alt.hn

5/19/2025 at 5:59:16 PM

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

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

by bramhaag

5/19/2025 at 8:04:32 PM

While i strongly disagree with the usa's sanctions on the ICC, i'm very surprised that the ICC has to rely on american cloud providers.

It seems like a court, especially one dealing with international crimes where international esponage seems quite likely, should have in-house tech. It seems like being fully independent would be really important. Sort of in the same way i would expect e.g. the eu gov not to be dependent on a foreign cloud provider either (have no idea if they are or not)

by bawolff

5/19/2025 at 8:50:37 PM

ICC doesn't have a country though. Wherever it is based may have to be investigated.

Pragmatically though - yeah after Snowden US is not a good choice.

by anotheracc3

5/19/2025 at 11:59:57 PM

The entire west participates in the kind of monitoring.

So obviously then China is the right place for the ICC to be hosted. I'm sure the UN can pass that.

by YZF

5/20/2025 at 12:57:43 PM

ICC is a relatively small organization. Expecting every such organization to have full home-grown IT, for the massive diversity, complexity, and constant change of IT services we expect and utilize today, does not seem realistic?

by NikolaNovak

5/19/2025 at 8:10:48 PM

Let's call it lessons learnt

by miohtama

5/19/2025 at 8:25:20 PM

It is a lesson all right. Whether or not it's learnt remains to be seen

by usrnm

5/19/2025 at 8:24:12 PM

Given we are still here despite how bush treated the ICC, i'm not sure the lesson will be learned

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 9:03:07 AM

The current prosecutor, Karim Khan, is the one that introduced the dependency on Microsoft platforms. He has not made any initiative to undo this, in fact as pointed out here, he's increasing that dependency further with internet services.

So calling this lessons learnt makes no sense. He hasn't learnt his lesson and is not displaying any intention to start now (given that he comes from a British/Pakistani family of conservative party politicians, which is also a family of sex offenders, that seems about par for the course)

It's weird how one needs to keep explaining to US and EU people: almost all governments do not take decisions based on how they'll affect people and/or the government involved. Different governments have different priorities. The decisions of the UN are targeted towards keeping their members happy and paying. The vast majority of governments worldwide are governments that were conquered by a group or even a family. These people see controlling government as a business and the business is to use control of the government to extract the maximum for that family. And joke all you want about Trump, it can be 1000x worse, and it generally is. The ICC isn't that bad, but it's pretty bad.

If you want to know what the ICC is (and isn't) about, read about how they went about prosecuting a Dutch citizen (their host country). It reads like a Blackadder script. The guy was accused, the Dutch government threatened, suddenly the accusation got dropped, he got knighted by the Queen in a New Year ceremony, got a pay rise. The ICC got a new building.

Google "DutchBat".

by spwa4

5/20/2025 at 10:31:14 AM

You may dislike the ICC, but please don't spread misinformation about them.

The ICC has never prosecuted a Dutch citizen (or anyone, for that matter) over war crimes committed during the Bosnian War. The events of Dutchbat happened in 1995, 3 years before the Rome Statue (the treaty that established the ICC) was accepted. The ICC has no retroactive jurisdiction as per the Rome Statue (Article 11(1)) [1]:

    The Court has jurisdiction only with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of this Statute.
The ICTY was established by the United Nations to prosecute crimes committed during the wars in Yugoslavia, but as the ICTY only focused on carried out atrocities (instead of failure to defend an area), no Dutchbat members were prosecuted there either. The ICTY did prosecute Krstić, the commander who led the Srebrenica massacre that Dutchbat failed to defend against.

There were some civil cases against Dutchbat, the Dutch state and the United Nations. Dutch courts held the state responsible to some degree in all cases.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of your story is also false. There are no credible reports of the Dutch government threatening anyone to drop cases related to Dutchbat. Some Dutchbat officers were awarded military honors, but they were not knighted, nor did their pay increase as a result of their actions in Srebrenica. The ICC moved to a new building in 2016, this was again not a result of anything that happened in Yugoslavia.

[1] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Sta...

by bramhaag

5/20/2025 at 1:24:29 AM

Most government organs or government adjacent organizations around the world are fully dependent on Microsoft platforms, especially for email.

by jimjimjim

5/20/2025 at 2:15:13 AM

That's not the point though. The point is that Microsoft to provide its services should be required to set up a fully local subsidiary and be prepared to lose its control on event of sanctions against that country.

by throw310822

5/20/2025 at 3:34:44 AM

I am pretty sure that USA Gov. wouldn't see things that way. Between breaking the law versus keeping ICC happy I think that Microsoft would default on obeying the law.

Hosting a email service isn't rocket science. If ICC can't be bothered to do that for themselves that speaks more to their general incompetence then anything else.

This isn't the first time they have faced US sanctions, after all.

by lotharcable

5/20/2025 at 5:17:51 AM

>Hosting a email service isn't rocket science. If ICC can't be bothered to do that for themselves that speaks more to their general incompetence then anything else.

I personally found building a rocket in KSP easier than getting all the external actors required to ensure reliable email delivery (completely self-hosted) lined up.

The fact is, most actors will not work with you if you don't have a business acct with your ISP. That's human relationship management, and therefore, hard.

Ironically, rocket science is easy by comparison. Use equations, plugin values, solve for X. Calculators and slide rules can get you to another planet easier than you can get a packet to a goddamned Gmail user through all the bloody layers of abstraction. And don't even get me started on the cryptographic material management. Just figuring out how large a key you can actually use and not have DNS mangle it is a bitch. That and bloody SMTP/IMAP proxying configuration if you have multiple domains on your intranet.

I embarked on the quest and have put a pin in it, ceasing to go any further until further notice, but as someone who has embarked on that journey, your comment is about the most condescending thing imaginable, and strikes me as being the product of a time where maybe email wasn't as hostile a space as it is today.

by salawat

5/20/2025 at 6:21:16 AM

It's hard, but not hard on the scale of "challenging for multi-state coalitions to accomplish". You and I might not be set up to deal with deliverability, but ~any funded startup could do it.

by tptacek

5/20/2025 at 8:14:20 AM

Convenience won out years ago

by MarceliusK

5/20/2025 at 6:20:07 AM

Especially given we're not a signatory to the ICC.

by tptacek

5/19/2025 at 11:27:19 PM

Software and cloud services have entered the infrastructure stage.

I don't think it matters who writes the software. Governments should mandate the infrastructure be hosted and operated locally by people accountable to the host nation (the operators would pay for the software, perhaps a subsiduary or whatever). It should require a Netherlands court to deprive an institute located in the Hague of its infrastructure.

This means bringing "big regulation" like we have for the electrical network (and the physical internet!) to the cloud. It would be tricky to draft since we'd still want to support the millions of small providers who, unlike Microsoft, you wouldn't describe as infrastructure.

by andyferris

5/20/2025 at 7:27:37 AM

https://nltimes.nl/2025/05/20/microsofts-icc-email-block-tri...

"Government agencies operate on Microsoft systems, hire employees with Microsoft expertise, and those employees, in turn, continue recommending Microsoft.

“There’s political pressure, but in practice, all they know is Microsoft,” the same person said.

Marietje Schaake, a technology policy expert and author of The Tech Coup, said Microsoft has strategically positioned itself as the go-to government partner. “The Netherlands has long been transatlantic in orientation and gives commercial parties a lot of space,” Schaake told de Volkskrant. She also pointed to a revolving door between Microsoft and government institutions."

by belter

5/20/2025 at 7:15:04 AM

I like the comparison to the electrical grid. We don't care where the generators were made, but we sure care who runs the switches.

by MarceliusK

5/20/2025 at 9:00:01 AM

You absolutely should care where the generator is made.

Good luck sourcing your replacement components from a hostile nation.

by Gud

5/20/2025 at 12:31:57 AM

Youre talking about utilities. And yes, letting foreign adversaries provide utilities is a security risk.

Unfortunately, current citizens have been awash in the notion that capitalism needs supersede government secirity.

by cyanydeez

5/19/2025 at 6:59:56 PM

We need Europeans need to rid ourselves from American big tech used in government functions. This is simply unacceptable.

by chvid

5/19/2025 at 7:51:08 PM

Americans would like the same thing.

Just off the top of my head, accessing the IRS website (taxes) gets tracked by google. Windows keeps trying to pull everything online. Americans don't get separate apple app stores.

It goes on and on.

by m463

5/20/2025 at 9:27:17 AM

USA threatened to sanction dedollarization, it can sanction selfhosting for the same reason. Karim Khan's bank accounts were frozen too - that's not microsoft.

by GoblinSlayer

5/21/2025 at 1:12:08 PM

Yeah let's say "we need" instead of actually implementing :)

by karel-3d

5/19/2025 at 8:56:22 PM

The US and Europe is tightly integrated, this integration can be used as leveraged. Especially, since we've allowed the US to play the bigger brother in most of these relationships.

