[bawolff]

I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place.

USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given the political situation.

Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.

[vladms]

How much do you think they should spend on IT to be independent from Microsoft (serious question) ? Wikipedia mentions they employ 800 persons working in several buildings and a detention center for a budget of 141 million USD.

Microsoft O365 Business Premium per person is 22 USD per month so total per year is ~200k USD (online price, I imagine they can negotiate a bit for that amount of people).

[bawolff]

I think its a core requirement of their mission, so essentially whatever is neccesary.

Their job is to investigate war criminal despite the usa trying to block them. Its not out of the question that nsa/cia/etc would use their ties at microsoft to try and get an advanced peek at the prosecution's case.

Yes all this is expensive. Their mission is not a cheap one. Doing it right costs money.

P.s. initially i mistead and got a laugh out of the idea of wikipedia operating a detention center.

[spwa4]

Do you mean just the ICC ... or all government organizations in the same boat, just not necessarily realizing it yet, inside the EU?

[vladms]

ICC is not a government organization, is an intergovernmental organization. This will make it much harder to convince all the stakeholders and to reuse any work done somewhere else.

Many governments employ millions of people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_se...) so for them the costs of having even tens of additional workers (IT, support, etc) to maintain a system will be a lower percentage from the total budget than for an organization with only 800 employees.

[bawolff]

Well there are many member countries, the ICC maintains its own infrastructure. Its not like they have to get approval of member states to make technology decisions.

[Johnny555]

The same reason most organizations use it -- inertia and because it's been the standard for so long, it's the best at what it does.

The startup I used to work at was exclusively on OSX + GoogleDocs, when we were small, but as we grew (and especially when the Finance team grew) more and more employees found a need for the MS Office Suite as well as apps that only run on Windows, so they started rolling out Windows VM's and then full Windows machines.

[booi]

I'm curious which apps only run on Windows. We are also a MacOS + Google Workspace shop and the microsoft requirements have been slowly seeping in.

[Johnny555]

I don't know what native apps they needed Windows for (I wasn't doing IT work by then), but I was still setting up PC's when they said they needed Windows Excel (not Excel on Mac, not Office365) for some forecasting spreadsheet product they purchased - it only ran on native Excel. We gave them Windows in a VM on their Mac at first, but eventually they had more and more apps that ran on Windows and moved from Mac to Windows laptops.

[nitwit005]

It's basically the "No one gets fired for buying IBM" effect. Microsoft became the default. Everyone was familiar with it, and knew it would work.

[tharne]

People tend to underestimate the value of a solution that folks, especially less technical folks, are already trained on, comfortable with, and one that is known to work as expected.

[jay_kyburz]

This is exactly why Canva is handing out Afinity for free.

[amelius]

It was basically "if the US ever plays this card, all hell will break loose for their IT companies". So ICC and others simply assumed it would not happen.

[margorczynski]

That's a very simplistic view of what Microsoft offers. They don't sell an office software package but a very robust solution for running the software side of a business.

The OS, office package, email (server and client), calendar, cloud & backup, BI, etc. all aligned work almost seamlessly with each other (compared to the alternatives for sure).

Nothing on the market comes close and that is the reason they are worth trillions, not because they use closed formats.

[nitwit005]

I didn't say anything about what Microsoft offers.

[zie]

And you get it all for ~ $22/user a month, which is totally reasonable.

[DeathArrow]

I know how to use MS Office. All my colleagues know how to use MS Office. People want to solve their daily problems, not learn how to use new software.

[SuperNinKenDo]

I agree this is a big part of it.

Office sucks?: "Man Office sucks these days."

The "weird" alternative you expended political capital to put everyone on works slightly differently or lacks a feature out of the box?: "What were you thinking?!"

[guerrilla]

I'm sure people get killed all the time for using American services. It's just that they were all brown "terrorists", not liberal Intitutions situated in Europe, until now that is.

[munk-a]

Lobbying - and likely a fair amount of network pressure from legal systems in various nations that lean towards using office for internal documents as a default.

[repelsteeltje]

That, and it's solid, well supported software most people are familiar with.

