The International Criminal Court wants to become independent of USA technology

https://www.heise.de/en/news/International-Criminal-Court-Kicks-Out-Microsoft-10964189.html

by Tepix • 9 months ago

144 99 9 months ago

Regardless of politics, it's still a good idea to try and avoid dependence on these globomegacorps that have revenues and market caps higher than the GDP of many countries. It seems like modern civilization is building toward an ultimate centralization of everything and we're just one catastrophic failure away from extreme societal problems of all kinds because of it.

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

My hope is that all these "independent of US technologies" actually end up being "independent of for-profit companies" rather than about the specific technologies and companies involved, as what countries are "the good countries" change all the time, but non-profit/for-profit choices seem to last a lot longer than the status of any country.

pessimizer• 9 months ago

There's also the problem that "non-profit" is a weird, inconsistent designation that a lot of people get very rich on.

I think we need to stop centering capitalism entirely, and start concentrating specifically on the process of how decisions are made. Collective deliberation, and the rules around it, seem to just be waved off when they are the substance that democracy and collective ownership are made of.

Whether that group is profit-making or not, it's the decision-making that's important. Who gets a say, how is what has been said handled, and how does that affect the allocation of resources and the direction of movement?

edit: FOSS has a "benevolent dictator" problem and is obsessed with either praising them or tearing them down. A stable organization fluidly changes leadership without changing character: it should only change character when the membership changes, with the consent of the previous membership. The ability of FOSS to simply fork puts it in a blessed position to follow this strictly (and still maintain a friendly relationship between forks.)

hyghjiyhu• 9 months ago

No man is an island. There must always be a dependency on the outside world. But you can reduce risk by using commodified products.

throwaway8943454• 9 months ago

Neither of these seem viable to me. You definitely can’t run an organization without doing business with for-profit companies. Probably the most feasible solution is diversifying dependencies so you can’t be extorted by any one country.

EDIT: downvoters, can you please share what you’re disagreeing with or objecting to? Is any of this particularly controversial?

epistasis7• 9 months ago

I don't think profit is the core problem here. It's control. A non-profit Microsoft is just as susceptible to cooptation by a hostile foreign government as a for-profit organization.

Rather the key thing is having the source code, control of the deployment, and control of the infrastructure. There are plenty of places in there where profit is completely compatible with achieving full control.

wat100004• 9 months ago

All those scifi stories where giant corporations rule the planet and national governments fade into irrelevancy are looking awfully prescient.

mystraline• 9 months ago

Thats a good idea for any government and major org.

Data sovereignty is such a massively huge issue. But when some nameless market-droid can go "pay us more in 10 days or we purge everything", or "account disabled" - those can absolutely wreck an org.

Now, non-critical stuff happens. And use 3rd party services for those. The key there is cancellation isn't a big deal. But the moment they do turn critical, replicate in-house.

Also, keep in mind that the AP reported killing Hague's ICC contracts. Lots of misinformation, but this is the starting point.

https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...

ArcHound2• 9 months ago

I remember writing about this one.

Good luck getting rid of MS dependency in the public sector. Migrating away all of the legacy systems is nigh impossible. Then you'd have to retrain all staff.

While this is not justified from an economic perspective one can only hope that these institutions have higher values to adhere to.

EDIT: This is great news, I should be more optimistic about this effort.

ceejayoz5• 9 months ago

It doesn't appear to be impossible; two days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732485

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

Good luck getting rid of MS dependency in the public sector

Thanks! Marathons aren't won by speed or doing everything at once, but progressing towards a far away goal step by step, and surely we'll need all the "good lucks" we can receive.

I'll disagree it's nigh impossible, and find such defeatist perspectives well, defeatists. One shall have hope we can continuously improve things by taking care of what decisions we make, this hopefully is one of those steps.

ArcHound2• 9 months ago

I agree that my perspective could use more optimism, after all, the sibling comment highlighted a couple success cases.

You are right. We need to make an effort, start small and tackle this issue step by step. I do support this effort and I think these are great news.

