5d ago

Microsoft blocks email-access for ICC prosecutor in accordance with US sanctions over Netanyahu arrest warrant

www.techzine.eu

Microsoft's ICC blockade: digital dependence comes at a cost

The world should wake up from tech dependence. Let the EU massively invest in FOSS.

Edit: as raised by comments, my title was not incorrect but did omit that it's actually the US that imposed sanctions, to which MS chose to comply. Changed the title.

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6d ago

Microsoft's ICC blockade: digital dependence comes at a cost

www.techzine.eu /news/privacy-compliance/131536/microsofts-icc-blockade-digital-dependence-comes-at-a-cost/

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59 comments

Do people really still need to be explained why proprietary software is bad?
I have zero understanding of why an organization like ICC would use it? Any court needs to be independent, and using proprietary software clearly compromises that. The same goes for public services. And private enterprises should of course avoid it in their own interest.
Open source proponents have tried to explain this simple fact for more than 20 years. But 90% of people simply don't care even just a little.
- Just speaking as someone in the field, you would be surprised at how many IT decisions happen the way they do because nobody wants to be the one who gets called when an ornery geriatric complains that LibreOffice doesn't have the 'mail merge' button in the right place.
  The old saying goes, "nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco."
  
  You are absolutely right, and I can understand that for a company IT department, but for public institutions, there are so many factors that speak for using open source software.
  Public institutions have requirements of for instance transparency private businesses don't have.
  Here universities have been aware of this for all of those 20+ years, and usually the ones that advice governments come from universities.
  But somehow monetary interests comes in between, and lobby their expensive proprietary solutions. And that's the real problem I think, proprietary vendors have loads of money for lobbying, while open source has almost zero.
  The old saying goes, “nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco.”
  That would be IBM, and that saying is from way before Cisco was even founded.
  
  The University where I studied switched from Linux to Windows because to many people complained that it was "too hard". Even the computers in the library that were just for searching books aka 90% of the time just using the browser were switched from Linux to Windows because the students complained. I now work in a job where most of our customers are public institutions and you won't even get our IT department to let go of decade old outdated software. Too many old people who will throw a hissy fit if anything suddenly looks different from what they've been used to for 30 years.
  My contract also won't be renewed. My bosses reason that he explicitly told me is: I don't fit in because I ask too many questions like "Why don't we use better alternatives for X software." We do "project planning" with email-chains and Excel sheets. No, we can't have any project planning tools, because this is what the 60-year old colleagues have been doing since their first day 43 years ago. If it was good enough for them back then it's good enough for you now. That's just how we do it here, since you can't get used to it we're letting you go. Etc pp, you get the idea. And the people in the IT department are the same! Never change a running system, it's worked for 40 years now, no need to try something new.
  There's just no way you'll get a public institution to switch to open source. Everybody over 50 will scream bloody murder about having to change how they work and it'll be changed back in no time.
  
  I know someone who retired early because our ticketing system changed.
  
  I know it with SAP, but I am young (not really) and from Germany, so that checks out.
  
  Here I was hoping leaving the States would free me from SAP
  
  No, if you are headed for Germany... It's probably worse here, since they're a german company.
  
  shaking, crying, throwing up
- I've been attempting to convert as much of my digital life to open source alternatives over the last few years, and I can't tell you how many people tell me it's unsafe to do since "just anyone can work on it". Most people really believe capital = expertise, and that's a hard nut to crack.
  
  That's been one of the cornerstones of Microsoft propaganda against open source. So it's not strange that the uninformed are exactly that, uninformed.
  It's worse when the professionals fall for it, and fail to recommend good solutions to politicians.
  
  Capital IS expertise. Expertise in command and control, thus shaping the narrative in order to bend it to their will.
  
  Those people are those without passion. I’d pay $50 for any FOSS I use regularly
  
  I did, in fact! I bought Immich for $100, and you know what? I don't regret a god damn thing. It has been a stellar replacement for Google Photos, which was an app I depended on every day for, God, like 10 years now?
  
