if there were no efforts to avoid civilian deaths. Do you think Israel makes no efforts to avoid civilian deaths? If you were presented with easily verifiable proof that they do avoid it (via both their own reporting, international reporting, and Palestinians themselves), would you retract your statement? Are there any facts which would change your mind? I ask because these facts are easily accessible, and I'm happy to provide them with many sources, but only if providing them isn't a total waste of time because it's become a pseudo-religious belief.
- hashim 1y agoThey don't actively civilian deaths, they just don't particularly care about them for pragmatic reasons, because killing a million people is much less plausibly denial genocide that wouldn't fulfil the former conspiracy theory and now publicly-stated gaol of Netanyahu to subsume Gaza into the rest of former Palestine. Is that not enough evidence for you? Besides that, if you truly believe Israel's version of events that at least 30,000 of those people were "militants" (the ANC and Viet Cong were also militants and terrorists), do you really believe it's possible to get a ~50% collateral damage rate when you care about innocent civilians? Also, the 60K figure has been stuck there for a long time in an ongoing genocide and famine. Once the dust settles and Israel has let the UN in, that figure will go up by a factor of at least two or three.
- dark_mode 1y ago> 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 happy to provide them services.
- boxed 1y ago[flagged]
- andrepd 1y agoHow so? The Patriot Act was arguably the kick-off of the state of constant mass surveillance that is ubiquitous today.
- 4d4m 1y agoArguably? I think its confirmed. The re-approval of the act under multiple administrations is horrifying.
- boxed 1y agoThe problem with the Patriot Act was mass surveillance of people who didn't need to be surveilled. In this situation we are talking about a group of people with support for genocide in the double digit percentages.
- andrepd 1y agoI guarantee that if my grandparents were expelled from their homes, brutalised, or killed, their homes bulldozed and annexed by the occupiers, and for the past 2 years I was the target of the most brutal genocide since Rwanda, I would probably wish worse than death to my oppressors too. But let's not get sidetracked... PS: It's also known that for Israel and its AI killing machines, "terrorist" is defined as "male between 14 and 45". Cannot get more "mass targeted" than that.
- alsetmusic 1y agoGuess those protesting employees who lost their jobs weren’t fired for nothing, at the very least. Finally.
- everdrive 1y agoI'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
- bhouston 1y ago> I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was? Why wouldn't countries store secret data in Azure, Google Cloud and AWS services? I think that this is quite common.
- everdrive 1y agoI think you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not saying "this story is bogus," but rather I'm saying that this sort of data is probably not the kind of data which is acquired through really secret means. Perhaps it was purchased from providers, or some other less-secret method.
- bhouston 1y agoIsrael actually had a bunch of rules where Palestinians are not allowed to have 5G or 4G networks to ensure that they can be monitored. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/israeli-restrictions-leave-palestinians-facing-digital-divide https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/israeli-restri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Palestine And yes it is recording pretty much all calls in Palestine: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-israeli-military-palestinian-phone-calls-cloud https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-isra...
- everdrive 1y agoI really had no idea, thanks for the links.
- derektank 1y ago
- catigula 1y agoIt's okay if they mass surveil and kill other people using sweeping AI systems, surely it will never happen to me.
- nerdjon 1y ago> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel. This seemed completely glossed over in the article (never revisited beyond this) but seems to imply that Satya must have at least known something about what was happening? Or was he mislead, told partial truths, or something? Very curious who within Microsoft knew anything about what was happening.
- dijit 1y agoI think people don't tend to realise how authoritarian the internal structures of companies are. They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.[0] For me, this is more proof (not less) that I shouldn't rely on US tech giants. Not because I will be collecting data on a population to do god-knows-what with, but because someone believes themselves to be the moral authority on what the compute I rent should be doing and that moral authority can be outraged for the whims of someone completely random, for any reason. [0]: https://www.aurasalla.eu/en/2025/05/26/mep-aura-salla-microsofts-example-shows-that-the-company-can-cut-off-europeans-access-to-critical-operating-systems/ https://www.aurasalla.eu/en/2025/05/26/mep-aura-salla-micros...
- shadowgovt 1y agoI expect this to continue to be the conflict of responsibility and capability in the 21st century. Alfred Nobel was known as a "merchant of death" for enabling the use of combat explosives that could do (by the standards of the time) preposterous damage to people, but his argument was that he just sold the dynamite; he wasn't responsible for the anarchists getting it and bombing something twice a week in New York. And even then, his conscience weighed on him enough that he endowed a Peace Prize when he died. The story is different when the data conversion is being done on machines you own, in buildings you own, in a company you own (for practical reasons in addition to moral / theoretical; if someone wants to stop those computations, they're now going after your stuff, not trying to stop a supply-chain).