But you can only use this in a big way once. And all parties have pretty much assumed the US would never use its leverage as Trump has been doing.

The same way we dare invest in the US stock marked, because we're confident the US won't do a Cuba-style nationalization of private assets.

Obviously, the orange man is gambling EU won't decouple from the US. He might be right, this probably isn't big enough.

Decoupling all systems is expensive, it cheaper to wait 4 years.

That said, the orange man did get EU defense investment -- the investments are just not being made in the US.

Sadly, I don't think anyone will decouple, people still laugh at the idea of using LibreOffice.

by jopsen

5/19/2025 at 9:53:28 PM

> Decoupling all systems is expensive, it cheaper to wait 4 years.

People who say this haven't internalized how much shit the US is in. In the absolute best case scenario where there is a fair election and the Democrats retake the federal government, the decisions made over the next 4 years will have harrowing effects throughout the world that will take decades to recover from.

In the most likely case scenario, Republicans will continue trying to expand their fascist power and suppress the judiciary and their stranglehold on Congress so they can effectively remain in power indefinitely.

by 9283409232

5/19/2025 at 9:11:42 PM

If it is only four years, too many people are confident this administration is willing to bet losing elections.

by pjmlp

5/20/2025 at 7:19:53 AM

Even if this admin gets booted out of WH after 4 years (and this is by no means a given!), it doesn't mean that something like them cannot get re-elected in the future.

At this point, Europeans would be stupid to rely on US in any sense whatsoever. Sure, milk the cow for whatever's left while you're at it, but "this too shall pass" is not a viable long-term strategy.

by int_19h

5/19/2025 at 9:26:22 PM

I can only imagine what's going to happen in 4 years. The current administration has opened a can of worms that is not easily closed. Once you start sending people to torture prisons, once you start defying lawful orders, people are going to be scared that this same power can be used against them.

Imagine what you would do if you thought weakness could leave you no recourse if you were sent to the gulags? How ruthless and self serving would you get?

by delusional

5/19/2025 at 10:08:16 PM

Imagine thinking the US just started sending people to torture prisons now. We had a worldwide network of black sites just to torture people, destroyed all the videotapes, pardoned all the torturers, and made the person who destroyed the tapes the head of the CIA a few years later.

> once you start defying lawful orders, people are going to be scared that this same power can be used against them.

I feel like people only born yesterday could say this. There has been a bipartisan push for an Executive unfettered by the legislature since 9/11, and extreme partisans just point at each other. You're both right.

by pessimizer

5/20/2025 at 1:52:24 AM

Exactly. Anybody can go to Google Images and type "abu ghraib uncensored" to see how it's done.

by greenavocado

5/21/2025 at 3:06:40 AM

...or watch Adam Driver give his character a stress disorder documenting the abuses in the major motion picture "The Report". I think the CIA torture program is pretty common knowledge at this point. That said, "common knowledge" might be a misnomer at this point.

by nativeit

5/20/2025 at 6:13:46 AM

> Imagine what you would do if you thought weakness could leave you no recourse if you were sent to the gulags? How ruthless and self serving would you get?

On average, not much apparently. Can't find the story now, but there was someone recounting Jewish families still hiding and hoping people aren't coming for them specifically, in towns where soldiers ended up coming for all the families. It seems like when it comes to similar decisions made individually, people aren't that keen to risk their lives.

by viraptor

5/19/2025 at 11:59:07 PM

Laughing at Libre (Open) Office is so early 2000s. Now people laugh at anything which isn't as collaborative as Google Docs.

by miki123211

5/20/2025 at 11:10:51 AM

Due to the American CLOUD Act conflicting with the GDPR, it's illegal for EU businesses to store data on American clouds.

by immibis

5/20/2025 at 3:35:16 PM

The EU and US signed a new Data Privacy agreement in 2023 that allows to store EU data in USA.

by tguvot

5/20/2025 at 4:01:25 PM

I thought it was after that, the EU agreed it's not legal to store data in the USA because the USA's own laws override whatever it agrees with the EU.

by immibis

5/20/2025 at 4:31:02 PM

nope. it was before. current agreement is still current.

by tguvot

5/19/2025 at 7:23:38 PM

It's also the only way for the EU to jumpstart it's own silicon valley.

Look at how silicon valley was bootstrapped through government expenditure.

by somanyphotons

5/19/2025 at 7:52:46 PM

I want to see: (1) an open source privacy first web browser engine funded by the EU and (2) EU to mandate interoperability in "chat" and video conferencing applications.

by PaulHoule

5/20/2025 at 7:20:36 AM

> EU to mandate interoperability in "chat" and video conferencing applications. reply

I rather suspect that this would come with mandatory encryption backdoors.

by int_19h

5/19/2025 at 8:23:39 PM

Chromium is already a suitable open source browser engine that a privacy focused browser product could be built on top of.

by charcircuit

5/19/2025 at 9:04:08 PM

Forking it and setting up the CI for all tests, monitoring performance regression, etc -- no thanks.

Having worked on Firefox CI infrastructure years ago, it's a huge and complex setup. As I recall back then it was >100 compute hours per push.

Fork it and keep synching in from upstream, sure that's easy. But are you an independent browser?

by jopsen

5/19/2025 at 11:22:29 PM

web is bursting with abuses. euros like to regulate. if they regulate & enforce-away the abuses, the browser could be made far far simpler.

by hello_computer

5/19/2025 at 8:29:34 PM

Or Firefox.

by monocasa

5/19/2025 at 10:07:46 PM

No, I don't want EU tech VC oligarchy. I just want to avoid big tech SaaS regardless of where it's from.

I've been quite happy with smaller local services for a loong time. Started using them in 2004 when I got my first website and aside from short try of gmail when it was still free, always used them.

by megous

5/19/2025 at 8:43:31 PM

EU can't even solve some tracking cookies, how will they/we create an europeran (-alternative to-) google?

by ajsnigrutin

5/20/2025 at 11:12:38 AM

They did solve them. Whenever you click on a search result and get e cookie popup, you go back and try another one.

by immibis

5/21/2025 at 5:54:25 PM

That's not solved, that's a bothersome thing that wastes millions of man hours and does nothing in the end.

Mandating browsers (preinstalled on devices sold in EU) auto-delete cookies on window close, and add a button to whitelist 1st party cookies on specific domains, would solve many more problems without wasting time with annoying popups.

by ajsnigrutin

5/19/2025 at 7:53:50 PM

To me, the real question is in the last sentence of the post: "the question is, however, whether they are enterprise-ready, secure, and fully sovereign"

The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.

If the ICC was able to have a contract with a fully sovereign supplier, that would be a whole new can of worms. It would be a matter of time (hours? days?) until a fully sovereign corporation put its profits above its negative impact on people.

More than that, how does an organization funded by a group of nations avoid the budget becoming politicized?

The issue is complex and the silver bullet is hard to find.

by pempem

5/19/2025 at 8:48:40 PM

> The ICC is incredibly important, incredibly young and global. Shifting this to europe would not solve the problem.

Well it’s incredibly young, but it is neither incredibly important seeing as how the premise of the court is suspect nor global seeing as how substantial portions of the globe have either not signed, not ratified, or withdrew their signature before ratification. I’ll give you “international”.

You’re right though: any possible software vendor is theoretically subject to someone’s sanctions regime. If they want to uphold the independence of their institution, that’s probably more work for an internal IT department.

by SllX

5/19/2025 at 8:52:12 PM

Is signing up to the ICC a bit like getting a bunch of CEOs and asking them to sign up to a fair tax on CEOs treaty.

by anotheracc3

5/19/2025 at 9:36:53 PM

Pretty much.

It requires a given state to allow it to operate and have jurisdiction. That's a political act through and through.

The US doesn't recognize it anymore so it's baffling why they didn't move to non US equipment.

by nimish

5/19/2025 at 10:01:31 PM

actually they completed migration to Azure in order to streamline "things" only year ago or so

edit. i believe the migration was initiated and implemented by the current icc prosecutor. amazing absence of a foresight.

by tguvot

5/19/2025 at 10:22:32 PM

Lack of wisdom and judgment. Ironic.

by nimish

5/19/2025 at 10:40:05 PM

speaking of "lack of wisdom and judgment". this is the prosecutor: https://www.timesofisrael.com/icc-prosecutor-khan-on-leave-a...

by tguvot

5/20/2025 at 11:13:57 AM

Please don't cite highly biased sources. The paper you linked is run by the people the ICC issued arrest warrants for. Thanks.

by immibis

5/20/2025 at 3:29:34 PM

it's just complete aggregation of prosecutor adventures. feel free to point out something that is described wrong there.

by tguvot

5/20/2025 at 8:20:53 PM

allegation?

