Was this decision made in Redmond or in Israel? Microsoft has offices in Israel and these offices are likely responsible for things happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible.
It has R&D centers and local business centers. Skype is not in Israel and there's no reason for a VoIP solution to route through a country local facility. The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc.
It isn't just Skype, their hotmail accounts were also disabled. Many local countries definitely do have authority over services provided in their countries.
I would guess these shutdown orders came from Israeli security services and then were routed though Microsoft Israel to be enacted.
> The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc.
> “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent UN experts, including the special rapporteur on the right to food and the special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement on Tuesday.
...
Three conditions must exist to determine there is famine:
- At least 20 percent of the population in the area faces extreme levels of hunger;
- 30 percent of the children in the area are too thin for their height; and
- The death rate has doubled from the average, surpassing two deaths per 10,000 daily for adults and four deaths per 10,000 daily for children.
Every time I read a story like this, about MS or Google or Twitter or which-ever big corporate it is, I'm so glad that I exited these platforms and years ago.
I left LinkedIn before MS bought it, because it was clear it was being copied by all and sundry.
I left GitHub once MS bought it (and I thank God for that, ever time I see another story about MS being awful).
I never used Google - they were obviously evil and from quite early on.
I may be completely wrong, but I think large companies are completely amoral. Not in a malicious way, but in a can't-be-anything-else kind of way; that is is an emergent property.
All large organization have absolutely no moral sense, which is to say, doing things because they are ethical, regardless of costs or benefits, or possessing a capability to assess or modify their own actions on moral criteria.
Complaining MS do these things is like complaining a cat jumps on a mouse.
I'm not a fan of brutal mouse death, so I don't own a cat.
What's critical of course is knowing this, and before deciding to buy into what these companies offer, rather than discovering it after buying into what these companies offer.
And these companies will only tell you how wonderful their services are, and nothing about what they're up - nothing about how much and what data they collect, and what they do with it (give it to the State, sell it to all and sundry, with real-time updates included), or what's done with it (mandatory State mass interception).
>I may be completely wrong, but I think large companies are completely amoral
For one, you are right, and two, they are actively incentivized to be immoral. Doing something in a moral way is to take something extra into account - morality. Taking into account, as an action, costs extra resources, which translates to money or risk, but then, risk also translates into money. So, what we end up with is that being moral is being handicapped. Money can be made by avoiding it.
The situation is especially worse when the other participants, the competitors, are also not moral. They can simply out-price a moral participants - people are less likely to buy the thing for its ethical "real price", if they can get a similar one for much cheaper. This can clearly be seen even in markets where being moral is a bonus, like, I'd say, how the current market is. "Morally superior" is a product differentiator, with labels like "bio", "organic", "fair", "ethical", "free from", "vegan" - even the ol' PU leather being rebranded as "vegan leather". So even in a context like this, non-morally-superior products sell way more than moral ones. So the incentives for companies are not really there, not just from an operational, but from a market standpoint as well.
>that is is an emergent property.
I agree, and I think it's part of the general human experience, especially with taking responsibility for anything that has impact. Attention and possibility of action is limited, so even if the perfectly moral course of action would be known, it might not be possible to enact it. And then, the arguments are endless as to what's moral and what not, and what part of that should people be engaged in. This is all too much to handle for an individual, so, even if morality is desired, sub-optimal decisions will be made on a daily, as part of life. Which is, in many ways, no different to when a company makes them - with respect to the size and impact though, of course.
It's interesting how no matter how much that we'd all like for technology to be this nice tidy domain of knowledge which doesn't intermingle in any messy way with philosophy or religion - where there is much less exactitude and clear boundaries - alas, this intermingling of morality comes around sooner or later.
Morality/ethics/religion/philosophy can't help but come to bear on any and all technology, once it becomes widespread, systemic and seemingly "too big to fail."
This is why I have my own domain and control the MX records on the DNS on it, so that I can reroute email to a new email provider, if needed (I pay for Fastmail).
Another nice thing about having a catch-all on own domain is that you can sign up to each service with a unique email address, e.g. <microsoft>@<your-domain.com>, which makes it easy to see if any services ever sold your address.
You can even put <hn-2024-07-11>@<some-domain.tld>.
Let’s note however that even "owning a domain" is an illusion of control, as IANA is ultimately a retainer of uncle Sam. I don’t know if there is any functional distributed alternative that promote more autonomy to end users that can works out of the box (or even just a few basic install steps away) in most digital terminal out there.
