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Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

(www.theguardian.com)
873 points helsinkiandrew | 5 comments | 25 Sep 25 15:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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dark_mode ◴[25 Sep 25 17:05 UTC] No.45375569[source]▶
> The decision has not affected Microsoft’s wider commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services. The termination will raise questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.

It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.

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tick_tock_tick ◴[25 Sep 25 19:29 UTC] No.45377762[source]▶
Doesn't every army conduct "mass surveillance"? What do you think all those satellites with cameras are doing orbiting the planet?

Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.

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StanislavPetrov ◴[25 Sep 25 22:49 UTC] No.45380276[source]▶
>Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.

That would only be true if your goal was not to completely obliterate the population you are attacking and bombing, as Israel has demonstrated.

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1. jlawson ◴[26 Sep 25 02:54 UTC] No.45382099{3}[source]▶
Since the Oct 7 attacks the Palestinian population has not shrunk. War deaths have roughly equalled births.

Are you claiming that the IDF is trying their hardest to kill all the Palestinians they can, and that this is the best they can do? Really?

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2. swores ◴[26 Sep 25 06:12 UTC] No.45383269[source]▶
You're spreading misinformation (quite likely unintentionally). No data has been released supporting the claim that the population has stayed the same, what was wrongly spread was a US intelligence assessment of expected population which was made before the October 7th attack predicting future population growth, and used by many people as if it had remained accurate despite all the killing,
3. swores ◴[27 Sep 25 01:00 UTC] No.45392529[source]▶
I'm too late to edit my previous reply, but wanted to add a few sources so here we go -

Fact checking services debunking the claim of population not shrinking since October 2023:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...

https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/gaza-population-growth-proj...

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' population estimates, as of July 2025 - down 6% in one year since 2024, which is 10% below original forecasts for 2025:

https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_... (3rd section of page 2; though the whole document is worth reading)

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4. jlawson ◴[29 Sep 25 22:27 UTC] No.45419603[source]▶
You are confusing emigration with death. We are not concerned with who is physically in Gaza, we are concerned with births and deaths.

There are less people physically in Gaza now because a bunch of people emigrated. Not because of deaths.

The overall group of families who lived in Gaza on Oct 7 2023 is about the same number of humans now. A few hundred thousand have emigrated. About 40-60k were killed. About 50k were born.

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5. swores ◴[30 Sep 25 22:00 UTC] No.45431759{3}[source]▶
Actually a few hundred thousand have been killed, the ~60k figure from the Gaza health ministry is just the deaths they've been able to actually confirm, which is just deaths at hospitals (which is why that number has grown so little this year, because the vast majority of hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed by the IDF).

See for example this July 2024 estimate of close to 200k deaths (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...) or this more recent estimate of over 600k (https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/ )

Sure, they're estimates not proven statistics, but the situation on the ground means it's impossible for anyone to have an accurate count. What's important is that we don't look at the relatively small (yet still depressingly large) number of confirmed deaths of known named people, tracked by the Gaza health ministry, as if it's a count of the actual number of deaths. Hell, even the IDF recently claimed that there have been 90k deaths (when they were boasting that they had killed 30k Hamas fighters and that they had "only" killed 2 civilians to every 1 Hamas) - and, setting aside the IDF's track record of lying and their incentive to claim less civilian deaths than reality, even if they were telling the truth that would still be limited to deaths they were actually able to track and confirm, not the many other deaths that weren't officially recorded.