I will assign a non-zero (but not-one) probability to this being a frame, for obvious reasons. Motive, means, opportunity.

by anotheracc3

5/20/2025 at 3:51:28 PM

You're saying Netanyahu runs The Times of Israel..?

by dlubarov

5/19/2025 at 9:02:01 PM

Well, I’m not a fan of analogies, but kind of, but in addition to asking them to sign up, all the biggest companies with the highest valuations got to sit it out, but retained powers to impose it on smaller companies that aren’t friends of theirs, and to step in and protect their friends from being subject to your hypothetical fair tax treaty.

by SllX

5/19/2025 at 9:42:40 PM

Not really. The ICC mostly doesn't prosecute heads of states. Recent events are kind of unusual relative to the historical role. Historically ICC mostly went after rebel groups.

Think of the treaty as more of an extradition scheme. Its also a bit of an insurance policy - its an incentive not to commit international crimes against/on territory of member states, because it becomes much harder to evade justice.

There is also an element of symbolism to it, of what type of country you want to be.

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 12:23:32 AM

The head of the ICC, Karim Khan issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023[1], so of course, Russia has issued an arrest warrant for him.

A year goes by, and the government of the world's other large rogue state responded thusly, to the ICC's consideration of arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders:

> On 24 April 2024, Khan was sent a letter signed by 12 Republican U.S. senators[c] threatening him and other UN jurists and their families with personal consequences if the ICC were to seek an international arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu or other members of the Israeli government. The letter cited the American Service-Members' Protection Act – known informally as "The Hague Invasion Act"[42] – which specifically includes "all means".[43][44] The signatories said they would view any arrest warrant as "a threat not only to Israel's sovereignty, but also to the sovereignty of the United States". They threatened: "Target Israel and we will target you", and that any further action would "end all American support for the ICC" and "exclude [Khan and his associates and employees] and their families from the United States". The letter ended: "You have been warned."[45]

by vkou

5/20/2025 at 2:54:31 AM

I'm not exactly sure what your point is. The Israel & Russia situation are somewhat exceptional in the history of people the ICC has issued warrants for. The majority of the work the ICC has done in the past has not been about holding the leaders of regional powers accountable. They have largely in the past concentrated on much smaller fish.

Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but i think it gives the wrong impression of the icc to assume that this type of situation is the primary thing the icc does (or did historically)

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 6:23:08 AM

Karim Khan is not the head of the ICC.

by tptacek

5/20/2025 at 6:22:05 AM

Most people in the world are not citizens of ICC signatories. It's "global" the way the Eurovision contest is.

by tptacek

5/21/2025 at 1:34:56 AM

You’ve made this argument before and I don’t see how it is relevant especially to your parent.

The Rome Statute is an international treaty by every definition of that term. It is available to every sovereign state, and has been signed and ratified by a majority of the UN member states on all six habitable continents. The ICC is as global as the WHO, UNICEF or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

by runarberg

5/21/2025 at 6:26:30 PM

It's a treaty; that's all it is. It doesn't bind non-signatories.

by tptacek

5/21/2025 at 7:07:47 PM

Still, I don‘t know why that is relevant. Signatories have all agreed to establish a global court and grant jurisdiction accordingly. If the court has jurisdiction, it doesn’t matter whether a perpetrator is from a non-signatory country or not.

In this case, the signatory is the state of Palestine, jurisdiction has been established, and it affects anyone who commits specific crimes within that jurisdiction.

by runarberg

5/20/2025 at 7:47:20 AM

Just shifting the trust problem somewhere else

by MarceliusK

5/19/2025 at 11:34:03 PM

It's certainly not incredibly important. It is, however, incredibly undemocratic

by cultureulterior

5/19/2025 at 7:48:26 PM

If this isn't enough to cause a shock in European companies and governments, I don't know what would.

by sebazzz

5/19/2025 at 9:09:36 PM

And I know: remote destruction of various tech, including pagers, laptops, routers, power plants, and experimental nuclear reactors.

Still not enough? A law that mandates backdoors necessary to trigger the above in all exported tech.

by patrakov

5/19/2025 at 8:25:36 PM

[flagged]

by username332211

5/19/2025 at 9:10:03 PM

Yeah, the EU needs the US for leadership mostly :)

by jopsen

5/19/2025 at 8:37:21 PM

Not only we Europeans need to get rid of American weapons, but also of most American technologies?!

And people talked about Huawei…

by DrNosferatu

5/19/2025 at 8:50:14 PM

To be fair, the ICC isn’t a European court, at least on paper.

by SllX

5/19/2025 at 10:34:03 PM

No one said Europe owned the ICC, just that Europe has to start to be more and more independent of the US, in the interest of its citizens.

by DrNosferatu

5/19/2025 at 10:55:33 PM

There is always an argument for that from each country’s, treaty organization’s, and corporation’s perspective: what are we relying on and what laws is it subject to? That cuts across both sides of the Atlantic.

All I’m doing though is pointing out that no European institutions were harmed by this result, and I’ll even add to that that generally the American sanctions regime is often a benefit to our allies; and this type of sanctioning is something we have usually done in concert with our European allies. What’s different this time is that it’s targeting an ICC prosecutor rather than people who are also on the EU’s hit list, namely Putin’s cronies.

by SllX

5/20/2025 at 12:10:04 AM

I would say the citizens of Europe have greatly benefited from the partnership with the US. I'm not an American by the way.

So after the US (and others) fought for Europe in WW-II. Defended Europe during the cold war (and till today). Took most of the load ($, weapons etc.) in supporting Ukraine against Russia. Now you're going to tell it to f off? And that is somehow in the interest of the citizens?

How many American companies have offices in Europe? How many American products are in your life? Hacker News is based where?

I would agree the partnership needs to evolve as does everything. But in a world that's looking more and more like China-"The West"-India(?) Europe's place is still in the west. That's likely the best thing for the world and for Europeans. And for Americans. Hopefully also including better partnership with the rest of the world as well.

Presidents come and go. Don't get too stuck on Trump.

by YZF

5/20/2025 at 7:14:17 AM

I'm pretty sure Europe has spent more money on Ukraine than the US.

by ChocolateGod

5/22/2025 at 4:44:41 AM

https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine

128B "aid to the government of Ukraine" $195B total spending for Ukraine

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/united-states-america...

$158B in total spending $136B financial and budgetary support and in humanitarian and emergency assistance + military assistance

It's a bit obfuscated but I think on paper the US is ahead overall. Certainly Ukraine without the US would be much worse off. Likely under Russian control.

by YZF

5/20/2025 at 12:20:36 AM

If Europe follows the US out of the west, that's bad for Europe.

by whatshisface

5/20/2025 at 7:23:58 AM

Indeed, don't get so stuck on Trump. We have a long list of potential candidates to replace him who are just as bad or worse.

There's nothing wrong with mutually beneficial deals, of course. But citizens of Europe should have a clear understanding that they cannot expect US to remain friendly to them in the future, even if and when Trump goes away. If you want benefits, you'll have to negotiate from a position of strength, and this means being able to walk away from the table because you don't actually need the deal on it.

by int_19h

5/22/2025 at 4:36:56 AM

Remember the anti-French sentiments post 9/11 when France didn't join the coalition? "freedom fries" instead of "french fries"? No? Well you won't remember this either in 10 years.

Countries have interests. That has always been the case. Europe's interest in this case is to align with the US.

But sure, Europe needs to figure some stuff out.

by YZF

5/22/2025 at 3:39:10 PM

I for one remember that very well, and I wasn't even American at the time.

Europe's interest is to be allied with the US. But if US isn't interested in that - and long term this now has to be assumed as a definitive possibility - Europe should be prepared to act accordingly.

by int_19h

5/23/2025 at 3:45:10 AM

Out of the first 12 leaders to visit/meet Trump in this presidency half were European (and then we had Canada and Israel in the other half). The EU is the largest trading partner of the US (Just Germany is #5 on its own).

The US is still very much part of the west.

Anything is a possibility. I get it that there's some drama and people are upset. The US has challenges and Europe also has challenges.

by YZF

5/20/2025 at 3:12:46 PM

You know what?

European Democracies should start a, new, NATO-like military Alliance on their own, but without Trump's America.

(and without the notorious US-made military equipment kill-switches)

And while we're at it, this time will be different: Instead of the membership criteria being anti-soviet communism, as in NATO, it should be effective Liberal Democracy - and - Freedom from Exceptionalist Exemptions, namely from the International Rule of Law. So, to be part,

1. Compulsory International Criminal Court membership and compliance - hence no exceptionalistic US, no exceptionalistic Israel - and now, no Orbanic Hungary.

