Microsoft cuts Israeli military off cloud services over mass surveillance of Palestinians
Microsoft has cut off an Israeli military intelligence unit from its cloud services after discovering the agency was using the platform to conduct mass surveillance of Palestinians, the tech giant said on Thursday.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and vice chair, said the company opened the review after an investigation by the Guardian newspaper alleged activity by a unit of the Israeli military.
The investigation said that an Israeli military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, used Microsoft’s Azure to store large volumes of mobile phone call recordings from Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.
“We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades,” Smith said in an email to staff.
Microsoft has informed the Israeli defence ministry of its “decision to cease and disable specified IMOD subscriptions and their services, including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies.”
The action does not impact Microsoft’s cybersecurity services to Israel and other countries in the Middle East, Smith said.
Microsoft’s decision comes after mounting pressure from employees and investors concerned about the company’s ties to Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Microsoft’s suspension of cloud services for Israeli army unit a first step
This all came from a joint investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call, who in early August revealed that in 2021 the CEO of Microsoft had a meeting with the head of unit 8200, at the military spy agency of Israel.
And shortly after that, Israel began using Microsoft’s massive data storage, cloud computing servers in the Netherlands and Ireland to basically hoover up all of the communications on cellphones in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and then store them. It became a search for the Israeli military.
However, once the Gaza bombardment began, the Israeli military reportedly used this database for military targeting. At the time, Microsoft said it had no idea this could be happening and that its massive data centres were being used for that purpose.
An internal review began, and this is the first result [Microsoft on Thursday said it disabled a set of cloud and AI services used].
Sure Microsoft had no idea... Lavender AI powered by Azure.
Lavender & Where’s Daddy: How Israel Used AI to Form Kill Lists & Bomb Palestinians in Their Homes
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/5/israel_ai
The Israeli publications +972 and Local Call have exposed how the Israeli military used an artificial intelligence program known as Lavender to develop a “kill list” in Gaza that includes as many as 37,000 Palestinians who were targeted for assassination with little human oversight. A second AI system known as “Where’s Daddy?” tracked Palestinians on the kill list and was purposely designed to help Israel target individuals when they were at home at night with their families.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/23/israeli-military-gaza-war-microsoft
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-customer-ai-cloud
