A Microsoft signal and emblem are pictured on the firm’s headquarters, Friday, April 4, 2025, in Redmond, Wash.
Jason Redmond/FR74394 AP
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Jason Redmond/FR74394 AP
REDMOND, Wash. — Police arrested seven folks Tuesday after they occupied the workplace of Microsoft President Brad Smith as a part of continued protests over the corporate’s ties to the Israel Protection Forces in the course of the ongoing warfare in Gaza, organizers stated.
Present and former Microsoft staff have been amongst these arrested, stated the protest group No Azure for Apartheid. Azure is Microsoft’s major cloud computing platform, and Microsoft has stated it’s reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate assaults on Palestinian targets.
The protesters may very well be seen huddled collectively on a Twitch livestream as officers moved in to arrest them. The video confirmed one other group assembled exterior.
Throughout a media briefing Tuesday afternoon, Smith stated two of these arrested have been Microsoft staff.
Eighteen folks have been arrested in the same protest in a plaza on the headquarters final week. The group has been protesting the corporate for months. Microsoft in Could fired an worker who interrupted a speech by CEO Satya Nadella, and in April it fired two others who interrupted the corporate’s fiftieth anniversary celebration.
The group’s calls for embrace that the corporate lower ties with Israel and pay reparations to Palestinians.
The British newspaper The Guardian reported this month that the Israel Protection Forces had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to retailer cellphone name information obtained via the mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Financial institution.
Microsoft has stated it employed an out of doors regulation agency to research the allegations, however that its phrases of service would prohibit such use.
“There are various issues we won’t do to alter the world, however we’ll do what we will and what we must always,” Smith instructed reporters at a media briefing following Tuesday’s arrests. “That begins with guaranteeing that our human rights rules and contractual phrases of service are upheld in every single place, by all of our clients world wide.”
Earlier this 12 months, The Related Press revealed beforehand unreported particulars about Microsoft’s shut partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Protection, which makes use of Azure to transcribe, translate and course of intelligence gathered via mass surveillance. The AP reported that the info will be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house, AI-enabled techniques to assist choose targets.
Following The AP’s report, Microsoft stated a overview discovered no proof that its Azure platform and synthetic intelligence applied sciences have been used to focus on or hurt folks in Gaza. Microsoft didn’t share a replica of that overview, however the firm stated it will share factual findings from the additional overview prompted by The Guardian’s report when full.
Within the assertion Tuesday, the protest teams stated the disruptions have been “to protest Microsoft’s energetic position within the genocide of Palestinians.”
