Microsoft Calls in FBI Amid Employee Protests Over Israel Military Contracts

Microsoft still does not manage to control the protest of a small but so louder group of employees who is directed against the cooperation of the software giant with the Israeli military. Now the FBI should help.

Air call to the FBI after protests at anniversary celebration

In Redmond there was again a sensational protest campaign of current and former Microsoft employees a few days ago, which is directed against the contracts related to Microsoft’s Cloud platform Azure between the software giant and the Israeli military. Like the US economic service Bloomberg Now reports, Microsoft called after the celebration for the 50th anniversary of the company’s existence even the US federal police FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). The group asked the authority to provide information to certain employees. Previously, Microsoft had released an employee who protested loudly during a speech by CEO Satya Nadella.

In an email to the FBI, which is available to the colleagues from Bloomberg, an employee of the department for internal investigations by the software company asked the authority, among other things, about information about a certain developer with the company’s business practices, particularly active in the company.

Microsoft’s own investigators scheduled for employees

Microsoft had identified a handful of employees as a participant in protests, but also one of the children of an employee of the company, it was also said in the email to the FBI. For its part, the FBI only reacted to inquiries from the press with the reference that the right to peaceful protest was respected and focused on criminal activities and threats to the US national security. The authority did not provide any information about possible interactions with Microsoft or employees.

The background to the whole are the ongoing efforts of a group called “No Azure for Apartheid”, which is fighting for Microsoft to give up his contracts that have existed for years with the Israel Defense Force (IDF). The group had also caused loud protest at the event location at the last Microsoft Build developer conference. Most recently, with the “occupation” of a place in the east of the Great Microsofts area in Redmond, it was drawn to themselves, which was resolved after the threat of arrests.

After this campaign, there were further protests in which the police arrived, according to the current knowledge, a total of 20 employees of Microsoft or their supporters – including the second employee, who had interrupted a conversation between Satya Nadella, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer with protests during Microsoft’s “birthday party” a few weeks ago. “No Azure for Apartheid” protested against the use of Microsoft’s Cloud platform, also because it has now become known that a spy group of the Israeli military is said to have stored by Palestinians in data centers in the Netherlands and Ireland. Microsoft therefore has a complicity in the “suppression of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”, it is said again and again.