Microsoft Cuts Off Access to Tech That Israel Used to Surveil Palestinians

Microsoft announced Thursday that it is cutting off access to some of its services provided to a unit of Israel’s Ministry of Defense after learning that its technology was used to conduct a mass surveillance campaign against Palestinian citizens.

The agency within the Israel Defense Forces is known as Unit 8200, a spying unit that is known for its role in collecting signal intelligence and conducting cyberwarfare. Through reporting from The Guardian earlier this year, it was revealed that the unit was collecting and storing recordings of cellular calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The report indicated that the agency was collecting millions of calls every day and storing and processing them through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. The Guardian reported that as much as 8,000 terabytes of data collected by Unit 8200 was stored within Microsoft’s data center in the Netherlands.

Microsoft, in a blog post from company president Brad Smith, publicly confirmed some of the reporting. “While our review is ongoing, we have found evidence that supports elements of The Guardian’s reporting. This evidence includes information relating to IMOD consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services,” Smith wrote. As a result, the company “cease and disable” certain services provided to Unit 8200, “including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies.”

Notably, he seemed to stop short of acknowledging the mass surveillance campaign directly, explaining that “we do not access our customers’ content in this type of investigation,” and stating that “We have reviewed this decision with IMOD and the steps we are taking to ensure compliance with our terms of service, focused on ensuring our services are not used for mass surveillance of civilians.”

While Smith may not have directly identified the surveillance program, the move to disable access to its services marks a stark contrast from where the company stood just a few months ago. In May, Microsoft declared there was “no evidence” that its technologies were used to target or harm Palestinians. It’s unlikely that Unit 8200 only launched its mass surveillance net after that investigation. According to reporting from The Guardian, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella met with the head of Unit 8200 in late 2021 to discuss hosting intelligence material on Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Microsoft’s decision both to review and cancel (at least for the time being) its contracts with Unit 8200 comes in the wake of an ongoing pressure campaign from the company’s own employees to end financial arrangements with the Israeli government, which is in the middle of committing what the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) recently declared a genocide. The organization No Azure for Apartheid has organized a number of actions directed at Microsoft, including disrupting Nadella’s presentation during Microsoft’s Build Conference and demonstrating during one of the company’s 50th anniversary events. Last month, the group organized a sit-in that occupied Smith’s office, resulting in multiple employees who participated in the demonstration being fired.

“Today’s news is a significant and unprecedented win for the campaign and our organizing. Within less than a month of our sit-in in Brad Smith’s office, Microsoft has taken the significant decision to become the first US tech company to stop the sale of some technologies to the Israeli military since the start of the genocide in Gaza,” Hossam Nasr, an organizer with No Azure for Apartheid and a former Microsoft worker, told Gizmodo. “This crack in the wall of Microsoft’s steadfast support of Israel’s genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine has only been possible because of our sustained pressure and organizing for the past two years.”

Nasr made a point to call out that Microsoft has only disabled “a small subset of services to only one unit in the Israeli military,” and that “the vast majority of Microsoft’s contract with the Israeli military remains intact.” Smith, in his statement, suggests the same. “Microsoft continues to do to protect the cybersecurity of Israel and other countries in the Middle East, including under the Abraham Accords,” he wrote.

“While Palestinians continue to be bombed, killed, ethnically cleansed, and forcibly starved by the Israeli military, it is unconscionable and morally indefensible for Microsoft to continue providing any technology whatsoever to that military. The decision today only motivates us more to continue our organizing until all of our demands are met, and until Palestine is free,” Nasr said.