From those doing the paperwork with Microsoft procurement for Dutch government I learned there have been legal disputes going on for years about what even constitutes "telemetry". That was a decade ago, and even then there was push to move away from Microsoft in the government. Toward open source, or even Oracle.

I suppose that with the Dutch being Dutch all the lobbying M$ needed was suggesting a discount.

[walletdrainer]

The main problem is that 365 is just far cheaper than the competitors for environments like this, maintaining and supporting an open source alternative would be an incredibly expensive undertaking.

[jay_kyburz]

Maintaining ans support sounds like an opportunity for some EU businesses to me.

Sweet gov contracts.

[walletdrainer]

Yes, but to get something nearly as good as 365 would realistically cost 100x as much as just buying from Microsoft.

Who would you even hire to do this? A big consulting firm known for delivering poor quality software, or an unproven startup? What kind of a process could you use to make such a selection in a way that would ensure a good outcome?

It’s the same as the old libreoffice vs. MS office debate. Yeah, you can download libreoffice for free. It sucks. What sucks even more though is how much money you will spend on support, training and all the inevitable productivity losses associated with weird software that approximately nobody you hire will have experience with.

[repelsteeltje]

In theory, yes, it could be...

But these are "European Tenders", which in practice usually translates to: race-to-the-bottom. Unless the tender was phrased specifically, from its very first inception, to aim at some polical goal - like open source, sovereignty, innovation, inclusiveness, etc.

[cachius]

When I think of Teams, I don’t think of solid, well supported software.

[iso1631]

No doubt they started using it in the 90s when you bought a copy of software, and Microsoft had no control over your computer.

[thewebguyd]

The story of Microsoft's stack in a nutshell and why everyone is still so dependent on it. Migration is hard, and it only gets harder the longer you've built yourself on top of a particular technology.

Microsoft offered what basically amounted to "IT in a box." You got identity, email/groupware, an office suite, and an OS that ran on just about any IBM compatible PC and your own servers. You paid for the license, and then you controlled and hosted it after that. Microsoft was content to let you do whatever the hell you wanted with their software, and stuck to their promise to not break shit (backward compatibility for Win32).

That everything is now cloud hosted and stuffed with telemetry was a big rug pull, but it's not like everyone could just up and migrate to something else (and what else, for that matter, there's not much out there that matches). It was literally just this year that on-prem exchange support ended for the one-time purchase license, but even then on-prem is still available via subscription.

Microsoft gave every incentive in the world to get enterprises to stick with their stack, and it worked, so it's no wonder people are just now starting to panic a little and look for alternatives.

[bawolff]

They were created july 2022. USA started threatening one month later in august.

[iso1631]

The ICC was created in 2022?

[bawolff]

Sorry, i meant to say 2002

[cge]

>I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place.

Public institutions in Europe, in my experience, often have a confusing insistence on using Microsoft cloud products. Universities heavily push Office 365 and Teams, often trying to demand that faculty use them, while faculty continue to use alternatives as much as possible in order to actually work effectively. During the pandemic, the only online conferences I attended that insisted on running via Teams, against all reason, were run by a UK public institution, and they had as many embarrassing technical problems as might be expected.

This is despite Microsoft's cloud services being generally designed for businesses and often poorly suited for public institutions, especially universities. The services are fundamentally built with the assumption that work will primarily take place within a single organization, with clearly defined employees. European research collaborations constantly seem to be hobbled by needing to use hacks around this assumption, but the inexplicable importance of using Microsoft seems to outweigh these problems. In the most ridiculous case, a conference online during the pandemic asked everyone during registration to please not register using their university email address, but to use a personal one not associated with any Office 365 account, because they had no way of allowing access to Teams if the email address was managed by Microsoft at a different university. Yet still the importance of using Teams was paramount to the organizers.

I have had no clear explanation of why using Microsoft services is so important, despite them being so poorly suited to the institutions, so opposed (and often just not used) by many of the actual users, and arguably being used in ways that they are not really intended to be used. I've had some people claim it is necessary for GDPR compliance, despite the GDPR compliance of any US company being on shaky ground. Microsoft itself has described what seem like rather extensive contingency plans around US-enforced GDPR violations or requirements for service cutoffs (there is a blog post somewhere), but these must also imply a fear that such things could actually happen (and, of course, actually did happen with the ICC). It all seems rather strange.

