Microsoft claimed that the Israeli military had breached its terms of service by using Azure to store data gathered from widespread Palestinian surveillance.
Microsoft’s vice chair and president, Brad Smith, confirmed that the company has cancelled some of its services to the Israeli military due to concerns that the military is breaking its terms of service by using the company’s cloud computing software to spy on millions of Palestinians.
Smith responded to an August 6 joint investigation by The Guardian newspaper, +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call by writing in a blog post on Thursday that the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services” to a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
According to the report, the Israeli military’s Unit 8200 stored phone call data gathered through widespread surveillance in the occupied West Bank and war-torn Gaza on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.
The Israeli military’s top cyberwarfare unit, Unit 8200, is in charge of conducting covert operations, such as gathering signal intelligence and conducting surveillance.
According to the journalists’ investigation, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Unit 8200 leader Yossi Sariel agreed to work together to transfer significant amounts of sensitive intelligence data into the company’s Azure platform after meeting in 2021.
The procedure, which has been in place since 2022, enables Unit 8200 to gather, replay, and analyse the phone conversations of millions of Palestinians by leveraging Azure’s nearly infinite storage and processing power.
According to Unit 8200 sources who spoke to news outlets, the cloud-based system also assisted Israel in directing lethal airstrikes and directing operations throughout the occupied Palestinian territory. The study also found that a significant portion of the Palestinian data seemed to be kept on Microsoft Azure servers situated in the Netherlands and Ireland.
According to Smith of Microsoft, the company examined the report’s claims “based on two principles” and came to the conclusion that the Israeli military data storage was against the company’s terms of service.
First off, we don’t offer technology that makes mass surveillance of civilians possible. We have consistently pushed for this principle for over 20 years, and we have implemented it in every nation on the planet,” he stated.
“Secondly, we uphold and defend our clients’ right to privacy,” Smith continued.
Smith acknowledged that some Israeli Defence Ministry subscriptions, including “specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies,” had been cancelled, but he did not identify which Israeli unit was losing access to Microsoft services.
The use of Microsoft products by the Israeli military increased following the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, which were led by Hamas, and the outbreak of the devastating war in Gaza, according to a February report from the Associated Press news agency.
In a similar vein, it revealed that the Israeli military was employing enormous amounts of AI-enabled language translation services and gigabytes of cloud storage for mass surveillance, which were then cross-checked with AI systems to determine who should be the target of airstrikes.
Microsoft admitted in May that it had helped find and rescue Israeli hostages in the besieged enclave and had sold cutting-edge AI and cloud computing services to the Israeli military during its war on Gaza.
However, the company asserted that after conducting an internal investigation, it discovered “no evidence” that Azure was being used to harm or target individuals.
Microsoft hired an outside law firm to conduct a second review after the August news investigation.
Although that investigation is still in progress, Smith claimed that it had already found proof that its products were being used against its terms of service.
Hailed as a “unprecedented win,” Hossam Nasr, one of over a dozen Microsoft employees arrested or fired for protesting the company’s role in the Gaza war, stated that the “The majority of Microsofts deal with the Israeli military is still active.”
According to Nasr, Microsoft has only turned off a limited portion of its services for a single Israeli military unit.