- themafia 1y ago> is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? That's why I never find it "fine." It's only a matter of time before corporate power finds it's way to your hobby horse. I thought part of the "hacker vibe" was being highly suspicious of any form of authority.
- snickerbockers 1y ago>They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament. Not that I necessarily agree with what they did here, but I would like to point out that one alternative which has been employed previously would be to silently forward her e-mails to the NSA or state department. Refusing to offer their services is probably the most ethical thing that MS has ever done on behalf of the US federal government.
- shadowgovt 1y agoImpressive. I often think of Microsoft as the new IBM, and it's startling to me to watch them buck that reputation.
- hashim 1y agoThey could never be that while Amazon and Google still run Project Nimbus.
- hashim 1y agoAs someone who's been boycotting Microsoft in line with the BDS movement, I welcome this (belated) move, but seeing Bill Gates on stage laughing (maybe nervously) at Ibtihal Aboussad's (now validated) protest still makes me uneasy about a guy who I previously followed and liked to a reasonable extent, and I'll still probably hold off on watching his most recent documentaries. It makes me wonder how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that. Hell, even Ballmer had the sense to keep a straight face.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that Laughing at someone yelling on stage can be entirely orthogonal to what they’re saying. (And it’s not like that outburst did anything.)
- hashim 1y agoThe article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure, of which Ibtihal Aboussad's was the most vocal and memorable in the media, played a significant role in the decision.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure Fair enough. I’m not buying it—the timeline doesn’t work, and the broader literature on disruptive protest is mixed, leaning towards negative. What clearly swung the odds was the Guardian reporting on the frankly brazen meetings Microsoft executives decided to take. Without that reporting, this wouldn't have happened. With that reporting and absent the employee protests, this would have still likely happened.
- hashim 1y agoDoes that "literature" include history itself? I can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off. Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zhengiszen 1y agoNice
- efitz 1y agoI 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), non-payment, or attempting to harm or disrupt the service. I am in no way condoning anything that Israel is doing, just like I wasn’t condoning what people on Parler were saying when AWS axed them in 2021. No matter how much you like what the people in charge are doing today or who they’re doing it to, sooner or later someone will take the reins who decides that you are the target. Same with banks, credit card companies, etc. if you are incorporated and your business is to support commerce, you should keep your thumb off the scale.
- taco_emoji 1y agoMS is saying they violated terms of service. Are you saying common carriers shouldn't have terms of service?
- khnov 1y agoSo you think making a genocide is not illegal ?
- baobabKoodaa 1y agoLook how carefully they worded that to make a carve-out for this very case: "in the country of service". As in, Gaza is now part of Israel, and according to Israeli laws, Israel is not doing any genocide on Palestinians.
- mlinsey 1y agoI 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 standard.
- danbruc 1y agoWhat would happen in a hypothetical scenario where Microsoft cut off everything [1] they can for all of Israel - no Azure, no Office, no Outlook, no Exchange, no SQL Server, no Windows, no Xbox, no ...? Depending on how many things they can make unusable, I would imagine that this would be pretty bad, probably even causing some deaths because of affected infrastructure. [1] Not sure what they could actually make unusable by revoking licenses, blocking logins, and whatnot. It probably also matters how quickly the effects are felt, Azure would be gone immediately but I am not sure how often Office checks whether its license has been revoked, if at all. If license checks make things stop working over weeks and months, it would still not be pretty, but it would provide at least some time to prepare and avoid the worst.
- CommanderData 1y agoThat would never happen. Israel has too much influence over the US.
- danbruc 1y agoThat is why the comment says hypothetical scenario. ;-)
- snickerbockers 1y agoIDK but Mossad is quite possibly the world's most effective spy agency and SV software corporations rarely have effective safeguards to protect against rogue employees so we must conclude that there are many sleeper agents planted throughout major corporations on behalf of just about every intelligence agency in the world including but not limited to mossad. I have not seen any hard evidence of this nor have i ever suspected a fellow employee at any of my employers of being a double-agent loyal to a state intelligence agency but it's easy enough to do that there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of sleeper agents all over santa clara and redmond.
- PicassoCTs 1y ago[dead]
- trhway 1y ago>Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform reliance of everything/everybody on cloud platforms already mind-boggling. One can extrapolate it further - in a near future conflicts both sides may have their data, weapons control systems, etc. running inside the same Big Cloud Provider ... in this case would they need actual physical weapons systems? or may be it would be easier to just let those weapons control systems duke each other out in the virtual battle space provided as a service by the same Big Cloud Provider.
