"Brad Smith issued a statement following reports in British newspaper The Guardian that Israel's Unit 8200 cyber unit was using Redmond's cloud network to harvest a "million phone calls an hour." The reports claim that Unit 8200 harvested phone details, sorted them using AI technology, and stored them on European servers, and then used the data for targeting military operations."
""We have informed IMOD of Microsoft's decision to cease and disable specified IMOD subscriptions and their services, including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies," Smith said in a public blog post. "We have reviewed this decision with IMOD and the steps we are taking to ensure compliance with our terms of service, focused on ensuring our services are not used for mass surveillance of civilians.""
Leaked documents indicate Israel's Unit 8200 harvested around a million phone calls per hour from the occupied territories, collected call details, applied AI to sort the data, and stored continuously updated records on Azure servers in the Netherlands. The dataset was reportedly used to mine information and target individuals for military operations. Microsoft informed the Israeli Ministry of Defence that specific IMOD Azure subscriptions and related cloud and AI services would be ceased and disabled to prevent mass surveillance of civilians. Microsoft declined further comment. IMOD and Amazon did not comment. Over 1,000 Microsoft staff signed a "No Azure for Apartheid" petition, and four staffers were reportedly fired after public protests.
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