Microsoft is investigating how Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, is using its Azure cloud storage platform, amid concerns the company’s staff in Israel may have concealed key details about its work on sensitive military projects. The investigation follows a Guardian report revealing how Unit 8200 has used Azure to store a vast collection of intercepted Palestinian mobile phone calls.
According to sources familiar with the situation, senior executives at Microsoft are scrambling to assess what data Unit 8200 holds in Azure and re-examine how it is being used by the Israeli military in its war on Gaza. The company’s leadership has raised doubts about the veracity of the information received from some employees in Israel who manage the company’s relationship with the military.
A Guardian investigation, conducted in partnership with +972 Magazine and Local Call, found that Unit 8200 has used a customised and segregated area within Azure to store recordings of millions of calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank. Intelligence drawn from the enormous repository of phone calls held in the cloud has been used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza, according to Unit 8200 sources.
The leaked files reviewed by the Guardian suggest that Microsoft, including senior executives, was aware that Unit 8200 planned to move large volumes of sensitive and classified intelligence data into Azure as the company began working with the unit in 2021. However, the company insists that its executives were not aware that Azure was being used by Unit 8200 to store the content of intercepted Palestinian calls.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company “takes these allegations seriously, as shown by our previous independent investigation. As we receive new information, we’re committed to making sure we have a chance to validate any new data and take any needed action.”
The company has not yet launched a formal review into its work with the Israeli military, but sources suggest that executives are concerned about whether some employees in Israel may have felt more bound to their country’s military rather than to their employer.
A worker-led group, No Azure for Apartheid, has issued a series of demands, including that the company cut off and “make all ties to the Israeli military publicly known.” Abdo Mohamed, an organizer with the group, said Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and other executives “claim they are unaware of how their company colluded with the Israeli regime to profit from Palestinian suffering while being the very ones who committed Microsoft to this partnership in 2021.”
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has said that Microsoft is not and has not been working with the IDF on the storage or processing of data, a statement that has been met with surprise by Microsoft’s leadership. Several Microsoft sources said it is not a secret that the company provides cloud storage to the military under contracts with Israel’s defence ministry.