Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

[runarberg]

This is a story on how technology is used to in a systematic human rights abuse and a massive systemic government sanctioned privacy breach is being facilitated by a major tech company.

This story should not be flagged.

[siltcakes]

It managed to get 105 upvotes despite being flagged. It’s important, relevant and clearly resonating with the audience here. Very shameful to bury it.

[nashadelic]

While the headline is focused Microsoft the bigger story is the wanton violation of human rights, privacy and using this data in risk scores which I’m certain gets used in automated kill chains by Israel.

[zorobo]

Right. However this is a tech/science focused news site so let's keep it that way.

[siltcakes]

Why is this flagged, and why can’t I vouch for it?

[fsflover]

It's not [dead], which means vouching already worked.

[ath3nd]

> Why is this flagged, and why can’t I vouch for it?

You know why it's flagged. Israel wants to continue doing its highly automated genocide silently without people questioning it an their cloud providers.

[monkey_monkey]

Today it's Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Tomorrow it's you.

[grafmax]

Also known as the imperial boomerang.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

[4gotunameagain]

In the context of surveillance or in the context of a genocide ?!

I must assume you mean the first one, because Israel would not survive without the US

[cyanydeez]

Its already you, but capitalism. It'll be this soon enough if republicanism continues.

[NomDePlum]

What's the fiduciary duty here for Microsoft C-suite when it is supplying infrastructure and services that assist in underpinning war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide?

There are a number of big name tech companies associated with similar through their collaborations with the Nazi's, IBM etc. Did that have any effect on those companies that might inform what could happen to Microsoft and others?

[actionfromafar]

I think the consequence was mostly that IBM made a lot of money.

[doener]

I don‘t understand why this flagged.

[kiwikan]

this will probably get flagged in a couple of hours

[arp242]

Was already flagged. I vouched it and it became unflagged. Now it's flagged again...

(I don't think every story about this conflict should be on HN by the way, as a "major on-going topic". But IMHO this particular story seemed like a good one as it intersects with tech and is something actually new, at least to some degree).

[gxnxcxcx]

Gates: [smirks] All right...

[gxnxcxcx]

I shall amend my flawed recollection of the facts: it was a chuckle, not a smirk.

https://www.theverge.com/news/643777/microsoft-bill-gates-st...

[netsharc]

In the documentary (in the form of cinéma vérité) The Act of Killing (1), the director learnt about "anti-communist" massacres in 1965 Indonesia, which was sanctioned by a regime whose successors were still in power in the modern times. He compared the atmosphere of the country as if he came to Germany 40 years after WW2, but with the Nazis having won it. He talks to some of the killers, and he found them not even regretful, but boastful - throughout the documentary, he learns that if they admitted they were wrong, they'd be having to admit to themselves that they murdered a lot of innocent people, so they'd rather construct a fantasy world where they're the good guys.

There's even a musical segment of the documentary (he convinced the people to reimagine their doings in the style of 50's Hollywood movies they loved) where actors playing the victims thank the killers for saving them from godlessness and sending them to heaven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-ta9To14yw

I wonder how many of the genocide-defenders and genocide-enablers (not to mention genocide-executioners) will have similar PTSD...

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJZb2Q1NmE