Israel uses Microsoft Azure for Palestinian surveillance system — The Guardian

Israeli intelligence is storing millions of phone calls from Palestinians and West Bank residents on secure Microsoft Azure servers, The Guardian reports, and is using the data to plan strikes on Gaza.

This was first revealed in a new joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazin and Local Call. The cloud system was created after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the head of the Israeli military intelligence unit "Unit 8200".

During the meeting, the head of Unit 8200, Yossi Sariel, received support from Satya Nadella for a plan to give the agency access to a specially designated and isolated area in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Using the nearly unlimited cloud storage, Israeli intelligence has created a system that collects and stores records of millions of Palestinian mobile phone calls from Gaza and the West Bank.

Microsoft says Satya Nadella didn't know exactly what data Unit 8200 would store in Azure. But leaked documents and testimony from 11 company and intelligence sources show that the cloud was used to store millions of Palestinian conversations every hour. According to Unit 8200 insiders, these recordings were also used to prepare for military operations.

The data storage system itself was designed to run on Microsoft servers with enhanced security levels that the company's engineers developed under the guidance of "Unit 8200." The leak of the tech giant's files also shows that much of the collected data may now be stored in the company's data centers in the Netherlands and Ireland.

Microsoft, for its part, continues to deny that it knows what data is stored on its servers. A company spokesperson said that it was unaware of Azure's use of phone records, and that "Unit 8200" was simply a customer of the cloud services. Microsoft also "did not design or advise Unit 8200" on the cloud surveillance system.