  I don't even understand that. The still-thriving, 30-year history of video game warez really says otherwise.
- Every new generation has to learn themselves hard way about proprietary software, fascism and market failures, it seems.
- Do people really still need to be explained why proprietary software is bad?
  The degree of overreach by a US company, in this instance, is shocking. Yes, you can go spill a gallon of ink talking about how American software companies have been the tip of the spear for intelligence gathering, propagandizing, and sabotage. But I would say that an international business with a huge future stake in European implementation of their software spiking a criminal court's Outlook servers over prosecution of an ongoing genocide is a new low.
  Open source proponents have tried to explain this simple fact for more than 20 years.
  Open source is a far cry from bulletproof. We could just as easily see Mossad fucking with a poorly implemented Linux iteration of an email distribution agent. But then the assumption is that the Israelis - being heavily integrated into the European socio-economic system - are on Europe's side. Similarly, Microsoft and Google are supposed to be agents of the Big Friendly American Security State. The thing that shields you from the evil Slavs and Huns and Muslims, not the thing that stabs you in the back.
  Part of this is corruption (Big Tech lobbyists effectively bribing public official to adopt their software), part of it is laziness (corporate sales reps go out of their way to make early adoption relatively easy and backload the real costs until later), part of it is the networking effect (thanks to the above there is an abundance of Microsoft-centric IT companies and experienced users who have already adapted to the privatized frameworks).
  But this isn't a problem you can simply explain your way out of. Ultimately, you need a structural change in how these institutions do business. You need ICC that has insourced its IT and is capable of self-administration, rather than a bunch of outsourced flunkies who exist as a way to pad a contractor's wallet. You need a public that is adopting good IT practices at the grade school level, rather than feeding at the trough of private subsidies and philanthropies to defer the up front cost of technical education. You need an IT community that is well-organized and unionized and hostile to the corporate model of development and distribution of for-profit systems. Not a bunch of freelancers that see Microsoft Certification as a meal ticket.
  But 90% of people simply don’t care even just a little.
  90% of people (honestly closer to 99.9% of people) don't believe they have any say over IT policies at their own offices, much less at the scale of the a trans-national criminal court.
  They do not genuinely believe they live in a democratic institution and roll over in compliance for fear of some form of reprisal, because that's how they've been trained to behave from their earliest days of life.
  It isn't a matter of caring nearly so much as it is a matter of learned helplessness.
  
  The degree of overreach by a US company, in this instance, is shocking.
  Yes, but they do many other types of shenanigans that are against the interest of their users. Like snooping, and lock in attempts, stifling competition and charging high prices for services that cost next to nothing to deliver. Those things are completely apart from the fact that you have zero control with the software, or insight into back doors or other security issues.
  We could just as easily see Mossad fucking with a poorly implemented Linux iteration
  WTF? Talk about a straw man argument! There's a reason some of the most demanding and sensitive tasks are completely dominated by Linux. Stock exchanges is is one example of that.
  
  WTF? Talk about a straw man argument!
  That's not what a strawman argument is.
  
  It's exactly what it is, you build a strawman and then argue against it.
  
  you build a strawman
  You think Mossad is a strawman?
  
  No, the argument you pulled out of no where that Mossad will deploly backdoors in open source is the strawman, the implication being open source bad, m'kay. Could they ? Of course but thats an entire separate argument.
  
  A strawman is when you take someone else's argument and you represent it as weaker than it really is. By definition their statement was not a strawman.
  It also does not appear to be an implication that OSS is a Mossad backdoor, only that the possibility is present. I presume this is based on the fact that Mossad has done this kind of supply-chain attack before (see the Iranian nuclear program, or the Hezbollah pagers) and that there have been multiple recent controversies about code inserted into OSS packages.
  OSS is still the way to go, but we need better governance and best practices in a lot of organizations to make that happen. In fact if the FOSS community would help provide training and certification in this realm, it would help deal with many of these concerns.
  
  the argument you pulled out of no where
  Who do you think promoted Microsoft to pull the ICC's email access?
- A lot of people I know haven't heard of it or barely know anything
  There's not much in terms of social media presence, and outreach for FOSS/OSS/Open Source Linux overall

59 comments