Microsoft president Brad Smith hosted an impromptu press convention on Tuesday afternoon, simply hours after protesters gained entry to a constructing on the firm’s headquarters and held a sit-in demonstration inside his office.
Seated on the sting of his desk, within the workplace that had been occupied by protesters earlier that day, Smith addressed a bunch of reporters and viewers on a stay stream. “Clearly, this was an uncommon day,” he mentioned, the digital camera shaking as he spoke.
The protesters had been a part of the No Azure for Apartheid group, which on several occasions this yr interrupted Microsoft’s public shows to demand that the corporate terminate all contracts with the Israeli authorities and army.
Smith mentioned that Microsoft is “dedicated to making sure its human rights ideas and contractual phrases of service are upheld within the Center East.” He mentioned the corporate launched an investigation earlier this month after the Guardian reported that Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was getting used for surveillance of Palestinians. Smith mentioned that Microsoft disagreed with a number of the report’s findings, however that others warranted investigation.
“We’re working every single day to resolve what’s occurring, and we are going to,” Smith mentioned.
An organizer for No Azure for Apartheid, Abdo Mohamed, earlier today told The Verge that Microsoft workers Riki Fameli and Anna Hattle had been a part of the protest. They had been joined by former Microsoft workers Vaniya Agrawal, Hossam Nasr, and Joe Lopez.
Smith mentioned that seven folks in complete had been concerned with at present’s protests, with two of them being Microsoft workers. The folks had been eliminated by Redmond police, he mentioned.
“When seven people do as they did at present, storm a constructing, occupy an workplace, lock different folks out of the workplace, plant listening units — even in crude type, within the type of telephones, cellphones hidden beneath couches and behind books — that’s not okay,” Smith mentioned. “Once they’re requested to go away and so they refused, that’s not okay.”