According to a joint investigation by The Guardian, + 972 Magazine, and Local Call, Israel’s elite cyber-intelligence unit kept sizable amounts of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft’s cloud servers.
The secretive intelligence branch of the Israeli military, Unit 8200, has been building the surveillance system since 2022. The device makes it possible for the unit to capture and retain recordings of millions of Palestinian calls made every day in the West Bank and Gaza.
Leaked Microsoft documents and testimonies from 11 sources, including those from Israeli military intelligence and the company, were the source of the revelations that were initially reported on Wednesday.
According to the leaks, a significant portion of the data appeared to be being stored on Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands and Ireland, according to the Guardian.
According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based system influenced operations across the occupied Palestinian territories and prevented deadly airstrikes.
According to Microsoft, Satya Nadella, who had a meeting with Yossi Sariel’s commander in Unit 8200 in 2021, was unaware of the nature of the stored data. No “evidence has been found” that Azure or its artificial intelligence (AI) tools were being “used to target or harm people,” according to the company.
The revelations follow Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory,’s report identifying the businesses supporting Israel’s occupation and occupation of Gaza.
According to the report, Microsoft, which has been in Israel since 1991, has begun integrating its technologies into the country’s military, police, prisons, schools, and settlements.
The business has developed ties to Israeli defense since 2003, acquiring cybersecurity and surveillance start-ups, and embedding its systems in military operations. An Israeli colonel referred to cloud services like those provided by Microsoft as “a weapon in every way” in 2024.
According to The Guardian, Nadella reportedly offered to help with Sariel’s effort to move large amounts of military intelligence into the cloud according to internal records at Microsoft.
According to a Microsoft statement that the Guardian cited, “is not accurate” to say that he personally supported the project.
Later, Microsoft engineers collaborated with Israeli intelligence to incorporate security measures into Azure, enabling the transfer of up to 70% of Unit 8200’s sensitive data.
Despite Israeli officials’ claims that the technology halts attacks, Unit 8200 sources claimed that the system randomly collects communications, which are frequently used to detain or blackmail Palestinians. One source quoted as saying, “When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason,” “that’s where they find the excuse.”
According to some sources, the stored data was used to justify killings and detentions.
The expansion of the system caused a wider shift in Israeli surveillance, moving from targeted tracking to comprehensive monitoring of the Palestinian population. Text messages reportedly receive risk scores based on a set of trigger words, such as martyrdom or weapons-related discussions.
Sariel had long advocated cloud-based surveillance and left in 2024 as a result of Israel’s intelligence failure on October 7, 2023.
The surveillance program is still active as Israel’s war against Gaza drags on, with more than 61 Palestinians killed, among them 18, 000 children. According to sources, military operations are still being conducted using the existing data and AI tools.
Source: Aljazeera
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