[covercash]

Weird, pretty sure employees brought this to their attention a few times already…

https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-palestine-is...

https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-prote...

https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-build-israel-gaza-prote...

https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-protest-employees-fired...

[duxup]

I actually think understanding exactly how your customers do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.

I've had sales, customer reps, even engineers and customers describe how a customer / they work ... and then I go and look and ... it's not how anyone said they work IRL.

[cl0ckt0wer]

If they act on information their employees report, they are violating their commitments.

[sc68cal]

There have been public reports by major news organizations on the subject of Israel using big tech companies to surveil the West Bank and Gaza, for a decade. This isn't an issue of customer privacy.

[concinds]

No, because those employees didn't learn about it by snooping around in Azure data.

[zamadatix]

Can anyone help clean up these sources/verify?

The first one seems to be after Microsoft's claim "and Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets".

The second one looks similar "Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian".

The 3rd one seems to be a genuine example that Microsoft employees were reporting this specific contract violation concern - but I feel like there are more genuine examples I've heard of than just this one report.

The 4th one is a bit unclear, it seems to be a general complaint about the contract - not about specific violations of it.

Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian". It's not like these kinds of claims are new, or in small papers only, but maybe The Guardian was able to put together hard evidence from outside that allowed Microsoft to determine things without themselves going in breach of contract details?

[covercash]

> Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian".

I think timing. The world is finally ready to stop ignoring what Israel has been doing so it’s significantly easier for countries, companies, and even individuals to stand up, speak out, and take action.

[michael1999]

I think it's the latter -- Microsoft was unable to look internally, or able to pretend they were ignorant. But the Guardian report was just too detailed to ignore.