I stand by the comment of this being dependent on a commitment to higher values than "cheapest ok solution" which is all too common in the private sector.

epistasis7• 9 months ago

Reminder for those that don't click through: Microsoft killed the email account of an ICC prosecutor, at the request of Trump:

According to Handelsblatt, the decision is to be seen against the backdrop of sanctions by the current US administration under President Donald Trump against employees such as Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan. Microsoft simply blocked his email access. He therefore had to switch to the Swiss email service Proton. Since the ICC is highly dependent on service providers like Microsoft, its work is being paralyzed, it was stated in May.

While there are clear financial wins too, basic sovereignty is at stake.

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

Yeah, seems like a no-brainer to react to something like that. Is there anyone in any circumstances that wouldn't want to move as far away from a company like Microsoft who acts on the whims like that? Even as a business strategy, it doesn't make any sense, but seems most companies are trying to kiss the ring of the king, rather than focusing on providing stable, robust and trustworthy services, so you reap what you sow.

kjksf• 9 months ago

Microsoft, being a U.S. company, had no choice in the matter. U.S. imposed sanctions on the guy. One component of sanctions is "Prohibition on U.S. persons (individuals or entities) conducting business or transactions with Khan."

If Microsoft didn't cancel his account it would be breaking the law by "conducting business or transactions with Khan."

So yeah, it makes sense for ICC to switch to a non-US provider, e.g. one in Germany, but it's not 100% solution because U.S. can impose secondary sanctions i.e. sanction the German company. I don't know if ICC sanctions include secondary sanctions but U.S. did that for Russian oil i.e. they said if e.g. Indian company buys Russian oil, they'll sanction Indian company too.

zugi2• 9 months ago

Microsoft killed the email account of an ICC prosecutor, at the request of Trump

These are legally-binding sanctions, issued under the same authority as those levied against Putin and Russia for the invasion of Ukraine:

* ICC: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo...

* Russia: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/addr...

The ICC sanctions are politically unpopular in Europe, whereas the Russia sanctions are popular in Europe. But the email account was not closed simply "at the request of Trump." Companies face serious consequences if they do business with sanctioned persons or entities - that's what makes sanctions work.

epistasis7• 9 months ago

Agreed that the sanctions aspect is an important part here. But the sanctions are only for the personal and partisan benefits of President Trump, there was no benefit to the United States here.

The tariffs in your second link are not sanctions, and in fact the President levying tariffs as a normal course of business is illegal and unconstitutional in the United States. But it's a good example of the lawlessness of the current President, and his grabs at more power in an attempt to become a tyrant.

But the email account was not closed simply "at the request of Trump."

Yes, it absolutely was closed at the request of Trump, via sanctions. That's the entire point. The President of the United States can and will target anybody he does not like for whatever minor reason crosses his mind on a random afternoon. That makes it risky to engage in any sort of long-term transaction with a US company.

bijant• 9 months ago

It's quite funny that they will switch to german technology now, because I can think of no german service provider that would not immediately comply with any and all US sanctions.

clort2• 9 months ago

Sanctions are official, but Trump phoning up the CEO and whining about nonsense is something else. I'd be concerned that a US company would be vastly more likely to fold from the latter than a German one would. Sanctions enacted against a German or EU company on a whim would perhaps cause some international response.

epistasis7• 9 months ago

In this case it was official sanctions enacted on a whim against a person, the ICC prosecutor.

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

If Trump asked a german company hosting a politicians email to shut down access to their emails, would they really comply with that? Because that's what happened with the ICC it seems, and why we're seeing this move right now.

DiogenesKynikos• 9 months ago

The only way to combat this behavior by the United States is for the European Union to finally stand up for itself and take retaliatory measures against the US. Start sanctioning prominent Americans until the US agrees to cut it out.

darreninthenet• 9 months ago

Many years ago, all organisations - "Hey we can cut costs by getting rid of all of our expensive experts and not running our own data centres!"

Many years later - "Oh no! Not running our own data centres means our data is no longer fully in our control!"

Who would have thought it!

spwa4• 9 months ago

And of course, equally surprising, it turns out getting services from US companies "but your data stays in the EU" means exactly nothing.

aleph_minus_one2• 9 months ago

The responsible executive should be jailed for many years for massive fraud. Even if such a court decision in another country won't be enforced by the US against their citizens, it will likely mean that the responsible executive won't be able to enter quite a list of countries anymore.

mothballed3• 9 months ago

It sounds as if this was kicked off in response to an MS e-mail account being shut off.