[kergonath]

> I think the bigger question is why they were using microsoft products in the first place.

There used to be this quaint idea of rule of law and things like that. We can always argue that governments were happy to get dirty and occasionally illegal, and they certainly were. But a) it was universally seen as a bad thing, and b) no country would have done it so blatantly and openly. Perversely, this narrative was important to advance the US’ interests because it opened opportunities for American companies to go deep into foreign administrations. Which they did.

So yeah, the clock ticked and now we’re in a new and exciting era for geopolitics and who knows what system will prevail in the end. What is certain is that the US abdicated their leadership.

> USA has been very hostile to the ICC under trump, but its not exactly a huge shift, bush was also incredibly hostile. It seems borderline incompetent to use a microsoft cloud offering given the political situation.

There is a difference between hostility as in "we won’t take part and won’t cooperate in any way" and "we’re also going to pressure private companies to steal your stuff". The ICC is also full of NATO countries and allies so any form of hostility has to be calibrated to keep them on your side. If you care about alliances, that is.

> Not to mention given the type of work they do, seems like hosting stuff off site at all is a bad plan.

Indeed. To be fair, it seems like a bad plan for most large companies with anything that looks like industrial secrets, let alone a government or such a supra-national organisation.

[themgt]

> So yeah, the clock ticked and now we’re in a new and exciting era for geopolitics and who knows what system will prevail in the end. What is certain is that the US abdicated their leadership.

In fact John Yoo, most famous for authoring the "Torture Memos" for Dubya over 20 years ago, has been perhaps the most prominent legal thinker arguing in favor of the actions Trump's taken against the ICC:

What can the incoming Trump administration do? It could impose severe sanctions on the ICC judges and its prosecutor, Karim Ahmad Khan, who engineered this debacle, by blocking their ability to transact business through our banking system, for example. It could threaten severe sanctions against any nation that arrested Netanyahu or Gallant pursuant to the ICC warrants. It could also display its contempt for the ICC by inviting the Israeli premier to the White House and Congress.

Furthermore, the Trump administration should take action against nations that are funding and supporting the ICC so generously. Some of the ICC’s largest financial benefactors, including Japan and the European Union nations, are also dependent on the United States for their security. Yet while asking Washington, D.C., to protect them, they finance a global institution that hamstrings our ability to do so. If Tokyo, for example, wants the United States to lead a new alliance to contain China, Trump can demand that Japan eliminate its subsidy for an international institution that seeks to undermine the American national sovereignty he was elected to restore.

There's a nearly straight through-line from the logic and approach to executive power Yoo helped architect under Bush and these attacks on the ICC under Trump. It's just that many have decided to bizarrely retcon the Bush administration into respected elder statesman instead of the lawless war criminals they were and are.

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

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/why-international-arrest-warrants...

[kergonath]

> In fact John Yoo, most famous for authoring the "Torture Memos" for Dubya over 20 years ago, has been perhaps the most prominent legal thinker arguing in favor of the actions Trump's taken against the ICC

True. Trump did not appear suddenly out of nowhere and he’s only able to do what he does thanks to people who prepared for this and have been pushing us down the slope for the last couple of decades. Thanks for the quote, it’s important we remember this sort of things.

> It's just that many have decided to bizarrely retcon the Bush administration into respected elder statesman instead of the lawless war criminals they were and are.

I think that’s the fact that Bush is at least able to finish a sentence. But yeah, you’re right. It was the golden age of enhanced interrogation techniques by masked men in black in illegal prisons in foreign countries.

[immibis]

I don't think that Trump himself really thinks all the things he's pushing for - I think most of it is coming from people who aren't him, and he's just the figurehead. It's not clear he's capable of understanding what he's doing, at this point, since he has dementia. I think the more emotional-outburst type stuff, like "You have 100% tariffs? We'll have 200% tariffs!" is him though.

[tiahura]

Because libreoffice is so poor.

[lysace]

USA has been very hostile to the ICC since way before Trump.

The ICC was created in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president of the USA. He never ratified the Rome treaty. And then GW, Obama, Trump and Biden didn't either.

