alt.hn

5/20/2025 at 9:55:01 AM

Microsoft blocked the email account of Chief Prosecutor of the ICC

 https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-email-block-a-wake-up-call-for-digital-sovereignty-10387383.html

by maratumba

5/20/2025 at 2:30:26 PM

This is classic American arrogance, trying to undermine international law for its own selfish agenda.

It reinforces the need for the EU to break free from US tech.

by saubeidl

5/20/2025 at 5:37:12 PM

You are wrong. It is not 'American' anything.

This is plain corporate malfeasance and corruption.

If anything its highly anti-American, borderline communist/state regime.

American values include many things, one of the more important being free speech.

Such a violation deserves reciprocity, stop blaming issues on the wrong things.

by trod1234

5/20/2025 at 8:42:26 PM

Sure, that is the de-jure definition of 'American' that a lot of good folks in the US also adhere to - I know many of them personally :).

However, that's not the de-facto definition of the US as a geopolitical player right now and Europe can't afford to pretend those two are the same.

by saubeidl

5/21/2025 at 12:45:04 PM

American values are what they are. Whether they're perceived that way is something else. And whether the people who hold those values are hypocrites or have any self-realization is irrelevant to the fact that the people believe they have and practice free speech.

by thejazzman

5/21/2025 at 9:25:00 PM

It appears you misspoke. We are clearly talking about two different things.

by trod1234

5/20/2025 at 7:10:43 PM

myth <-> reality

  (50) In the same vein, study the right wing concept of
       "free market" as an exercise.

by exceptione

5/21/2025 at 7:37:59 AM

[flagged]

by suraci

5/20/2025 at 4:19:50 PM

America? How is what Israel wants American arrogance?

by noobermin

5/20/2025 at 4:52:11 PM

Are you not familiar with the relationship between America and Israel?

by tartuffe78

5/21/2025 at 11:32:54 AM

It would be good to get a honest, objective, non ideological explanation somewhere - but almost any source I find is heavily biased.

What's your take on that relationship?

by includenotfound

5/21/2025 at 3:34:45 PM

Nothing wrong with getting information from biased sources, as long as you acknowledge the bias and read counter arguments.

I think a good place to start is what advocates for this relationship claim. As staunch proponent of Palestinian rights, I think a good starting point is to simply read what AIPAC says about this relationship: https://www.aipac.org/policy-relationship just know they have a vested interest in exaggerating how good this relationship is and lie about how important it is to strengthen it.

by runarberg

5/20/2025 at 9:06:38 PM

[dead]

by sieabahlpark

5/20/2025 at 11:46:40 PM

I clicked on this expecting it to be caused by some sort of bug. Lo and behold, to nobody's surprise, oppressors have no shame.

by Aerbil313

5/20/2025 at 2:28:33 PM

The US position on the ICC is very reasonable. Absolutely no one should agree to be under the jurisdiction of an independent international court, but at least many of its members signed on to it.

The court believes that it has jurisdiction over anyone involved in a conflict with a signatory. This is why the president is preauthorized by congress to use military force against the Netherlands, in the event that an american or allied service member is held there.

by mathgradthrow

5/20/2025 at 2:35:36 PM

This seems like a tangent. The article isn’t about whether the ICC’s jurisdiction is valid—it's about how dependent international institutions (or anyone, really) are on US-based tech providers, and how that exposes them to US executive power, like sanctions or account blocks.

I’m not convinced that “digital sovereignty” is the right framing for this problem. What I think is more important here - and probably more interesting to HN - is the fragility introduced by technological monocultures and lack of service portability. Open protocols, interoperability, and reducing concentration risk matter more than trying to build a digitally fenced-off Europe.

by fwn

5/20/2025 at 2:43:59 PM

I think either approach works.

China is definitely digitally fenced-off and you don't see it having these issues.

by saubeidl

5/20/2025 at 2:59:41 PM

> China is definitely digitally fenced-off and you don't see it having these issues.

China is the textbook example of this problem. Political power in China routinely uses infrastructure to suppress or punish those who deviate from approved positions. This is precisely the risk that the article raises.

And obviously, if the ICC were to switch to Chinese infrastructure, it would just be trading one leverage for a more active one.

by fwn

5/20/2025 at 3:07:05 PM

Now this happens in US too... ICC must use its own mail servers. Actually any government or international organization must use its own infrastructure. Dependency on any 3rd party is an attack vector.

by pk-protect-ai

5/20/2025 at 3:49:23 PM

That's a separate issue. Infrastructure is never suppressed in China because somebody outside of China disapproves of a position. The sovereignty of the Chinese state is maintained.

by saubeidl

5/20/2025 at 5:45:33 PM

> who deviate from approved positions.

That's making it sound like those approved positions are unchanging. They constantly change, and punish those that didn't change quick enough.

