(Redmond) Tuesday, police arrested seven people after occupying the offices of Microsoft president Brad Smith, as part of continuous demonstrations against the company’s ties with the Israeli army during the current war in Gaza, the organizers said.
Microsoft employees and former employees were among those arrested, said the protest group “No Azure for Apartheid”. Azure is the main infonuagic platform for Microsoft. The digital giant said they examined an article published this month in a British newspaper, reporting that Israel would have used the platform to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets.
The demonstrators were seen grouped in a live broadcast on the Twitch social network, while the police intervened to arrest them. The video showed another group gathered outside.
During a press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, Brad Smith said that two of the arrested people worked for Microsoft.
Eighteen people were arrested during a similar demonstration in a place in the company’s headquarters last week. The group has protested the company for months.
In May, Microsoft dismissed an employee who had interrupted a speech by CEO Satya Nadella, and in April, two others who had disrupted the celebration of the 50e Birthday of the company. The group notably requires that the company is falling in its links with Israel and paying repairs to the Palestinians.
The British newspaper The Guardian reported this month that Israeli defense forces had used Microsoft’s Azure infonuagic platform to store telephone call data obtained through the massive monitoring of Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank.
Microsoft said that it has mandated an external law firm to investigate these allegations, but that its conditions of use prohibited such use.
“There are a lot of things that we cannot do to change the world, but we will do what we can and what we have to do,” Smith told journalists at a press briefing after Tuesday arrests. This starts by ensuring that our principles relating to human rights and our contractual conditions of use are respected everywhere, by all our customers in the world. »»
Earlier this year, the Associated Press revealed unpublished details on the close partnership between Microsoft and the Israeli Defense Ministry, which uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process the information collected through massive monitoring. The AP indicated that the data could be overcome with the internal systems of Israel, based on AI, to facilitate the selection of targets.
Following the AP report, Microsoft argued that a survey had revealed any evidence that its Azure platform and its artificial intelligence technologies were used to target or harm the Gaza population.
Microsoft did not communicate a copy of this survey, but the company indicated that it would communicate the factual conclusions of the additional survey, motivated by the report of the report Guardianonce finished.
In their Tuesday statement, protest groups said the disturbances aimed at “protesting the active role of Microsoft in the Palestinian genocide”.