Very few americans batted an eye as far as I could tell. Your are after all by definition exceptional. (/s)

[tharne]

This is not a U.S. specific issue. Once you strip away all of the formalities, titles, and ceremonies, you'll realize there's no such thing as international law, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word.

The law, by definition is a rule backed up by the use of force, specifically state-sanctioned violence. If you write a law but do not have the ability to use a sufficient amount violence to enforce it when needed, you don't have a law at all, you just have a suggestion around how you'd like people and countries to behave.

The only way you could ever have anything resembling "international law", would be to have some sort of global military or police force capable of exerting enough violence to ensure that the law is followed, and I'm not even sure how such a thing would work.

[lukan]

There is international law. It is made up of all the treaties the big and small powers implemented together. But yes, not much is left now, but I would argue before Bush and 9/11 .. it was in a way better shape.

Global military is not necessary, just consensus to enforce it.

Practical example, there is no EU military, but there surely are EU laws EU members have to follow.

[stackskipton]

>Practical example, there is no EU military, but there surely are EU laws EU members have to follow.

EU has other levers to enforce compliance like ejection from Eurozone or Schengen Area.

Global military is required to enforce it because biggest stick wins. Many countries thinks Russia should be removed from Ukraine but no one has stepped up to provide the military to do so, ergo, in violation of international law they remain.

[lukan]

"Many countries thinks Russia should be removed from Ukraine but no one has stepped up to provide the military to do so, ergo, in violation of international law they remain."

I would argue, or rather I know many people from poorer countries argue, that why should they care that russia violates international law etc. if the US blatantly ignored it when they invaded Iraq? In other words, it is the same international like it is in the EU, just with less trust. Also the EU might fail (and there are challenges) if too many members act against the common interest. Then the enforcement will fail and so will all of EU.

(also, with international support and china not backing russia ... it would have worked without military involvement. Then the sanctioned would have worked. So ... some countries are just happy for the cheap bargain for russian oil)

[lysace]

Trade is a vector, obviously.

[bawolff]

> The only way you could ever have anything resembling "international law", would be to have some sort of global military or police force capable of exerting enough violence to ensure that the law is followed, and I'm not even sure how such a thing would work.

I'd push back a little bit on this. Much international law is just based on recipricol alturism. Chemical weapons are illegal. Why? Because they are a pain, and it sucks for both sides when they are used, so both sides have an interest in banning them.

I know its a hard cry from hard enforcement (to be clear hard enforcement does happen sometimes. E.g. UN interventions or even the ICC), but soft power is not nothing.

Its more like the sort of thing like how if you are a rude party guest you dont get invited to the. Sure its not the same as cops. At the same time most party guests are reasonably polite as a result of this pressure.

I know its not much, but i dont think we should count this out either.

[epistasis]

> Bill Clinton was president of the USA. He never ratified the Rome treaty. And then GW, Obama, Trump and Biden didn't either.

Small point of order, but it is the Senate that ratifies treaties and not presidents. The Senate is heavily biased to overrepresent rural areas, which tend to be very conservative, and only 40% of senators can stop any ratification. The ICC has been the subject of massive amounts of conspiracy theories and misinformation in conservative media, so there's approximately zero chance that it could ever be ratified, unless the Senate's structure was made more representative of the people of the US rather than a conspiracy-minded subset.

If the Senate was a democratic representation of the will of the US it would not be hard to ratify the treaty.

[lysace]

Fair. Clinton signed it on his last day in office but didn't submit it to the senate for ratification. Seems like he wanted it both ways.

[epistasis]

You're probably very right on that, Clinton listened to Kissinger on foreign policy and somebody like Kissinger is very much at risk if the US follows international law.

[chvid]

No one thought the US would get this insane.

[perihelions]

> "The American Service-Members' Protection Act, known informally as the Hague Invasion Act[1] [sic] (ASPA, Title 2 of Pub. L. 107–206 (text) (PDF), H.R. 4775, 116 Stat. 820, enacted August 2, 2002) is"

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

[bawolff]

I dont know, when bush threatened to invade the netherlands over the ICC, that was pretty insane, and in some ways worse than sanctions.

[chvid]

Sure. But no one thought it, or anything like it, would actually happened.