The anaconda in the chandelier in a locked room of blind people.

by trod1234

5/20/2025 at 4:57:29 PM

Of course its a tangent. The article is trying to talk around the fact the the ICC is a unique diplomatic object wrt the US. Bringing this fact into focus in the conversation is tangential to the article because the article fails to incorporate it.

by mathgradthrow

5/20/2025 at 5:43:16 PM

> Open protocols ... concentration risk matter more...

Well it all comes down to the incentives and money. Money printing sieves money into such titans, concentrating business. You gotta look at the banking cartel before anything else.

by trod1234

5/20/2025 at 2:31:09 PM

That position is pure hubris.

by saubeidl

5/20/2025 at 5:28:22 PM

Can you use hubris is a different sentence, so that I can make sure I inderstand what you think it means?

by mathgradthrow

5/20/2025 at 8:39:24 PM

It was imperialist hubris for Russia to attack Ukraine.

by saubeidl

5/20/2025 at 3:06:47 PM

No, the president of the US should just be considered by all to be the god-emperor of the planet.

by mystified5016

5/20/2025 at 4:47:43 PM

ICC signatories:

- Europe

- LATAM

- subsaharan Africa

ICC nonsignatories:

- US

- China

- India

- Russia

- Turkey

- Israel

- Pakistan

- Egypt

- Saudi Arabia

Hubris is imagining a situation in which The Hague Act is ever tested in the first place!

by aegypti

5/21/2025 at 12:18:47 AM

Israel never agreed to abide by the ICC and they're still trying to claim authority over Israeli actions? That's crazy.

by polski-g

5/21/2025 at 12:40:28 AM

Yeah, the ICC considers itself to have jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-parties if they're within the territory of a party to the Rome Statute.

Here the argument goes that the State of Palestine is a party, and Gaza is somehow its territory, even though it has never controlled or governed Gaza.

by dlubarov

5/21/2025 at 1:12:24 AM

The State of Palestine has two government at the moment which govern separate territories, just like Libya, Yemen, or China. Neither government of Palestine disputes the ICCs jurisdiction over Gaza. And unlike China there have been numerous attempts to unify the two governments, most of them were stopped by Israel.

I think the ICCs argument of jurisdiction is entirely reasonable, and consistent with how the court has ruled previously.

EDIT: Since this is Hacker News and we like nerdy details, I’ve linked below the 2021 ruling that established it’s jurisdiction of Palestine. The ruling was 3-1 and explicitly included the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-issues-...

by runarberg

5/21/2025 at 4:48:41 AM

Hamas' feelings about the case aren't really relevant to jurisdiction, partly because the ICC doesn't recognize Gaza as a state, and partly since Hamas hasn't accepted the ICC's jurisdiction. The latter would require Hamas to accept ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed by themselves, not only by Israel, so I don't think that would happen regardless of the statehood matter.

Libya, Yemen, and China are a bit different since they used to be unified states. It's great that there's a vision for a unified State of Palestine, but I don't think it makes any sense for the international community to pretend that exists today. In reality the current State of Palestine is represented only by the PLO, which has never controlled Gaza, not is it supported by most Gazans.

China is an interesting comparison though. Hypothetically if the PRC wanted to join the ICC, would the ICC understand that as including Taiwan, regardless of what the ROC or the people of Taiwan wanted? If so, that seems like a bad situation made possible by China's leverage, and not something the international community should try to replicate with Palestine.

by dlubarov

5/21/2025 at 7:00:43 PM

I want to make one correction, the verdict was not 3-1 but 3-0 with one of the justices issuing a Partly Dissenting Opinion, meaning they agreed with the verdict but disagreed with the reasoning (more on that later).

So you obviously disagree with the 2021 ruling of the court, and subsequently 2024 ruling which denied Israel‘s appeal to that ruling, thus reaffirming jurisdiction. That is fine. That verdict has not gone without criticism. But it is ultimately irrelevant the court’s interpretation of the Rome Statute, and Palestinian statehood is that the ICC does have jurisdiction over Gaza. In particular the verdict did not claim that Hamas needed to accept the jurisdiction.

Now I’m not very good at reading legal documents, but from what I can gather, the court determined that it “is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community.” ([1] para. 108) and that it did not want to resolve border disputes (para. 113 and para. 115). Rather the court based its ruling on the right of self determination and the Palestinian right to their own state (para. 116). For this they used internationally recognized borders which were defined in other UN resolutions.

I guess you can point out the colonial nature of such a ruling, that this in effect allows some groups to determine the rights of separate groups as long as the former is internationally recognized, but not the latter. I‘m not gonna argue for how just this system is, but this is consistent with international law, as argued by justices of the ICC, on at least two separate rulings. For better or worse, this is how international law works.

As for the partially dissenting opinion[2] as I understand it—again, I‘m not good at reading these things—disagreed that the court couldn’t determine Palestinian statehood, and argued that the Oslo accords gave Palestine their statehood, and the court derived their jurisdiction from that. This ends up being the exact same territory.

1: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/CR2...

2: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RelatedRecords/C...

by runarberg

5/21/2025 at 3:20:06 AM

[dead]

by sieabahlpark