Microsoft Suspends Some Technology Access to Israel Over Surveillance of Palestinians

In a significant move, American tech giant Microsoft has revoked some of its technology usage rights granted to the Israeli military, which was reportedly used to monitor Palestinians. The company had provided various technological tools that allowed Israel to collect data on everyday phone calls made by Palestinians living in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

According to a report by The Guardian on Thursday, September 25, Microsoft informed Israeli officials late last week that Israel’s elite military intelligence unit, Unit 8200, had violated the company’s terms of service. The Israeli military had been storing extensive surveillance data on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure.

Last month, The Guardian published an investigative report revealing how Unit 8200 used Azure to build a massive surveillance infrastructure, storing and analyzing the communication data of Palestinians. The investigation was conducted jointly with the Israel-Palestine owned magazine +972 and the Hebrew-language news outlet Local Call.

Following the report, Microsoft canceled permissions for Unit 8200 to use some of its technologies, although the Israeli military continues to use many other Microsoft services.

The use of Microsoft’s technology by the Israeli military for monitoring Palestinians has drawn widespread criticism recently. The project began in 2021 after a meeting between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and then-commander of Unit 8200, Yossi Sariel.

After The Guardian report, Microsoft ordered an external review by independent experts to investigate the allegations. Based on preliminary findings, Microsoft suspended certain cloud storage and artificial intelligence (AI) services.

Unit 8200 leveraged Azure’s vast data storage and computing capabilities to create a broad surveillance system. Through this system, Israeli officials collected metadata on phone calls made by the entire Palestinian population. The calls were recorded, reviewed, and analyzed extensively.

The scope of the project was reportedly comparable to that of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). One Israeli military intelligence source described the ambition behind the program as “one million calls per hour.”