> Let’s note however that even "owning a domain" is an illusion of control
That’s not true. It’s definitely not complete control, but it’s far more “sovereign” and independent than having a user account with some corporation that can change its ToS overnight. To seize a domain, a lengthy legal process is needed. Not to mention, you can choose a domain that doesn’t fall under a specific country’s jurisdiction or choose a registrar company located in another country. For example, you can register a domain like .ch or .no, and a legal US order won’t be effective, especially if you didn’t use a US-based registrar. Furthermore, you can host your own domain name (1). It isn’t entirely safe, but the process and efforts to seize it are far more complicated than a click in an MS dashboard. Unless that person is doing something extremely illegal, no one will bother.
> you can sign up to each service with a unique email address, e.g. <microsoft>@<your-domain.com>, which makes it easy to see if any services ever sold your address.
Pro tip on this, use gibberish if you want a true canary. I know it's tempting to use microsoft@ or ms@ or msft@ etc, but companies are getting smarter about selling emails and filter those out.
Anecdotally backing this up, I did the less obfuscated address with Tractor Supply and they flagged my account as fraud and nullified a gift card that a company gave me. I tried working with their customer support but they were openly joking with one another on the calls treating me as a scammer.
ICANN has rules that limit how much power a registrar has when they choose to stop doing business with someone. As a rule, registrars can't just cancel your domains.
>> Another nice thing about having a catch-all on own domain is that you can sign up to each service with a unique email address
This is true when services support sign-up with a password and you are an advanced user. I'm not sure that this is easy for many vulnerable people that need this. The advice you may need to add is that you should use these unique email addresses to create burner accounts on login providers (Microsoft accounts, Google accounts, etc.) because that's how you have to access some services.
> you can sign up to each service with a unique email address, e.g. <microsoft>@<your-domain.com>, which makes it easy to see if any services ever sold your address
You don't need your own domain for that. Gmail (and probably the other big ones) support it as well, just add a plus sign and whatever after your username: username+microsoft@gmail.com will end up in the inbox of username@gmail.com.
Fastmail handles this "unique email address" scenario really well, even tying into Bitwarden so you can insert a unique address into a web form with just a couple clicks, and then efficiently block/remove the email address later, as desired.
US gov tells companies that xyz groups are under sanctions (which is good, actually) and that they must put effort into preventing them from using their products (also good, actually). The problem is that they are punished for true negatives (in the press and potentially by the gov) but not for false positives (except for articles like this). The end result is overzealous bullshit that ends up hurting innocent people. For another example, the US gov told Paypal that they need to prevent transactions related to a weapon smuggling shell company "Tarigrade Limited" (which as I've said before, is good actually) but they implemented it to just block transactions and freeze accounts if "Tarigrade" is in the notes. Similarly, I know of a small store that sells patches that got their account frozen for some time because they released a patch with a firearm in it and had the gall to put the name of the firearm in the name of the product.
You get to an important issue: Type 1 vs Type 2 errors - precision vs recall. Any system is going to have errors, so what do you prioritize? The company has only limited control over this choice, as you also point out that the gov't will punish them for false negatives but not false positives. So the company prioritizes recall over precision.
But you also imply that the gov't should punish BOTH types of errors, but I'm not sure that's fair. By extension it implies that the company should have a perfect system, with no errors of either type. That's not realistic, and a company should be punished for meeting an impossible goal.
Better is for the government to just be explicit about it: we're requiring companies to employ broad sanctions, and even if some innocents get swept up, we think it's worth it to stop the bad guys. Or the verse, if that's the gov't decision.
I'm not advocating for the gov to punish false positives, I don't know what exactly the issue is that's causing them, maybe incomplete information, maybe lack of resources, likely a combination of issues. Ultimately you're right though, there will be innocent people who are affected by sanctions
If technology becomes necessary to participate in society, and if we cede control of that technology to unaccountable dystopian hypercorporations like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, then we're setting ourselves up for disaster.
yes. the only alternative i know of is free software and peer-to-peer networking on a cryptographically secure basis. unfortunately there isn't currently either a viable free software political movement or a viable cypherpunk political movement, so the near future looks very dark. perhaps after a few generations of hitherto unimaginable atrocities things might start to improve, but it is now too late to prevent those atrocities
however, historically speaking, regimes of oppression have often been dismayingly stable, long outliving the states that establish them—consider that the traditional liberties eliminated by julius caesar in 049 bce, diocletian in the late third century, and constantine in the early fourth century were not regained until the late medieval or even modern era (the final end of the roman empire in 01453, the end of serfdom in the 13th through 19th centuries, the confederation of eight cantons in about 01315, the re-establishment of a senate in the us in 01789, the french revolution in 01799, etc.)