I'd like to see how well it goes for you if you run your own e-mail server. Even when I did that in the near dot-com days, it was already getting locked down to the point you would get filtered out going into any of the big boys to the point it was largely a futile effort. It's not easy getting your service white-listed, and even if you do they're still likely back at the spot of going straight to spam when messaging to any US based large provider.

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

It's not easy getting your service white-listed, and even if you do they're still likely back at the spot of going straight to spam when messaging to any US based large provider.

I feel like this point is maybe outdated, or possibly never been right. I've run my own email servers for many years, helped friends setup their own servers too, last time around April this year, and neither of us have this issue that everyone always brings up whenever people start talking about self-hosted email. Is this particular problem something you have personally faced lately, or are you parroting a "known typical problem"?

Make sure you setup all the right DNS records, double-check IPs/domains against spam lists, set the right headers and you're unlikely to have issues here, even when sending emails to large US providers (I've manually tested this with Outlook, AOL and Gmail, neither have these issues).

bluGill2• 9 months ago

That depends on your scale. The big email providers cannot afford to block large organizations. However a "little guy" they can ignore.

The US isn't part of the ICC, but there are plenty of other governments who are and take this seriously. At least one will make a big deal about the ICC being blocked and governments have more power than even large companies.

2Gkashmiri• 9 months ago

Been using self hosted mailinabox on a cheap racknerd vps for last 4 years. Zero hiccups.

The trick is to send an email, have it whitelisted a bunch of times. Then it just works.

Once I massmailed by mistake. Google rightly spammed the emails. Had to unspam them and was back within a few days.

Outlook was worst but even that worked.

Its 100% doable

MangoToupe3• 9 months ago

Seems absolutely harebrained to have done so. What was the upside of such pettiness? Just to suck off the government?

zugi2• 9 months ago

My company avoids most of the "cloud" hype. We've found it more cost effective to self-host our internal services, plus it gives us more control over our configurations and data. We don't need 24/7 guaranteed up-time; we have occasional hiccups and resolve them in minutes or hours.

But communications within and outside of the company is so vital, that email is the one thing we outsource to the cloud.

mmooss3• 9 months ago

For almost every organization, outsourcing has been the right choice. It's right for almost every international organization. Really, only with Trump's second election has it become too risky for some.

timbit42• 9 months ago

The article mentions OpenDesk. Did they mean OpenDesktop?

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

Probably they meant OpenDesk as it's a real thing, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior: https://www.opendesk.eu/en

heinrich5991• 9 months ago

https://archive.today/8BuB9

jongjong2• 9 months ago

No government should be using big tech products. It's essentially corruption IMO. There are so many smaller, cheaper, better alternatives. And these days, building software is not that difficult. There are a lot of open source stacks to start with.

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

I'd love to see more support for locally developed solutions, but many of the governments in the EU are just reaching out to the most popular cross-EU businesses, often German or Austrian, instead of their local companies.

But then I guess the argument could be made for that you should go for the best option possible, as long as it's within EU, and I can certainly see the point of that too.

tobinfekkes2• 9 months ago

building software is not that difficult.

Maintaining it is.

jongjong2• 9 months ago

I disagree with this as well to some extent. I see how much big corporations spend on "maintenance" and all the bureaucracy involved. It's easy money for them and their employees. Too easy.

The problem with Europe is that they starved their tech sector completely. IMO neglectful to the point of corruption. The salaries of EU-based engineers was just laughable compared to US. And they outsourced a lot of the software work to foreigners and basically ended up with low quality solutions, compromised by foreign nations from all sides. In terms of tech, EU governments have been extremely incompetent... They could not have failed worse if they tried. So now there is a lot of fixing to do. Radical fixing.

righthand• 9 months ago

Only if you’re constantly trying to zero the budget after it’s built.

mmooss3• 9 months ago

No government should be using big tech products. It's essentially corruption IMO.

