Microsoft launch inquiry on Israel use of tech for surveillance of Palestinians | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft launch inquiry on Israel use of tech for surveillance of Palestinians

theguardian.com

42 pointsOhioMan294312 comments

> In a statement, Microsoft said “using Azure for the storage of data files of phone calls obtained through broad or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank” would be prohibited by its terms of service.

Why would it be against their terms? Literally all the western nations’ governments (US, UK, others that share intelligence relationships with the US) all use cloud platforms for their work, which definitely includes surveillance of people. But it’s a problem when Israel does it? Microsoft and Amazon literally built private cloud platforms to serve sensitive government needs like this.

In the US it is supposed to be foreign surveillance or domestic with a warrant. For Israel this is domestic without a warrant since they have occupied or otherwise broadly controlled Gaza for many decades.

Foreign surveillance from someone with little power over you is different than an Orwellian system domestically.

Gaza has been independent for a while though. Israel left in 2005 or so and Hamas came into power soon after, voted in by the residents of Gaza willfully. And there has been a long history of rocket attacks and other terrorism since then.

Anyways, the US, UK, and EU aren’t any different. Snowden revealed all the warrantless surveillance going on against their own people.

There is definitely some truth in that, but also there are many links between hamas and the likud party in terms of funding and there haven't been elections held in gaza since circa 2007

Gaza was never independent by any meaningful metric. Ground, air and sea access are all controlled by Israel.

Water and electricity have to come from Israel. Attempts to install solar panels resulted in them being bombed. Israeli officials control food deliveries as well. Years ago a document was leaked showing how they tracked caloric intake of Gaza residents to make sure that they are not "overfed".

Gaza was and is an open air prison. Trying to understand the conflict from the lens of the usual "2 countries beefing" will lead to faulty analysis. Gaza has been occupied since 1948 and Israel is the occupier.

A blockade where they couldn't export, but they could export labor to work for Israeli settlements as day laborers. That's similar to slavery and not any kind of independent state.

Because 1) this is not their own citizens they are surveilling and 2) Israel is committing genocide according to many (most?) international and human rights orgs, which would make Microsoft an accomplice

Considering microsoft disabled the emails of people who spoke out about palestinian human rights this is quite transparently a saving face tactic. They've been wilfully complicit at every step of the way.

The US, UK, EU, and Australia all surveil non citizens. It isn’t an issue for any one of them. They don’t even care that they’re doing warrantless surveillance of their own citizens.

>Why would it be against their terms?<

Azure's terms of service probably require customer agreement for data processing.

The Israelis certainly have no such agreement.

Anddd flagged :) I wonder who by.

exactly, and why

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