federated systems like mastodon (or email) are a step in the right direction, but we need a decentralized system, without single points of failure, rather than just a federated one
It's worth pointing out that this same lockout situation can and has happened in many more cases than listed here. It happens that the timing coincides with a specific service use, but the problem of people getting locked out of their life because Google blocked access to their account is an old one. Unfortunately, your point will be forgotten by many once this episode passes, and we'll be back to ignoring how much control has been ceded.
I get nothing positive or useful out of writing this comment but the negative potential is infinite. When the www started someone attempted to convince me that you should never interact using computers unless there is no other choice. Turns out he was right, you are not going to buy me beer, invite me, introduce me, collaborate or help me. The new contract is useless.
Anyone know why this post is flagged? I get that there is an aspect of 'Most stories about politics' but at the same time the tech censorship angle here is high and likely in-line with 'Anything that good hackers would find interesting.'
It is incredibly frustrating to realize that a lot of companies are within their right to deny you service as soon as you even _appear_ to pose a risk to them.
Geico recently denied my renewal of insurance because they said their underwriters received notification that I use my vehicle for business. (I don't.) I have spent hours trying to explain to them that this is a mistake, but they have zero interest in providing me with insurance. I've heard this is common for people in CA.
I'm not sure what legal recourse the people in this story have. Hopefully they have a legal right to at least download an archive of their data so they can recover old emails, attachments, photos, etc.
I've never felt comfortable using Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc products.
In the recent months and with the increasing possibilities of surveillance with AI and how they are controlling the narrative of things, it made me feel incredibly uneasy. No more of these products on my devices.
Readit News
Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible.
Is Microsoft via Skype and Hotmail participating in what Israel's leaders are call the "complete siege"? https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-ministe...
No appeal and no explanation available does suggest to me the shutdown orders may have come from Israeli security services or the Israeli army.
Dead Comment
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I would guess these shutdown orders came from Israeli security services and then were routed though Microsoft Israel to be enacted.
> The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc.
Sure, whatever you say.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/10/is-there-famine-in-...
> “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent UN experts, including the special rapporteur on the right to food and the special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement on Tuesday.
...
Three conditions must exist to determine there is famine:
- At least 20 percent of the population in the area faces extreme levels of hunger;
- 30 percent of the children in the area are too thin for their height; and
- The death rate has doubled from the average, surpassing two deaths per 10,000 daily for adults and four deaths per 10,000 daily for children.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
I think you answered yourself right there
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Dead Comment
I left LinkedIn before MS bought it, because it was clear it was being copied by all and sundry.
I left GitHub once MS bought it (and I thank God for that, ever time I see another story about MS being awful).
I never used Google - they were obviously evil and from quite early on.
I may be completely wrong, but I think large companies are completely amoral. Not in a malicious way, but in a can't-be-anything-else kind of way; that is is an emergent property.
All large organization have absolutely no moral sense, which is to say, doing things because they are ethical, regardless of costs or benefits, or possessing a capability to assess or modify their own actions on moral criteria.
Complaining MS do these things is like complaining a cat jumps on a mouse.
I'm not a fan of brutal mouse death, so I don't own a cat.
What's critical of course is knowing this, and before deciding to buy into what these companies offer, rather than discovering it after buying into what these companies offer.
And these companies will only tell you how wonderful their services are, and nothing about what they're up - nothing about how much and what data they collect, and what they do with it (give it to the State, sell it to all and sundry, with real-time updates included), or what's done with it (mandatory State mass interception).
For one, you are right, and two, they are actively incentivized to be immoral. Doing something in a moral way is to take something extra into account - morality. Taking into account, as an action, costs extra resources, which translates to money or risk, but then, risk also translates into money. So, what we end up with is that being moral is being handicapped. Money can be made by avoiding it.
The situation is especially worse when the other participants, the competitors, are also not moral. They can simply out-price a moral participants - people are less likely to buy the thing for its ethical "real price", if they can get a similar one for much cheaper. This can clearly be seen even in markets where being moral is a bonus, like, I'd say, how the current market is. "Morally superior" is a product differentiator, with labels like "bio", "organic", "fair", "ethical", "free from", "vegan" - even the ol' PU leather being rebranded as "vegan leather". So even in a context like this, non-morally-superior products sell way more than moral ones. So the incentives for companies are not really there, not just from an operational, but from a market standpoint as well.