Governments are organizations like many others, with similar needs. Almost all need to be purchased in the marketplace. Is every purchase from a business, even a large business, corruption? What about cars? A phone system? Electricity?

NietTim• 9 months ago

It's always been an odd choice to build infra on services owned by companies from a country which doesn't recognise the ICC and, even worse, has a special law that if any of US service men were ever tried there, they will invade the Hague. (gotta love the good guys)

ceejayoz5• 9 months ago

Dropping a cite for the last bit, as it's so goofy people tend to think it's made up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

excalibur• 9 months ago

Passed in August 2002, how very Patriot Act of them.

embedding-shape10• 9 months ago

It's a great example from 2002 that demonstrates that while the US have ramped up its isolationism efforts lately, it has been moving in the same direction for a long time, so what's happening now shouldn't be so surprising.

hersko• 9 months ago

I don't understand the whole concept. Why would any country recognize a law above their own?

ceejayoz5• 9 months ago

Because borders aren't hermetically sealed?

Same reason individuals tend to want to live in a society and the rules that come with it.

wongarsu• 9 months ago

Same reason most people prefer living in a society with laws: you are subject to laws, but so is everyone else, and provided the laws are beneficial ("just") you are overall better off.

On a national level I agree not to steal, and in return nobody else is allowed to steal from me. On the ICC level my country agrees not to genocide anyone, and in return others aren't allowed to genocide either

badgersnake• 9 months ago

It’s like any international treaty, you agree to it because there’s something in it for you in return for signing it.

In this case, there’s a straightforward benefit to it in that it could be used to prosecute crimes against the US and US citizens, and soft benefits e.g. of the US being seen a a paragon of lawfulness and trust. There’s likely more, these are just what I could think of immediately.

hackingonempty• 9 months ago

Why would any state enter into a treaty with a state that doesn't recognize them? Diplomacy requires it so it has been in the USA Constitution since the beginning:

Article VI, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

dragonwriter5• 9 months ago

Because they’ve already entered into treaties making the offenses involved matters of universal jutisdiction which any state can prosecute their citizens for, and as a State Party to the Rome Statute, they would have more influence over the fairness and process of the ICC than they would over any national system outside of their own.

Also, because they are tired of the diplomatic cost and expense of working with other countries to set up ad hoc tribunals for particular conflicts and want to get the job done once and properly. (That's actually why the US was one of the leaders of the effort that produced the ICC, even though it did a U-turn against it at the last minute.)

lingrush4• 9 months ago

Why would the US choose to cede authority to the ICC here? If the US wishes to discipline its service members, they still can and do. Under no circumstances should any country allow a foreign entity to decide what its military can and cannot do.

ceejayoz5• 9 months ago

Why would the US choose to cede authority to the ICC here?

For the same reason as any other treaty - the corresponding benefits.

If the US wishes to discipline its service members, they still can and do.

That's not what the ICC is for. The ICC is for when a country won't do so when they should be.

Under no circumstances should any country allow a foreign entity to decide what its military can and cannot do.

The US has a very long history of telling other foreign entities what they can and cannot do.

nielsbot2• 9 months ago

Why have an ICC at all then?

If US soldiers are (once again) committing war crimes, will the US do anything? What’s the recourse for the victims of those crimes? Should there not be one?

MangoToupe3• 9 months ago

Well they also don't want their own citizens to have any say. So whose interests in the end does our military actually answer to?

dragonwriter5• 9 months ago

If the US wishes to discipline its service members, they still can and do.

Its not “service members” that are the usual defendants at the ICC.

greatgib• 9 months ago

That is the good electroshock that was needed to start doing good things.

But: "Zendis is part of an EU-level organisation that four EU countries founded on Tuesday with the aim of building sovereign digital infrastructure."

My intuition:

That is the usual European recipe for disaster. A public funded initiative to waste money in the usual way by giving it indirectly to consulting groups while producing nothing concrete and having to be scraped after a few years. At the same time, a big part of the money will be use to fund largely a big group of useless executives, representatives, communicators, and have countless workshops and conferences.

At the same time, almost zero money will go to the real existing Open Source project, their developers and maintainers.

The International Criminal Court wants to become independent of USA technology

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