2. No "Illiberal Democracies": say, for example, a composite of a minimum 0.67 score on the WJP Rule of Law Index and others: therefore no Orbanic Hungary, and no illiberal others like it. Poland, Slovakia, Italy: time to make some hard choices if you want in.

3. Democratic backsliding removes you rights in the Alliance, and, can proportionally lead to outright expulsion.

Not one more new military equipment purchase from the US, (and dispreference for other non-qualifying nations procurement). Member nations should use their - substantial - industrial capacity to equip themselves with indigenous military materiel.

Hey, it would be actually great for the economy!

Initially European scope, but bridges to a broader global scope (or even a secondary sister-Alliance) with open-ended partnerships with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and yes: Taiwan.

US and/or Israel want to join, if a more Democratic future selves? Simple: fully join the ICC, and meet the Alliance's full criteria as every other member. Same applies for prospective new members.

Sweden shows how principled positions can be maintained while building serious defense capabilities. Now multiply that model by Europe's combined industrial and technological base.

We just need the political will to execute - instead of rolling over and wagging our tail to bullies.

by DrNosferatu

5/20/2025 at 3:41:29 PM

Speed with which multiple EU countries revoke their signature on Ottawa Convention and now on Convention on Cluster Munitions shows exactly how much morals hold when the house is on fire.

by tguvot

5/19/2025 at 9:24:33 PM

It doesn't matter if it is or isn't. The whole point was accountability to each other. That went out the window with the "American Service-Members' Protection Act" (The Hague Invasion Act) [0].

Nothing screams "complicit in genocide" like attacking and cripling the institution investigating such crimes.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more public outrage at what I think is the geopolitical equivalent of having a journalist killed.

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

by rolandog

5/19/2025 at 9:57:55 PM

It does matter, even excluding America, Russia and the PRC, none of which are signatories, as well as the other non-members: the world is a big place. The ICC has many signatories across the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. An international institution doesn’t automatically become a European one when America leaves the room.

> Nothing screams "complicit in genocide" like attacking and cripling the institution investigating such crimes.

The law you cited is clear. Don’t touch American service members and American service members won’t touch the court. Reasonable enough given we aren’t party to the court and will not be held subject to its jurisdiction.

by SllX

5/20/2025 at 3:03:19 AM

> The law you cited is clear. Don’t touch American service members and American service members won’t touch the court. Reasonable enough given we aren’t party to the court and will not be held subject to its jurisdiction.

Not really. International law is for the most part not worth the paper its written on. However if you do believe in it, USA signed the UN charter where they in theory gave up the right to use military force except in self-defence. A foreign court holding a trial for an american citizen accused of commiting a crime in a foreign place is definitely not a valid excuse to invade someone under international law.

Its also pretty hypocritical, since if someone travels to america and commits a crime there, america has no problem arresting them for their conduct while in america. Why aren't other countries allowed to do the same?

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 4:33:32 AM

> A foreign court holding a trial for an american citizen accused of commiting a crime in a foreign place is definitely not a valid excuse to invade someone under international law.

This isn’t a Dutch district court in The Hague trying ordinary crimes. This is a non-Dutch court hosted in The Hague with jurisdiction limited to signatory nations and trying extraordinary crimes listed in its charter, but again, with limited jurisdiction. Right now the extent and scope of their reach is under debate specifically between the signatory Palestinian State and the non-signatory Israel, and we’re seeing that “debate” play out between governments which have an interest in minimizing its institutional reach and the ICC itself which has an interest in maximizing its institutional reach. Real sovereign nations are, as it turns out, more powerful than the ICC. Which brings us to:

> Its also pretty hypocritical, since if someone travels to america and commits a crime there, america has no problem arresting them for their conduct while in america. Why aren't other countries allowed to do the same?

Other countries can and they do, and we do the same to foreigners that commit crimes in America. This isn’t at issue. This isn’t even in the discussion.

What is, is the American Service-Members Protection Act wherein we’ve passed a law specifically to insulate our service members and our allies from an international institution whose jurisdiction over us and other non-signatories we explicitly don’t recognize, and there’s a big stick in there where the President at his own discretion is explicitly authorized to use force to liberate any American or citizen of a US ally from the ICC. This does not extend to the Dutch judicial system.

by SllX

5/20/2025 at 6:13:11 AM

> Real sovereign nations are, as it turns out, more powerful than the ICC.

The ICC is best understood as a consortium of soverign states. The US is more powerful than pretty much all other states combined. So really its not that soverign states are more powerful than the ICC, but that usa is more powerful than everyone and does what it wants.

> This isn’t a Dutch district court in The Hague trying ordinary crimes

This is kind of an odd distinction given that the real dutch courts do claim universial juridsiction over international crimes. Real dutch courts claim the right to prosecute these crimes regardless of where they take place including in non-icc countries. The ICC on the other hand is much more limited.

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 6:41:00 AM

> The ICC is best understood as a consortium of soverign states.

More accurately, it’s a treaty organization that relies on the sovereignty of its signatory nations to assert its claim of legitimacy.

> This is kind of an odd distinction given that the real dutch courts do claim universial juridsiction over international crimes. Real dutch courts claim the right to prosecute these crimes regardless of where they take place including in non-icc countries. The ICC on the other hand is much more limited.

There’s a couple of countries that subscribe to similar judicial principles. The long arm of their legal systems are in fact still limited in reality if not on paper.

Regardless of the Dutch court system’s claimed jurisprudence, that is irrelevant because the ICC is not a Dutch court and I’m not inclined to view further attempts to conflate a single sovereign nation’s own court system with one rooted in a specific signed treaty between signatory nations as an argument made in good faith.

by SllX

5/20/2025 at 6:04:26 PM

I suppose i don't understand the distinction you are trying to make between a court established by a treaty organisation and a court of a soverign state.

The reason i'm focused on this is you claimed national courts are legit. This naturally raises the question of what the difference is.

What specificly is the element that you think makes treaty courts illegitament? Are you opposed to them in general or the ICC specificly? I'm just not clear on the nature of your objection specificly.

From my perspective, if a state can make a court, then it stands to reason that a state can delegate to any court it feels like. If it wants to delegate some of its justice powers to the ICC, i don't see how that's any different than if it delegated those same powers to a court of its own making.

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 6:12:16 PM

Two things:

1) I did not say the ICC was illegitimate.

2) The difference between the ICC and a nation’s own court system is the Rome Statute which defines the ICC’s jurisdiction and competencies.

by SllX

5/19/2025 at 10:19:03 PM

Yeah, clear law:

"(b) Persons Authorized To Be Freed.--The authority of subsection (a) shall extend to the following persons: (2) Covered allied persons."

That includes Nehterlands, which is a member of NATO.

So US can snatch Dutch war criminal from Netherlands if US president likes the person or whatever? :) Very clear law with no weird implications.

Addenum: I solely react to your claim that this law is very clear.

by megous

5/20/2025 at 12:44:50 PM

> [Covered allied persons] includes Nehterlands, which is a member of NATO.

Because the Netherlands signed the Rome Statute, it does not (italics mine):

> COVERED ALLIED PERSONS—The term ‘covered allied persons’ means military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand), or Taiwan, for so long as that government is not a party to the International Criminal Court and wishes its officials and other persons working on its behalf to be exempted from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

by mananaysiempre

5/21/2025 at 5:46:39 PM

Exceptions for everything. :-)

by megous

5/19/2025 at 10:32:11 PM

I would actually pay money to see that happen, should the opportunity arise.

Jokes aside though, remember that the prior commentator brought in the American Service-Members Protection Act as a weird form of whataboutism. Bringing that up does not transform the ICC into a European court, even if an actual American military intervention of The Hague would not bode well for the integrity of Dutch sovereignty and my advise to the European nations and citizenry that can’t grok the implications of hosting an international political institution is to convince the ICC to relocate itself so the Eurocentric among you stop mistaking it for a European court.

by SllX

5/19/2025 at 11:54:13 PM

>And people talked about Huawei…

Still bad.

Dont even try :)

by heraldgeezer

5/19/2025 at 6:39:28 PM

Just goes to show how short-sighted these political decisions have been. Politics shouldn't be wrapping itself around tech, the US is shrugging off a huge market and ally.

by gleenn

5/19/2025 at 8:57:37 PM

> ally

Keep the chocolate separate from the artificial sweeteners.

Whatever our deal is with the EU and individual European countries, the ICC is emphatically not an EU nor even a European court. They’re hosted in The Hague, it is not of The Hague in the same way the UN is not of New York.

by SllX

5/19/2025 at 10:00:39 PM

This distinction is a technicality, given the The Hague Invasion Act signed into law by G.W. Bush. Or to use your example, would a hypothetical attack on the UN building in New York not also be a violation of American sovereignty?

by j0057

5/19/2025 at 10:05:15 PM

Call me when we’ve invaded The Hague or when someone else invades New York. An international institution that claims members from Asia, Africa and across the Americas doesn’t become a European institution just because America left the room. Japan is actually the largest national contributor to the ICC’s budget.

by SllX

5/19/2025 at 6:43:51 PM

> Just goes to show how short-sighted these political decisions have been. Politics shouldn't be wrapping itself around tech, the US is shrugging off a huge market and ally.

