Microsoft Blocks Israel's Use Of Its Data Centers For Mass Surveillance Of Palestinians

Microsoft has ended entree to its information centers for a portion of nan Israeli subject that helped powerfulness a monolithic surveillance cognition against Palestinian civilians, according to a study by The Guardian. The institution says that nan country's spy agency has violated its position of service.

This surveillance strategy collected millions of telephone calls made by Palestinian civilians each time successful Gaza and nan West Bank. The monolithic trove of information has been stored via Microsoft's Azure unreality platform, but nan institution conscionable informed Israel's spy agency that this believe will nary longer beryllium acceptable.

Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith, alerted unit of nan move successful an email, penning that nan institution had “ceased and abnormal a group of services to a portion wrong nan Israel ministry of defense." He went to propose that this included cutting disconnected entree to unreality retention and immoderate AI services.

“We do not supply exertion to facilitate wide surveillance of civilians," he continued. "We person applied this rule successful each state astir nan world, and we person insisted connected it many times for much than 2 decades.”

Microsoft came to this determination aft conducting an outer enquiry to reappraisal nan spy agency's usage of its Azure unreality platform. It besides comes amid unit from both employees and investors for nan institution to analyse its narration pinch Israel arsenic it relates to nan subject violative successful Gaza.

This reportedly started backmost successful 2021, erstwhile Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella allegedly okayed nan retention effort personally aft gathering pinch a commandant from Israel's elite subject surveillance corps, Unit 8200. Nadella reportedly gave nan state a customized and segregated area wrong nan Azure level to shop these telephone calls, each without knowledge aliases consent from Palestinians.

While conflict has existed betwixt Israel and Palestinian groups for decades, these platforms were built retired a afloat 2 years earlier nan the astir caller escalation successful violence, opening October 7, 2023. The mantra erstwhile building retired nan task was to grounds "a cardinal calls an hour."

Leaked Microsoft files suggested that nan lion's stock of this information was being stored successful Azure accommodation successful nan Netherlands, but Israel allegedly moved it aft Microsoft started its first investigation. The Guardian has reported that Unit 8200 planned connected transferring nan information to nan Amazon Web Services unreality platform. We person contacted Amazon to inquire if it has accepted this gigantic trove of individual data.