Microsoft cuts off Israel’s Unit 8200 from cloud services after surveillance revelations
Guardian report triggers investigation; Brad Smith cites misuse of Azure for mass monitoring of Palestinians.
Microsoft has blocked Israel’s Unit 8200 from accessing some of its cloud services, following revelations by The Guardian that the intelligence unit had used Microsoft’s platforms for surveillance operations. According to the investigation, the IDF’s Unit 8200 stored recordings of millions of calls made by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and used the company’s computing tools to analyze the data.
“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,” Microsoft’s president and vice chair, Brad Smith, said in a statement on Thursday. The announcement comes after months of employee protests within the company over its ties to Israel, including a demonstration in which staff occupied Smith’s office.
In August, The Guardian, in collaboration with the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine, reported that Unit 8200 had amassed some 8,000 terabytes of intercepted phone calls through Azure. The unit reportedly adopted an unofficial mantra of “a million calls an hour” to describe its data collection goals.
Roughly a week and a half after publication of the report, Microsoft opened an internal investigation. Smith said the probe was based on an examination of corporate records, financial statements, contracts, and internal correspondence, rather than direct access to Unit 8200’s data. “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.
Based on these findings, Microsoft notified Israel’s Ministry of Defense that it was suspending and revoking access to cloud storage, AI tools, and other services for both the ministry and Unit 8200. “The steps we are taking [are] to ensure compliance with our terms of service, focused on ensuring our services are not used for mass surveillance of civilians,” Smith said.
He emphasized, however, that the decision does not affect Microsoft’s ongoing work on cybersecurity for Israel and other countries in the Middle East. “Our review is ongoing. I’ll share more information in the coming days and weeks, when it’s appropriate to do so, including lessons learned from this review and how we will apply those lessons as we go forward,” added Smith.
The IDF and Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