Which political decision? The one to prosecute a US ally, or the one to sanction the ICC?

When someone decries something as "politics," there's often a problem where the analysis conveniently stops when the blame can be placed on the speaker's disfavored group.

by palmotea

5/19/2025 at 6:47:04 PM

Seems like we shouldn't be using tech to punish a foreign group who's job, at least at face value, is to help the world. If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally. That's where the battle should be fought. Not ripping away some guy's email access.

by gleenn

5/19/2025 at 6:52:10 PM

In international politics there is no "legally". Maybe the closest thing to it is the ICC.

by qznc

5/19/2025 at 9:45:35 PM

ICJ would be the comparison for international politics. It is all about interpreting treaties and what the duties of various states are in various circumstances.

ICC is about criminal liability of individuals, which sometimes has bearing on international politics but is not intrinsically so.

by bawolff

5/19/2025 at 8:18:27 PM

Don't international treaties count as "legally"?

by Kudos

5/19/2025 at 8:33:06 PM

It isn’t like there are some treaty police that will come along and arrest you for breaking a treaty. It is more like a business contract I think; if you break lots of contracts, people will be less likely to make deals with you.

by bee_rider

5/20/2025 at 3:10:12 AM

No, but many treaties have dispute mechanisms that function somewhat like a court where you have legal filings. That's how we have the south africa vs israel genocide thing. Both countries signed a treaty that had a clause in it saying the ICJ can decide any disputes about this treaty.

More generally, part of the envisioned role of the ICJ is that it could be a court system where countries can go to solve any disputes about how to interpret any treaty (however the rules are both parties have to consent, which means in practise it rarely happens)

by bawolff

5/19/2025 at 8:51:11 PM

I assume it is more like high school drama just at a much larger scale. If a bully wants your sandwich…

by qznc

5/19/2025 at 8:28:33 PM

> If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally.

US isn't really a party to all this, so there isn't much they can do legally (to be clear i think americas sanctions are unacceptable). They could file a juridsictional challenge, which some countries did, but legally there isn't a huge amount of ground to stand on for that.

Other than that, the actual legal part doesn't start until (if) the suspects are apprehended. And if it does get to a trial, its going to be the accused lawyers who are going to be fighting it out.

by bawolff

5/19/2025 at 6:47:59 PM

That would mean having due process.

by mlinhares

5/19/2025 at 8:37:35 PM

Under international law, the United States is free to regulate it's commerce in any way they wish. If they declare it a crime to do business with the ICC, it's their right. The sanctions are completely legal.

What's legally questionable, is for ICC to claim jurisdiction over Israel - a nation that never signed to or ratified the ICC statue.

by username332211

5/19/2025 at 9:58:26 PM

> What's legally questionable, is for ICC to claim jurisdiction over Israel - a nation that never signed to or ratified the ICC statue.

They do not claim that.

What they claim: - palestine is a state (probably the most controversial claim)

- states have the right to punish crimes that happen in their borders regardless of who commits them

- states can delegate that right to other parties

- Palestine delegated that right to the ICC.

Additionally from an international law perspective, there is the idea that some things are preemptorary norms which apply to all states. This includes things like parts of the geneva convention or the genocide convention that define certain crimes. Based on the precedent at nuremburg, an international body can setup a tribunal to punish those crimes even against the will of the state in question. The ICC doesnt use this but its fairly well established doctribe in intl law.

by bawolff

5/19/2025 at 10:30:05 PM

> Based on the precedent at nuremburg, an international body can setup a tribunal to punish those crimes even against the will of the state in question.

You do realize the precedent at Nuremberg (note the spelling), requires that the the capitulation of the party being tried? Famously, at the trial of admiral Dönitz, the defense presented an affidavit from admiral Chester Nimitz, where he confessed to the same crimes Dönitz was being tried for. Dönitz was convicted, but the court declined to try Nimitz because the United States was on the winning side and thus outside of the jurisdiction of the court.

You can't impose a tribunal on a country, without capitulation.

by username332211

5/20/2025 at 12:22:26 AM

Hold on, that line of reasoning would imply that the Nazis were primarily guilty of being defeated. Are you sure? The idea of ordering people you can't catch to appear before court makes enough sense to me.

by whatshisface

5/19/2025 at 8:44:12 PM

[flagged]

by Nekhrimah

5/19/2025 at 9:15:04 PM

Claiming Palestine is a state in its current form is a huge stretch and would probably undermine the rest of the court case.

Is Israel actually supposed to supply food for the independent state of Palestine whose controlling government in Gaza (Hamas) has initiated said war, while the war is ongoing, and where the food is transferred to areas that are not even controlled by Israeli forces? I don't think that's very common in warfare between states

by breppp

5/19/2025 at 9:53:01 PM

> Is Israel actually supposed to supply food for the independent state of Palestine whose controlling government in Gaza (Hamas) has initiated said war, while the war is ongoing, and where the food is transferred to areas that are not even controlled by Israeli forces? I don't think that's very common in warfare between states

Under the geneva convention Israel (or any state engaged in war) is expected to do 2 things:

- not unduly hinder aid shipments provided by relief organizations (there are a bunch of details here im glossing over) - anywhere where they are occupying they are expected to ensure that the civilian population has the neccesities of survival. Providing it themselves if neccesary.

It doesn't matter who started the war, who is right, who is wrong. The rules are for the protection of non combatants, not for the people involved in the war.

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 4:17:36 AM

It actually does matter If Israel is not occupying that territory then it does not need to, and when there are no troops in the area it is the responsibility of the Palestinian government.

Then it becomes really a palestinian problem as they decided to start a war with no food supplies against its food supplier, while actually destroying most of their food sources during the attack

by breppp

5/20/2025 at 4:48:15 AM

The geneva convention still requires parties to not unduly hinder aid supplies even if its destined for places not currently under occupation (you are still allowed to inspect it, administer how its delivered, prevent it from being misappropriated, etc. And there is a lot of ambiguity in that part so some its not the most clear cut).

Like the rules are different between the occupation and non-occupation cases, but there are still rules related to food in the non-occupation case.

Israel (or any other country at war) probably doesn't need to feed the areas it doesn't occupy. However per the geneva convention they are not allowed to prevent others from supplying the food, and they can't actively take actions to intentionally to cause the starvation of civilians.

See section II of aditional protocol 1 of the fourth geneva convention https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention/Protocol_I#... (article 54 in the other section is also relavent)

[Israel is not a signatory to protocol 1 of the fourth geneva convention but parts are considered to be customary and apply to everyone]

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 5:08:17 AM

I agree, however when not occupying, and when Gaza has a border with Egypt, it really comes to the Palestine government deciding to prioritize its troops for food instead of its citizens (also happens with aid by the way), and to furthermore politically navigate it to a situation of food shortage (multiple steps in stupidity which was starting this war)

And if starvation ensues (which did not, by the way), then in reality it's the problem of the palestinian government which really worked hard in causing a food shortage

Regarding hindering the transfer of aid, even barring Egypt, Israel does not need to allow the transfer of aid if it is diverted or that it is being used to give military advantage to the adversary.

This is well documented as the aid is taken over by the Palestinian government, passed to its troops and the rest is sold in exorbitant prices while the proceedings are passed to pay wages to the Palestinian military.

All of this without even raising the current issues around the prosecution in the ICC and behavior that might show a conflict of interest, as well as criminal behavior

by breppp

5/20/2025 at 6:45:22 AM

I would agree generally that Hamas seems to want Palestinians to suffer for various political reasons. However i don't think that relieves or really affects Israel's obligations when it comes to allowing aid shipments into Gaza.

> And if starvation ensues (which did not, by the way), then in reality it's the problem of the palestinian government which really worked hard in causing a food shortage

I'd agree in so much that Israel is responsible for its own actions and not Hamas's. To that end i believe Israel has an obligation to not intentionally make the food situation worse and to not arbitrarily get in the way of people trying to improve the situation. This is true no matter what Hamas does.

> Regarding hindering the transfer of aid, even barring Egypt, Israel does not need to allow the transfer of aid if it is diverted or that it is being used to give military advantage to the adversary.

