Microsoft Blocks Israel's Access To Its Technology For Mass Surveillance In Gaza: Report

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Microsoft said Thursday that it has disabled access to its cloud-based storage and artificial intelligence subscriptions for a unit within the Israeli military. The move follows an internal review prompted by an investigative report in The Guardian and the Associated Press, which alleged that the unit used Microsoft's technology to conduct mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

According to The Guardian, the technology enabled Tel Aviv to intercept and collect millions of phone calls daily made by Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank.

Earlier, the software company faced protests by some of its employees, who accused the company of being complicit in the abuse of human rights by Israel in Gaza.

Late last week, Microsoft informed Israeli officers from Unit 8200, the elite spy agency of the Israeli military, that they had flouted its terms of service by using the Azure cloud platform to store a huge cache of data.

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This decision came in the wake of an investigation carried out by the Associated Press and The Guardian into Microsoft's relationship with Unit 8200, which revealed how the Israeli Ministry of Defense had been using the tech major's Azure platform to aid in the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.

In August, The Guardian, in collaboration with the Israeli-Palestinian publication 972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, reported that the commander of Unit 8200, Yossi Sariel, had met directly with Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella in 2021. Following this meeting, the Israeli unit then used Microsoft's products to develop an AI-powered mass surveillance system capable of intercepting, translating and analysing millions of telephone calls made daily by Palestinian civilians.

Following the reports, Microsoft initiated an external inquiry into its relationship with Unit 8200. The findings led to the cancellation of the unit's access to Microsoft's AI tools and cloud storage.

Azure's limitless storage capacity and computing power had reportedly enabled the unit to build a system capable of mass surveillance of the entire Palestinian population.

Around 8,000 terabytes of intercepted call data were being stored in the US tech giant's data centre located in the Netherlands. Following the release of the investigation's findings, the unit moved the data out of the Netherlands' facility.

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A source familiar with the matter told The Guardian that Unit 8200 is now planning to migrate the data to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. However, neither AWS nor the Israeli Defense Forces has confirmed or denied said report.

Brad Smith, Microsoft's President and Vice Chair, said in an internal email to the staff,“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.”

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