Microsoft cuts Israel's access to AI surveillance technology used against Palestinians

American technology giant Microsoft has announced that it has blocked Israel’s access to technology used for the mass surveillance of Palestinians. According to reports, the Israeli army had been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store vast amounts of civilian data, including daily phone calls made in Gaza.

In a statement, Microsoft said it disabled services for a secret intelligence unit of the Israeli army after determining that the unit had violated the company’s terms of service by misusing its cloud and AI technologies.

Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith confirmed that the decision followed an investigative report by The Guardian, which revealed the surveillance activities of Israel’s unit 8200.

The report stated that the unit had been exploiting the Azure platform to collect Palestinians’ personal and location data for intelligence purposes.

This is the first time a major American tech company has blocked the Israeli military over concerns of Palestinian rights violations. The unit 8200 had been preparing to shift its surveillance data to Amazon Web Services following Microsoft’s restrictions.

The Guardian also disclosed that after its investigation, Israel moved around 8,000 terabytes of Palestinian call records that had been stored in Microsoft’s Netherlands data center to another location.

Microsoft’s move comes amid growing pressure from its employees and investors, who expressed concerns about the company’s association with Israel’s military operations.

In an internal email to staff, Brad Smith explained, “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.”