This is probably one of the stronger arguments. Tbh the extent and limits of this defence is beyond my knowledge so i'm not sure how far it considered valid for [ianal]

> All of this without even raising the current issues around the prosecution in the ICC and behavior that might show a conflict of interest, as well as criminal behavior

This is pretty unconvincing. The prosecutor is accused of sexually harrasing an underling. Despicable but has very little to do with the case. Even if the prosecutor was biased, ultimately its the judges who make the decision, not the prosecutor. I don't think it would make a material difference if the prosecutor was biased in some fashion. Either he proves his case to the judges or he doesn't. The judges are the party that needs to be neutral.

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 7:08:19 AM

Regarding the prosecutor, it did affect the case

1. The allegations were revealed just before the arrest warrants were released

2. The arrest warrants were rushed, brushing aside valid concerns (the court later decided it was unlawful)

3. The prosecutor himself and people he sent tried to pressure the victim to pull her complaint because it will hurt the palestinian case, which seems to indicate this might have had convinced her

So this at least raises the question whether these warrants were rushed or were generally pressed in order to quiet the sexual harassment/rape case.

The inability of the ICC to properly investigate its own people also greatly puts the own court ability to investigate foreign matters into question

by breppp

5/20/2025 at 3:05:00 PM

> The arrest warrants were rushed, brushing aside valid concerns (the court later decided it was unlawful)

Which valid concern specificly do you mean?

Do you mean Israel's juridsictional challenge? The prosecutor wasn't the one who decided that. It really wasn't brushed aside, there was just an ambiguity in the court rules on at what stage is the appropriate time to raise such a challenge. Initially the court said it was too early and that Israel had to wait until after the suspects were aprehended and the trial starts. Israel appealed, won the appeal, and the appeal court just said no point in waiting, we should just hear the challenge now. Either way the prosecutor wasn't the one deciding this, and it was largely procedural; Israel would get to make their challenge either way, it was just a fight about when they were allowed to make it.

I'd agree generally that the sexual harrasment case is pretty embarrasing for the ICC generally, and the office of the prosecutor especially.

However, even if they were rushed or the prosecutor did a bad job, i don't see how that matters. Its the judges who decides if the prosecutor has provided enough evidence to show reasonable cause, not the prosecutor. If the warrants were rushed that would benefit the accused, as presumably that would mean the prosecutors presentation to the pre-trial chamber was rushed and not as good as it could have been (and indeed we did see the prosecutor push for a few charges that were rejected by the pre-trial chamber (extermination and the mode of liability for attacks directed at civilian objects). If the theory is that he rushed it, the most likely conclusion is the accused benefitted by not being charged with those things the pre trial chamber rejected)

by bawolff

5/20/2025 at 6:03:02 PM

I believe that if this would happen in a normal court case this would end in mistrial.

It is not true that this must be in favor of Israel, a criminal that tries to prevent his trial by influencing witnesses, could also try to influence the judges, misrepresent evidence and such, if he thinks moving forward with the trial will save him. There is evidence he pressured the victim precisely on the reason of this trial success, without a trial he will go to jail.

This also raises a question, if there are multiple persons in the supposedly neutral prosecution team including victim and head of prosecution, that believe that ignoring a rape is worth it in order to follow through with a trial against a specific country, so early in the trial, then how do we know that the rest of this organization including judges does not have major prejudices against Israel?

I think that if you take the fact that they completely ignored the principle of complementarity, claiming essentially Israel does not have an independent judiciary system, when said judiciary system is prosecuting Nethanyahu currently for a different crime while upping the irony when half of the ICC judges come from countries with actually non-functioning judiciary systems

Then add to it the fact that they passed through a highly creative way of interpreting their jurisdiction, while ignoring the chance for the accused to plea and ending that with highly unusual arrest warrants against a current head of state, whose process is criticized by the very same court a year later. Then you get something that looks bad, at least to me

by breppp

5/21/2025 at 12:47:28 AM

> I believe that if this would happen in a normal court case this would end in mistrial.

Generally you cannot have a mistrial before having a trial.

The trial hasn't started yet. ICC trials require the defendents to physically be present in the court room and the defendents have so far chosen not to surrender themselves (unsurprisingly).

All that has taken place so far is the ICC equivalent of a grand jury procedure.

> if he thinks moving forward with the trial will save him. There is evidence he pressured the victim precisely on the reason of this trial success, without a trial he will go to jail.

Well at this stage, the warrants have been issued. There is still Israel's juridsictional challenge to them to deal with, but by and large this stage is done and there is nothing left to do. The next stage starts once the accused are aprehended. It seems really unlikely the ICC is going to be capture the accused, and it seems really unlikely they will self-surrender. The most likely outcome is that nothing further happens. The prosecutor has done his role. Maybe there could be some sort of argument like this if stuff was ongoing, but it isn't ongoing, so i just don't see it.

[One thing i think that gets lost in these discussions that is really important to remember, is that the ICC prosecutor has a kind of bad conviction rate. In the unlikely event this actually goes to trial, we shouldn't consider it a foregone conclusion. The accused might win]

> I think that if you take the fact that they completely ignored the principle of complementarity, claiming essentially Israel does not have an independent judiciary system, when said judiciary system is prosecuting Nethanyahu currently for a different crime while upping the irony when half of the ICC judges come from countries with actually non-functioning judiciary systems

Thus far, it doesn't seem like Israel has made a serious good faith criminal investigation into the conduct in question. More to the point, it doesn't seem like Israel has even claimed that they intend to. It would make a big difference if Israel could point to someone and say we assigned this person to investigate the allegations, here is their report, they didn't think charges were warranted because X.

Israel does generally seem to have an independent judiciary that is not afraid to go after people at the top. That is something to be proud of. However that in itself is not enough for complementary - there needs to be a criminal investigation of the same conduct as the ICC is worried about.

> while ignoring the chance for the accused to plea

The accused can plea any time they want. They first have to surrender themselves (or otherwise be aprehended). Entering a plea (or more generally defending yourself) is part of the process of a trial. The trial has to start first.

> highly unusual arrest warrants against a current head of state

Its a bit unusual, but certainly not the first time. They issued a warrant for Omar al-Bashir when he was president of Sudan.

by bawolff

5/22/2025 at 7:33:44 PM

>Thus far, it doesn't seem like Israel has made a serious good faith criminal investigation into the conduct in question.

actually... when Israel tried to claim principle of complementarity it was rejected because it can be invoked only within 1 month of start of investigation. And current arrest warrants were filed under investigation that prosecutor started in 2020 or something, way before current events for which warrants were issued.

by tguvot

5/19/2025 at 9:10:13 PM

That's a rather questionable interpretation of international law, I'm afraid. If a country A wages war on country B, A isn't normally bound by treaties signed by B.

And in any case, even if the ICC's actions weren't questionable, the beauty of international law is that America is free to ban companies from serving the ICC for any reason or for no reason at all.

by username332211

5/19/2025 at 9:48:30 PM

> Palestine is an ICC signatory; the genocide is happening on Palestine land. ICC has jurisdiction.

While the ICC has juridsiction over criminal acts of genocide comitted on the territory of member states, so far they have not accused anyone of comitting genocide in Palestine.

Its always possible they might add more charges later, but so far they have only accused Israeli leaders of lesser crimes.

by bawolff

5/19/2025 at 6:52:05 PM

> Seems like we shouldn't be using tech to punish a foreign group who's job, at least at face value, is to help the world.

Claims about "helping the world" are highly subjective and often bullshit (see the often-mocked tech company talk about "making the world a better place [by doing awful stuff like shoving targeted ads in people's faces]".

> If the ICC is doing so much harm to the US, fight legally. That's where the battle should be fought. Not ripping away some guy's email access.

What do you mean? Sanctions are "fight[ing] legally," literally.

by palmotea

5/19/2025 at 7:25:34 PM

Sanctions are still the rule of the bigger stick, except the stick is measured in money and manufacturing capacity, not soldiers and weapons. A great improvement to be sure, but it’s still an instrument for unilaterally forcing people to stop doing things you don’t like. And as far as a group of people in the Netherlands doing things the US does not like, it’s not clear the US has (or ought to have) a more civilized way to accomplish its goals.

by mananaysiempre

5/19/2025 at 11:05:21 PM

> Sanctions are still the rule of the bigger stick, except the stick is measured in money and manufacturing capacity, not soldiers and weapons. A great improvement to be sure, but it’s still an instrument for unilaterally forcing people to stop doing things you don’t like.

What's the problem with that? Ultimately, that's what all law is. Law doesn't work unless the lawgiver has the power to force its will on whomever it deems to be a lawbreaker.

The ICC's problem here is that it tried to exert control where it has no power, inviting retaliation.

by palmotea

5/21/2025 at 3:57:39 PM

> What's the problem with that?

Intrinsically, nothing, as long we remember the amoral nature of the whole thing. That what you say is true has nothing to do (in either direction) with its consequences being good in my, your, or anybody else’s conception of goodness; each one of us will have to evaluate that completely independently.

by mananaysiempre

5/19/2025 at 7:38:32 PM

> Claims about "helping the world" are highly subjective and often bullshit

It seems you are making the point that using technology to punish subjective politics is the right way?!