- saltserv 1y ago[dead]
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoToo little, too late. The whole world knows that Microsoft has blood on its hands.
- not_a_bot_4sho 1y agoYeah, not really. Kind of the opposite: they took action after investigation. The assertion that Microsoft knew what it's customers were doing, that it was inspecting customer data and workloads, comes from ignorance of how cloud providers work.
- aa-jv 1y agoFalse. Microsoft knew very well they had contracts with the IDF, it was announced in flowery PR all over the place, and at the beginning of the genocide there were protests against Microsofts' overt involvement. This is just CYA. That it took Microsoft this long is incorrigible.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoMy first reaction was "good on Microsoft". Then I read how it was only after a Guardian report exposed this was happening that MSFT took action. They were perfectly content to provide the services so long as it wasn't widely known.
- myth_drannon 1y agoLooks like the contracts are not going to AWS or Google but to Nebius (founded by Volozhin, who founded of Yandex). https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nebius-to-build-and-operate-140m-israeli-national-supercomputer/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nebius-to-build-a... "Google and Amazon, both of which already hold the $1.2 billion Nimbus contract with the Israeli government, originally received a preliminary tender for the supercomputer but ultimately withdrew from contention."
- EchoReflection 1y ago"Microsoft condones Hamas attack on Oct 7th." "Microsoft changes company slogan to 'Allah Akbar Surveillance for the Future of Glorious Jihad" "Microsoft Pledges Billions of Dollars to Help Hamas Rebuild Tunnels That Were Used to Invade Israel". I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...I guess people need income/have families to think about, but still... Preventing Israel from using MS tech to protect itself from terrorist attacks is pretty disgusting. Highly recommend Douglas Murray's (extremely disturbing and sad) book "On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Western Civilization" (warning: includes horrific accounts of extreme violence against Israeli civilians) https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/on-democracies-and-death-cults-israel-and-the-future-of-civilization-9780063437135/new https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/on-democraci... https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Democracies-and-Death-Cults-Audiobook/B0DMTJ134Y https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Democracies-and-Death-Cults-Au...
- phatfish 1y ago> 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).
- shadowbammed 1y ago[flagged]
- Sporktacular 1y agoCue the victimhood - how unfair it is that the IDF gets singled out for doing what every military does - how Israel is the real victim here.
- doubleorseven 1y agoit's a jing jang thing. soon there will be some one else who will be a tastier roast. but as an Israeli im really impressed they were able to use so much compute before someone checked their activity report. I mean this was not just parking space they were using, stakes were high! it's 2025 and (still) money talks.
- zawaideh 1y agoEvery single one of these companies that have enabled the genocide should be help accountable. Maybe some are trying to claim plausible deniability. -- For those looking for direct sources on the findings of genocide in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal conclusions from human rights organizations, international courts, and genocide scholars: 1. UN Commission of Inquiry: Concluded that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. * Report: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c... * Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA 2. Amnesty International: Concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. * Statement: https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-genocide-aga... 3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. * Report ("Our Genocide"): https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide 4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention. * Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192 https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192 5. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: Issued an "Active Genocide Alert" in October 2023, warning of the high risk of genocide. * Alert: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-genocide-alert-1/active-genocide-alert---israel-palestine%3A-there-is-no-justification-for-genocide https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-genocide-alert-1/acti... Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source validates their lived experience.
- DaveZale 1y agoit doesn't matter. What is happening is demolition and genocide. Simple as that
- r00fus 1y agoIsrael is now damaged goods. You interact with them at a reputational cost. It's only going to get worse as they don't seem to want to stop the genocide.
- aussieguy1234 1y agoThese journalists have saved lives and will almost certainly face repucussions and backlash for their work, so kudos to them.
- aussieguy1234 1y ago"Unit 8200 had built an indiscriminate new system allowing its intelligence officers to collect, play back and analyse the content of cellular calls of an entire population" During the troubles in Northern Ireland all the phones were tapped. IRA supporters knew this, so would frequently discuss fake bombing plans over the phone, sending the authorities on a wild goose chase.
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- PeterStuer 1y agoNot really my backwaters, but suppose Israel would block US companies from using their tech, wouldn't cybersecurity collapse?
- botanical 1y agoAre they going to rehire the employees they fired for being against this and Microsoft's support of the genocide now? It's more than just mass surveillance, and their leaders need to be held accountable. https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-customer-ai-cloud https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-cu...