Israel is using Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure to conduct mass surveillance of Palestinian phone calls, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call.
In the report, Satya Nadella is alleged to have met with Yossi Sariel, the head of Israel's Unit 8200 spy unit, in 2021 to discuss the use of Microsoft's cloud services.
Through Azure's unlimited cloud storage service, Israel collects millions of phone calls from Gaza and the West Bank residents every day. Israel uses the excuse of mass surveillance of Palestinians as security reasons, even though it violates human rights.
This spying system has been in operation since 2022, with the data collected later used to help carry out airstrikes and plan military operations in Gaza and the West Bank. In the leaked documents, recordings of Palestinian phone calls were stored in Azure data centers located in the Netherlands and Ireland. In the Dutch database alone, over 200 million hours of audio recordings are stored, taking up 11,500 TB of storage space.
In a statement released by Microsoft, they said they were “not aware that Azure was being used for such data storage.” Unit 8200 was simply a cloud service customer and they “did not build or consult with Unit 8200” to build a cloud-based surveillance system.
This is not the first time Microsoft has been accused of being involved in helping Israel commit genocide in Palestine. Earlier this year, a number of Microsoft employees were fired after publicly protesting Satya Nadella during his keynote address. This forced Microsoft to issue a statement denying that Azure and its AI systems were being used to carry out attacks on Palestine after October 7, 2023, despite having a $133 million contract with Israel.