Microsoft's Ethical Reckoning Is Here

Microsoft has become the latest company dragged into the tech industry's ethical reckoning over the use of its products by government agencies. On Sunday, critics noted a blog post from January in which Microsoft touted its work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The post celebrated a government certification that allowed Microsoft Azure, the company's cloud-computing platform, to handle sensitive unclassified information for ICE. The sales-driven blog post outlined ways that ICE might use Azure Government, including enabling ICE employees to "utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification," Tom Keane, a general manager at Microsoft wrote. "The agency is currently implementing transformative technologies for homeland security and public safety, and we're proud to support this work with our mission-critical cloud," the post added.