Hacker News Reader

Comment by patrickg_zill | Hacker News Reader

It would be entirely expected and likely, that were MSFT to cancel their ICE contract, that many other parts of the Federal government would leave MSFT's services.

After all, they too would be only 1 media dustup away from having to deal with finding another vendor suddenly.

View on HN

> that many other parts of the Federal government would leave MSFT's services.

The government is not going to waste billions of dollars over something like this, especially given its track record in IT.

The only large tech company with sufficient control over their employees is oracle, and it's unlikely they'll have the necessary capabilities anytime soon. They're still trying to figure out this whole cloud thing.

I don't follow. Parts of the fed gov't frequently don't talk to each other or have connections to each other.

That's a lot easier said than done. Microsoft might decide to look ahead to a time when Trump is not in office. Are the short-term gains worth the long term reputational damage?

They bought Skype and turned over the keys to it, to the NSA. Did it seriously hurt their reputation?

They added telemetry which can't be easily disabled, to all parts of Windows desktop OS - did that seriously hurt their reputation?

Supposedly they sell stuff to the DIA, DoD and NSA - what is the long term reputational damage from that?

They sell stuff to police departments, like the Ferguson police that (allegedly/from one point of view) shoot dead black men - any feedback from that?

For all we know it's this pattern of behavior that has motivated this current pushback by Microsoft staff. I'm sure you're aware that some political issues attract wider attention than others, and that while people rarely march in the streets to protest the NSA the same is not true of other agencies.

>allegedly/from one point of view

What's alleged is whether or not the shootings were legal. It isn't a point of view that those men are dead because of a cop.

EDIT: Downvoted for stating a fact.

That could be a libertarian win because maybe then the government couldn't function.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com