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

(www.theguardian.com)
873 points helsinkiandrew | 1 comments | 25 Sep 25 15:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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codeulike ◴[25 Sep 25 15:22 UTC] No.45373831[source]▶
“I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the Guardian,” [Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith] wrote, noting that it had brought to light “information we could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments”. He added: “Our review is ongoing.”

Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to privacy commitments.

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Etheryte ◴[25 Sep 25 15:50 UTC] No.45374312[source]▶
The whole point of confidential computing is that the cloud provider can't access your data and can't tell what you're doing with it. This is a must have requirement in many government contracts and other highly legislated fields.
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IlikeKitties ◴[25 Sep 25 16:05 UTC] No.45374562[source]▶
I've personally never seen anything requiring confidential computing in anything. Is this required in the USA? I find that hard to believe, because the technology on a cloud level is still very beta-feeling. I think that Microsoft just never looked because they did not want to know.
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hnlmorg ◴[25 Sep 25 17:21 UTC] No.45375859[source]▶
They have services literally dedicated to things like health data records.

But you don’t even need to go that sensitive, literally any type of online service might run the risk of handling PII. Which is why CIS, NIST et al have security frameworks that cover things like encryption at rest.

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IlikeKitties ◴[25 Sep 25 17:41 UTC] No.45376182[source]▶
But encryption at rest is not confidential compute. And Confidential compute is pretty new in terms of tech and i would be genuinely suprised if it's already required for some stuff. I am genuinely interested though, if you have any links about it please enlighten me.
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1. hnlmorg ◴[26 Sep 25 06:53 UTC] No.45383551{3}[source]▶
Ahhh I hadn’t realised that was a new term. I’ve got something new to learn. Thank you