Sidenote: ICC has been backed by many nations, occasionally including US too. Using sanctions in retributions to unfavourable opinions might seem against the spirit of US Constitution in other contexts...

Why not let arguments do their work in open debate? The ICC isn't a bunch of loonies or Saddam's Baath party. These are reasonable people, with dissident opinions, for sure. But reasonable.

> Sanctions are "fight[ing] legally," literally.

Technically, the more appropriate term might be "legalism", in the mechanistic sense.

by repelsteeltje

5/19/2025 at 7:59:29 PM

> Why not let arguments do their work in open debate?

Well, that happened. Israel presented an argument that the investigation legally must end, as they haven't consented to ICC jurisdiction; the ICC openly considered and openly rejected this argument (https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-p...), saying that Palestine's consent was sufficient because the alleged crimes took place in Palestinian territory.

The US has always taken an extremely aggressive stance that this theory of ICC jurisdiction is unacceptable. "It is a fundamental principle of international law that a treaty is binding upon its parties only and that it does not create obligations for nonparties without their consent to be bound", as 22 USC §7421 puts it. (If you're old enough, you may recognize this as part of the bipartisan "Hague Invasion Act" of 2002, widely understood as a threat of military force against anyone who tries to enforce ICC jurisdiction on a citizen of the US or its non-ICC allies.)

by SpicyLemonZest

5/19/2025 at 8:19:57 PM

> the ICC openly considered and openly rejected this argument (https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-p...), saying that Palestine's consent was sufficient because the alleged crimes took place in Palestinian territory.

Its a little more complicated than that. The dispute is also about if palestine is a "state" and thus able to consent (and i'm not sure, but possibly what the territorial extent of Palestine is. it probably doesnt matter, but the fact that the official government of Palestine lost control of the gaza strip in a civil war a long time ago is another winkle in this whole thing)

While the court initially rejected Israel's challenge, the appeal court reverses the decision, and threw it back to the lower court, which is now deliberating on it https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-appea... . As far as i understand most observers think this is an extreme long shot on the part of Israel and they are unlikely to win this challenge.

[IANAL, and far from an expert at this, this stuff is complicated, it is very possible i got the details wrong]

by bawolff

5/19/2025 at 8:32:27 PM

I think the more interesting point here is that some members of ICC don't recognize Palestine as a state so they don't have a reason to accept ICC jurisdiction because essentially they will be ceding recognition of states to the ICC which seems unlikely.

by HappyPanacea

5/19/2025 at 9:08:29 PM

and majority of those who recognize palestine as state, do not recognize any specific borders.

by tguvot

5/20/2025 at 6:26:32 AM

The US has never meaningfully backed the ICC, and has repudiated it for the overwhelming majority of its existence. Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, on his way out the door; the US never ratified it, and we withdrew our signature in 2002.

by tptacek

5/21/2025 at 5:37:01 PM

Still, US was instrumental in a couple of cases. Supplying evidence against and apprehending suspects in case of ex Yugoslavian culprits and one or two African dictators, but I could be wrong...

The 2002 withdrawal was clearly to sidestep prosecution for the lies that led to Iraq's invasion.

US was okay with ICC until those human right high horse stuff could apply to US...

by pipo234

5/21/2025 at 6:26:04 PM

All I'm saying is that the US is not a signatory to the ICC and does not owe the ICC anything. The ICC sounds like an important supranational body, but is in fact simply a treaty agreed to by a minority of the world's population.

by tptacek

5/22/2025 at 6:49:09 PM

Fair enough.

I guess so I was saying, is that US might have been a signatory. In spirit, US has often advocated for applying rules of international humanitarian law where appropriate.

Treaties like NATO, NAFTA, or various "coalitions of the willing" were never backed by a majority of the worlds population. (Maybe an agreement between China and India, might count?).

I think the point isn't that US never believed in multilateralism - it did - but that it feels rules and laws should only apply to others.

by pipo234

5/20/2025 at 2:45:14 PM

>> Claims about "helping the world" are highly subjective and often bullshit

> It seems you are making the point that using technology to punish subjective politics is the right way?!

My point was to not trust claims that so-and-so is "helping the world," is a vague but positive description that is abused and often collapses on further scrutiny (especially because the speaker may have different subjective interests, what's "helping the world" to him can be "harming the world" to you).

Your response was weird. I was talking about something that I specified clearly, but you took it as I was speaking about something else.

> Using sanctions in retributions to unfavourable opinions might seem against the spirit of US Constitution in other contexts...

No. What are you smoking?

> Why not let arguments do their work in open debate? The ICC isn't a bunch of loonies or Saddam's Baath party. These are reasonable people, with dissident opinions, for sure. But reasonable.

Ok then. I claim authority over you and your friends, but you never consented. I'm not a loony, why don't you recognize my authority over you and engage with me in open debate?

That's "why not."

by palmotea

5/19/2025 at 8:17:52 PM

What are your object-level beliefs?

by sunshowers

5/19/2025 at 7:24:41 PM

Imagine the leader of some random country taking away your country's judge's funds, their email address, their job, for trying to do their job in accordance with the law, regarding a non citizen.

You don't have to imagine it, it's happening. Is it happening to judges in your country, though?

by randunel

5/19/2025 at 9:22:25 PM

That would be bad because it tramples that country’s sovereignty, and by that, the sovereignty of its citizens. But the ICC has no citizens, and it does not represent anyone other than a cause.

by flyinglizard

5/20/2025 at 5:14:44 AM

The ICC judges are most definitely citizens of the members' countries. The "sanctions" are against the persons, not against the institution.

by randunel

5/19/2025 at 11:01:08 PM

The U.S. is harming itself by making technology subject to politics. Only makes them look untrustworthy. Just Trump breaking things that work.

by mark336

5/19/2025 at 8:07:59 PM

I honestly don't get what HN, or even some commenters, thinks should happen here in the real world.

I understand in the pretend world they want to be able to do $x without ever worrying about being beholden to any other countries laws or politics or whatever else.

They want this for lots of values of $x, and often have fun asserting it will soon be possible.

In the real world however, this has never been possible, since the dawn of recorded history, for lots and lots and lots of values of $x.

Pretty much any time $x becomes valuable or interesting enough, it becomes impossible to have this happen in all and usually most cases.

It often doesn't matter how simple a thing $x is - sailing a ship for example, or buying produce, it usually only matters how valuable or interesting it was.

As long as enough countries exist, and they have laws that have extra-territorial effect, the likelihood this problem will be really solved trends towards zero.

What exactly does someone expect to happen here when it's just people and companies trying to follow the laws they think they are required to follow.

This is actually what should happen, and is happening

The usual response is then that some country or group of countries need to build some untouchable-by-other-countries infrastructure and that will solve having to deal with others politics. This seems to me naive at best. The only cases this will work is for things that can be 100% contained and controlled within a given country/group. That is roughly impossible for most interesting things.

For example - it makes no sense to have a economic-block-specific email provider to work around sanctions, because whoever wanted to sanction them will just ban transiting email to them, and then transiting packets, and then equipment, and then chips to make equipment, and then machines to make chips to make equipment, and then wafers used to make chips, and then raw resources used to make wafers, and then equipment to mine raw resources, and then ....

Let's assume you don't care about this group, but they are still powerful. Great - they'll do this not just directly, but indirectly, by forcing others who do have to care to do the same to you.

Now, it would be different if you are building this thing as a political move or strategy, rather than expecting it to solve your problem directly. But otherwise, it is remarkably rare to be able to work around the politics with technology, and if you do, you won't be able to for very long.

It's much more useful to focus on dealing with the politics, if you want to change it.

Wasting lots of time and energy and money trying to avoid politics seems like a bad plan

by DannyBee

5/19/2025 at 11:05:39 PM

In Europe's defense, they didn't expect a mad-man would be running the U.S., but still should have had a protocol for Apocalypse.

by mark336

5/20/2025 at 6:57:02 AM

How is that a defense not to expect the expected (given human's history worth of precedents)?

by eviks

5/20/2025 at 7:34:30 AM

Said madman was already elected once before in 2016. Fool me twice etc.

by int_19h

5/20/2025 at 12:58:55 AM

Cute to pin it all on one man and pretend K-Street doesn't exist.

by ignoramous

5/19/2025 at 9:19:04 PM

Basically you need to sovereign-balance your services over different regions. Also have a high available pool of people to replace arrestees.

One reason the the court has been hamstrung is that it relies heavily on contractors and non-governmental organizations. Those businesses and groups have curtailed work on behalf of the court because they were concerned about being targeted by U.S. authorities, according to current and former ICC staffers.

Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.

https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-co...

by adolph

5/19/2025 at 8:04:26 PM

I had a conversation about 15 years ago where he told me about a book he was reading about the risk of anti-intellectualism in the US. I laughed it off. I think about this at least once a week now.

What we've seen over the last 10 years in tech and politics is the rise of people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.

I've had so many conversations with crypto bros about how crypto doesn't really solve anything and NFTs are BS and DeFi is pushed by people who have no idea of why finance is the way it is or they're simply trying yet another rug pull. This is a fundamentally anti-intellectual position.

What we've seen since January 20 is the absolute dumbest, most ignorant sycophants destroy things they simply don't understand and don't want to understand. Destroy USAID (as one example)? Foreign aid is a tool of US soft power, a key part of US foreign policy. That's not money for nothing. We're buying influence. Don't even get me started on tariffs. Again, it's fundamentally anti-intellectual.

Part of me is glad to see how many people are waking up to the myth of meritocracy.

By taking punitive yet performative action against the ICC for hurting Israel's feelings by saying true things does nothing but weaken US tech influence over Europe. it tells Europe that the US cannot be relied upon and an alternative needs to be found.

Fun fact: the US has passed a law colloquially known as the Hage Invasion Act [1]. This not authorizes but requires the US to invade the Hague if the ICC ever detains and prosecutes any US service member or official or those of any ally.

By itself it doesn't really matter but it's death by a thousand paper cuts and there are a thousand other small things that are pushing Europe to distance itself from the US.

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

by jmyeet

5/19/2025 at 8:26:28 PM

Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov has written about it many years ago, but it has clearly accelerated. My hope is that's it's the last surges of Christianity/religion in a death spiral.

by Hikikomori

5/19/2025 at 8:41:19 PM

Why you think it is religion based? And why you think it is specifically Christianity?

by matkoniecz

5/19/2025 at 8:47:07 PM

This anti-intellectualism has a strong connection with Evangelical Christianity in America and the connection has a long history.

by jsnider3

5/19/2025 at 10:01:30 PM

I'm a strict atheist but am generally neutral on religion. It depends on the output.

What people should know is that even within a religion like Christianity there are vast differences between sects. Jesuits are not Southern Baptists, for example.

A lot of texts from antiquity were preserved by the Catholic monastic tradition through the Middle Ages. Theology in the Roman Catholic sense has always been treated as an academic discipline.

Evangelicism arose primarily in the US as a byproduct of "manifest destiny" combined with no access to academic theologians. Sects popped up based on "plain" readings of religious texts. Put another way: it's almost entirely vibes-based.

But none of this really matters because religion is never the reason for a conflict such as this. Religion is simply the veneer applied to motivate the masses. The actual motivations are always materialist. In this case that means a settler colonial project to disrupt a region of strategic improtance.

by jmyeet

5/19/2025 at 11:16:47 PM

Absolute statements using words like "always" and "never" are always mistaken. The world is never so simple.

by istjohn

5/20/2025 at 5:02:28 PM

[flagged]

by kmeisthax

5/19/2025 at 10:07:44 PM

> the absolute dumbest, most ignorant sycophants destroy things they simply don't understand and don't want to understand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

Usually, I suspect that, behind the behavior of dumb figureheads and dumb pawns, is some party that is smarter (and evil).

by neilv

5/20/2025 at 1:29:54 AM

I am sure anti-intellectualism plays no small part, but I believe it's more that we have adopted a culture of greed at all levels, not just at the top of the income distribution. We are not willing to make even small sacrifices to make things better for other (present and future) Americans. I don't think that's always been true.

by DangitBobby

5/20/2025 at 2:03:04 AM

I actually figured it out after attending crypto meetups in Switzerland just to drill into their heads to see what is really going down with my own eyes and ears. And man, you're spot on. Crypto is basically a giant loophole for slapping the word "decentralized" on what's just a fancy, unregulated securities market. The whole scene is a masterclass in rebranding speculative gambling as "innovation." NFTs? Mostly hype and JPEGs with extra steps. DeFi? A Wild West where the rules of traditional finance get ignored until someone gets rugged, then suddenly everyone's shocked. The crypto bros love to talk about "disrupting the system," but half the time it's just a grift wrapped in tech jargon to lure in bagholders.

by greenavocado

5/19/2025 at 11:29:34 PM

our technocrats are destroying the world and bleeding the peasants dry. the peasants are right to revolt against them. they only err in their choice of alternatives.

by hello_computer

5/19/2025 at 8:27:21 PM

Surely there must be an uncensored, decentralized means for sending messages? What about banking...

by jjoe

5/20/2025 at 7:05:42 AM

If your critical infrastructure lives under someone else's legal and political umbrella, then you're basically renting stability. And when politics shift, so can access.

by MarceliusK

5/19/2025 at 7:51:33 PM

Could Microsoft deny the request from the US government? I guess not, but i am not familiar with US laws for US companies…

by runningmike

5/19/2025 at 10:41:32 PM

Yes. It would then be upon the government to do something about it, which would create some controversy, penalties for MS, and a political debate.

Same for refusing orders. It may change nothing, like in this story:

  > One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in
  > a certain house ... and to blow up the house with them.
  > The sapper refused ... The commander then ordered his
  > men to put the old women in the house and the evil deed
  > was done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Dawayima_massacre

But people sometimes still do it.

by megous

5/19/2025 at 8:02:05 PM

If it’s a lawful request, no. They can fight it but it’s a fight under US law, so if the law says they have to do it then that’s the outcome.

by scott_w

5/20/2025 at 7:53:28 AM

Microsoft (and other U.S.-based companies) are generally obligated to comply with government orders, even if the data is stored overseas

by MarceliusK

5/19/2025 at 7:49:53 PM

Certainly the ICC would be using something more secure than Microsoft hosted email?

by AJ007

5/19/2025 at 8:38:33 PM

Why? US is not the main threat.

And even this case it's pretty obvious that they are under attack.

If you run your own server, you might not know that you've been compromised.

by jopsen

5/19/2025 at 10:26:38 PM

The US have the means to act against the ICC. They have a motive for doing so. The US has the Hague Invasion act. The US is currently performing a blockade against ICC. The US really is the main threat.

by im3w1l

5/19/2025 at 10:41:57 PM

Why not proton, or fastmail, or tuta. Some provider that resides in a country that does not have an "Hague Invasion Act" just in case the ICC investigates a US citizen.

Maybe not the 'main threat', but most certainly a threat. Have been since 2002.

by 28304283409234

5/19/2025 at 11:42:21 PM

They have moved to using protonmail now, per a BBC article I read yesterday.

by qingcharles

5/19/2025 at 9:49:42 PM

> If you run your own server, you might not know that you've been compromised.

You may or may not if run your own server. In a case of the hosted solution you are absolutely can't know.

by betaby

5/20/2025 at 5:44:08 AM

The contempt for international law is the true headline here.

by canxerian

5/20/2025 at 6:23:49 AM

What international law? The United States isn't an ICC signatory. Microsoft is a US company.

by tptacek

5/20/2025 at 6:59:13 AM

The one you display contemt for by sanctioning organizations trying to uphold it. Neither of the facts you mentioned is of any relevance to this point.

by eviks

5/20/2025 at 9:00:56 AM

Microsoft will be hit hard due to DMA

by franczesko

5/20/2025 at 5:44:23 PM

The ICC was created by the United Nations, it is not an EU institution. I don't think the DMA has much relevance to this particular case.

by tremon

5/19/2025 at 11:03:51 PM

ICC should also issue an arrest warrant for Trump/Biden. Who do you think supplies Israel with all the money and weapons they use against the Palestinians?

by mark336

5/19/2025 at 11:34:24 PM

And at the same time for the sake of balance, issue a warrant against saddam hussain and bin laden.

by FridayoLeary

5/20/2025 at 6:50:35 AM

ICC should also issue an arrest warrant for Khamenei. Who do you think supplies Palestine/Yemen with all the money and weapons they use against the Israelis?

by TiredOfLife

5/20/2025 at 10:51:47 PM

Well, if Israel was a signatory, they could arrange for this...

by FireBeyond

5/20/2025 at 5:13:59 AM

Why only target two presidents? The US has been involved with funding for decades.

Also, why only target US? Europe has helped fund projects that have gone into weapons research.

by ImJamal

5/21/2025 at 3:41:39 AM

You all are right. Today, the UK, France and Canada made threats to take action on Israel over Gaza. We need balance. See more on this development on my news site: https://asiaviewnews.com/gigabots/Threads?p=80022

by mark336

5/19/2025 at 7:28:27 PM

Will be waiting to see if anything changes.

by cadamsdotcom

5/19/2025 at 8:40:57 PM

[dead]

by computerthings

5/20/2025 at 2:47:18 AM

[flagged]

by blotfaba