>that is is an emergent property.
I agree, and I think it's part of the general human experience, especially with taking responsibility for anything that has impact. Attention and possibility of action is limited, so even if the perfectly moral course of action would be known, it might not be possible to enact it. And then, the arguments are endless as to what's moral and what not, and what part of that should people be engaged in. This is all too much to handle for an individual, so, even if morality is desired, sub-optimal decisions will be made on a daily, as part of life. Which is, in many ways, no different to when a company makes them - with respect to the size and impact though, of course.
Morality/ethics/religion/philosophy can't help but come to bear on any and all technology, once it becomes widespread, systemic and seemingly "too big to fail."
No SIM, don't want my location tracked.
Wifi only.
I use Linphone for POTS.
Deleted Comment
Another nice thing about having a catch-all on own domain is that you can sign up to each service with a unique email address, e.g. <microsoft>@<your-domain.com>, which makes it easy to see if any services ever sold your address.
Let’s note however that even "owning a domain" is an illusion of control, as IANA is ultimately a retainer of uncle Sam. I don’t know if there is any functional distributed alternative that promote more autonomy to end users that can works out of the box (or even just a few basic install steps away) in most digital terminal out there.
That’s not true. It’s definitely not complete control, but it’s far more “sovereign” and independent than having a user account with some corporation that can change its ToS overnight. To seize a domain, a lengthy legal process is needed. Not to mention, you can choose a domain that doesn’t fall under a specific country’s jurisdiction or choose a registrar company located in another country. For example, you can register a domain like .ch or .no, and a legal US order won’t be effective, especially if you didn’t use a US-based registrar. Furthermore, you can host your own domain name (1). It isn’t entirely safe, but the process and efforts to seize it are far more complicated than a click in an MS dashboard. Unless that person is doing something extremely illegal, no one will bother.
(1) https://blog.technitium.com/2022/06/how-to-self-host-your-ow...
Pro tip on this, use gibberish if you want a true canary. I know it's tempting to use microsoft@ or ms@ or msft@ etc, but companies are getting smarter about selling emails and filter those out.
This is true when services support sign-up with a password and you are an advanced user. I'm not sure that this is easy for many vulnerable people that need this. The advice you may need to add is that you should use these unique email addresses to create burner accounts on login providers (Microsoft accounts, Google accounts, etc.) because that's how you have to access some services.
You don't need your own domain for that. Gmail (and probably the other big ones) support it as well, just add a plus sign and whatever after your username: username+microsoft@gmail.com will end up in the inbox of username@gmail.com.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-err...
But you also imply that the gov't should punish BOTH types of errors, but I'm not sure that's fair. By extension it implies that the company should have a perfect system, with no errors of either type. That's not realistic, and a company should be punished for meeting an impossible goal.
Better is for the government to just be explicit about it: we're requiring companies to employ broad sanctions, and even if some innocents get swept up, we think it's worth it to stop the bad guys. Or the verse, if that's the gov't decision.
however, historically speaking, regimes of oppression have often been dismayingly stable, long outliving the states that establish them—consider that the traditional liberties eliminated by julius caesar in 049 bce, diocletian in the late third century, and constantine in the early fourth century were not regained until the late medieval or even modern era (the final end of the roman empire in 01453, the end of serfdom in the 13th through 19th centuries, the confederation of eight cantons in about 01315, the re-establishment of a senate in the us in 01789, the french revolution in 01799, etc.)
federated systems like mastodon (or email) are a step in the right direction, but we need a decentralized system, without single points of failure, rather than just a federated one
Which is concerning.
But it's probably for the best. Once it's unblocked, it becomes a tug of war on both ends to flood the site with propaganda.
Geico recently denied my renewal of insurance because they said their underwriters received notification that I use my vehicle for business. (I don't.) I have spent hours trying to explain to them that this is a mistake, but they have zero interest in providing me with insurance. I've heard this is common for people in CA.
I'm not sure what legal recourse the people in this story have. Hopefully they have a legal right to at least download an archive of their data so they can recover old emails, attachments, photos, etc.
In the recent months and with the increasing possibilities of surveillance with AI and how they are controlling the narrative of things, it made me feel incredibly uneasy. No more of these products on my devices.