Microsoft equipped Israel’s "indiscriminate" Palestinian surveillance operation with Azure cloud tech, claims report

"Incredibly almighty marque moment" sparks renewed calls for Microsoft and Xbox boycotts

A caller associated probe betwixt the Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian work +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call has claimed that Microsoft person worked with the Israeli subject to store surveillance information connected Palestinian civilians successful Azure servers overseas, with immoderate of that information allegedly being utilized to probe and place bombing targets. The study has led to renewed calls for crippled developers and players to articulation the precocious launched Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions run against Microsoft and Xbox gaming products and services - successful particular, Minecraft, Call Of Duty, Candy Crush, and Game Pass.

The study is based connected interviews with 11 sources from Microsoft and the Israeli military, positive entree to a cache of leaked Microsoft documents. In precocious 2021, the Guardian portion begins, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with Yossi Sariel, the commandant of Israel's subject surveillance bureau Unit 8200, to sermon plans for storing quality information connected Microsoft unreality servers. According to the report's sources, the inspiration for these proposals was that Israel's subject did not person the retention abstraction oregon computing powerfulness to grip the magnitude of information they wanted to cod and process.

The alleged effect of that speech was a cloud-based strategy that became operational successful 2022, and has been utilized to stitchery "indiscriminate" recordings of Palestinian telephone calls successful the West Bank and Gaza. According to the report, arsenic of July this twelvemonth astir 11,500 terabytes of Israeli subject information were being held successful Microsoft Azure servers successful the Netherlands, portion a smaller proportionality were stored successful Ireland, though not each of this information whitethorn beryllium from Unit 8200.

"Thanks to the power it exerts implicit Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, Israel has agelong intercepted telephone calls successful the occupied territories," the study notes. "But the indiscriminate caller strategy allows quality officers to play backmost the contented of cellular calls made by Palestinians, capturing the conversations of a overmuch larger excavation of mean civilians." One of the investigation's sources besides explains however these telephone recordings whitethorn person been utilized to program airstrikes, commenting that quality officers would usage the cloud-based strategy to analyse calls made by radical successful the vicinity of an idiosyncratic target.

Sariel yet resigned his presumption successful September 2024 successful effect to disapproval for failing to expect the astonishment Hamas-led attacks connected Israeli civilians successful October 2023, which near implicit a 1000 dormant with hundreds taken hostage. According to this week's Guardian report, helium was accused of prioritising fancy caller exertion implicit older surveillance methods.

But the cloud-based strategy helium allegedly developed with Microsoft's assistance is said to stay successful usage alongside AI-driven people proposal tools, arsenic the Israeli subject continues a punitive and open-ended battle connected Gaza that has killed implicit 60,000 people, the bulk of them civilians, and near hundreds of thousands much stateless and starving.

The study argues that Microsoft had immoderate consciousness during improvement of the strategy that it was being utilized to cod telephone calls and facilitate airstrikes. It cites interior records that amusement that during the archetypal 2021 gathering with Nadella, Sariel referred lone to "sensitive workloads" of concealed data, not the retention of Palestinian telephone calls. But it adds that "documents suggest that Microsoft engineers understood the information stored successful Azure would see earthy intelligence, including audio files" and that Israel-based Microsoft staff, who allegedly see erstwhile members of Unit 8200, look to person known astir the project's wide objectives.

The study besides references files that amusement that Microsoft executives anticipated hundreds successful millions of dollars successful gross from the project, calling it "an incredibly almighty marque moment" for Azure.

Back successful May, Microsoft confirmed that they had supplied exertion to the Israeli subject for usage successful Gaza. But they insisted that they had recovered "no evidence" that it was being utilized to people oregon harm Palestinians, citing an outer reappraisal carried retired by an unnamed 3rd party.

They person besides pushed backmost connected this week's claims, with a Microsoft spokesperson telling the Guardian that they person "no information" connected the information being stored successful the unreality by Unit 8200. "At nary clip during this engagement," the spokesperson added, "has Microsoft been alert of the surveillance of civilians oregon postulation of their cellphone conversations utilizing Microsoft's services, including done the outer reappraisal it commissioned."

Asked astir Nadella and Sariel's relationship, the spokesperson continued that the CEO "attended for 10 minutes astatine the extremity of the meeting" and determination was "no discussion" of the nonstop contented of the "sensitive workloads" above.

Notwithstanding Microsoft's comments, this week's quality has fuelled calls to articulation the BDS boycott, with immoderate participants pointing retired that this doesn't person to mean parting ways wholly with immoderate and each Microsoft services. "BDS has a lasting boycott people connected Microsoft products which radical tin realistically driblet from their lives, knowing that not everyone tin alteration their operating system," wrote Kitsune Tails pb creator and gameplay decorator Allison Shabet successful a Bluesky station yesterday.

In different Bluesky thread, crippled decorator and writer Austin Walker added that "I've evidently been saying this a batch lately, but BDS does not expect anyone to driblet everything made by Microsoft each astatine once. They prime precise circumstantial targets successful bid to get arsenic wide a conjugation arsenic possible, and successful the lawsuit of Xbox, adjacent suggest antithetic tiers of engagement." You tin work much astir the BDS Xbox boycott here.