Microsoft is launching an investigation into the affirmations that Israel has used its technology for mass monitoring of Palestinians | War of Israel-Gaza

Microsoft has launched an “urgent” external survey on the allegations of the Military Supervisory Agency of Israel used company technology to facilitate mass surveillance of Palestinians.

Friday, the company said that the official exam was in response to a Guardian survey which revealed how the spy agency of the unit 8200 relied on the Cloud Azure platform in Microsoft to store a large collection of everyday Palestinian calls.

The joint survey with the Israeli-Palestinian +972 publication and the local call for the Hebrew language has found unit 8200 used a personalized and separate zone area to store records of millions of calls made daily in Gaza and the West Bank.

In a press release, Microsoft said that “the use of Azure for storage of data calls from telephone calls obtained by wide or mass monitoring of civilians in Gaza and West Bank” would be prohibited by its service conditions.

The survey, which will be supervised by lawyers of the American firm Covington & Burling, is the second external examination commissioned by Microsoft in the use of its technology by the Israeli army.

The first was launched this year in the midst of dissent within the company and the reports of the Guardian and others concerning Israel’s dependence on the technology of the company during its offensive in Gaza. Announcing the review of the journal in May, Microsoft said that it had “found any evidence to date” that the Israeli army had not been in accordance with its service conditions or used Azure “to target or harm people” in Gaza.

However, the recent Guardian survey has aroused concerns among Microsoft’s senior executives as to whether some of its employees based in Israel may have hidden information on how unit 8200 uses Azure when it is questioned in the examination.

Microsoft said on Friday that the new survey would expand the previous one, adding: “Microsoft appreciates that the recent Guardian report raises additional and precise allegations that deserve a complete and urgent exam.”

The company is also faced with the pressure of a campaign group led by workers, no Azure for apartheid, who accused him of “complicity in genocide and apartheid” and asked him to cut “all links with the Israeli army” and make them publicly known.

Responding to the announcement, the group criticized Microsoft’s decision to launch an investigation, describing it as “another tactic to delay” answering its requests.

Since the Guardian and his partners, +972 and the local call, the Unit 8200 monitoring project last week, Microsoft rushed to assess the data from the Azure unit.

Several sources of Microsoft close to the internal deliberations said that the company’s management was concerned about information from the sources of the unit 8200 interviewed for the article, in particular affirmations according to which information drawn from the telephone call standards held in Azure had been used to find and identify the bombing objectives in Gaza.

The Israeli bombing of 22 months of the territory, launched after the attack led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, killed more than 60,000 people, the majority of civilians, according to the health authority of the territory, although the actual number of death is probably higher.

Microsoft senior executives had in recent days considered a clumsy scenario in which unit 8200, an important and sensitive customer, could be in violation of the conditions of use of the company and the commitments of human rights, sources said.

According to the disclosed files examined by The Guardian, the company was aware of 2021 that unit 8200 planned to move large volumes of sensitive and classified intelligence data in Azure.

At Microsoft’s headquarters in November of the same year, senior executives – including its managing director, Satya Nadella – attended a meeting in which the unit 8200 commander discussed a plan to move up to 70% of his data on the cloud platform.

The company said that its leaders, including Nadella, was not aware that unit 8200 planned to use or finally used Azure to store the content of intercepted Palestinian calls. “We have no information related to the client’s cloud-stored data,” said a spokesperson last week.

An Israeli military spokesman previously declared that his work with companies such as Microsoft was “carried out on the basis of regulated and legally supervised agreements” and that the army “operates in accordance with international law”.

The new survey will examine the trade agreements of the army with Microsoft. Once finished, the company “will share with the public the factual conclusions resulting from this exam,” said its press release.