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By The Cradle
Israel has been using a Microsoft cloud platform to store massive amounts of data and intelligence on Palestinians in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to a new investigation carried out by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian.
The investigation reveals that Microsoft’s chief executive met in 2021 with the commander of Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 – the military intelligence unit involved in the pager terror attacks against Lebanon and other covert operations across the region.
Unit 8200 chief Yossi Sariel convinced Microsoft’s Satya Nadella to grant Israeli military intelligence access to a “customized and segregated area” inside the Azure cloud platform, according to The Guardian.
It then began building “a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Microsoft says its chief executive was unaware of what data would be stored on the platform.
Yet the report cites a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with nearly a dozen employees of the company and of Unit 8200 – revealing the storage of everyday communications and data on the daily lives of regular Palestinian civilians.
Three Unit 8200 sources said the platform helped pave the way for many deadly airstrikes in Gaza, and Israeli army operations in the occupied West Bank.
Other sources say Tel Aviv needed Microsoft due to a lack of storage space and computing power to carry out its espionage plans.
Israel hoped to intercept, record, and store “a million calls an hour,” according to intelligence sources.
The system was designed to be placed on Microsoft servers under layers of security developed by the company with directives from Unit 8200.
According to the leaked documents, droves of sensitive information are inside the company’s data centers in Ireland and the Netherlands.
The Guardian reported earlier this year that Israel relied on Microsoft tech for its genocidal campaign against Gaza. An internal review carried out by the company claimed “no evidence” that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems or cloud platforms were used for harm.
“The company had held conversations with Israeli defense officials and stipulated how its technology should be used in Gaza, insisting Microsoft systems must not be employed for the identification of targets for lethal strikes,” a company source told The Guardian this week.
Unit 8200 sources confirmed, however, that “intelligence drawn from the enormous repositories of phone calls held in Azure had been used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza.”
“When planning an airstrike on an individual located within densely populated areas where high numbers of civilians are present, officers would use the cloud-based system to examine calls made by people in the immediate vicinity,” they added.
Israel has relied heavily on western tech firms for mass surveillance and attacks on Palestinians.
In March, +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed that Unit 8200 developed a ‘Chat GPT-like’ tool programmed to compile massive collections of intercepted Palestinian communications.
The tool was trained to understand colloquial Arabic and uses large amounts of Palestinian phone calls and text messages obtained through surveillance.
“The IDF has become increasingly dependent on the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to store and analyze greater volumes of data and intelligence information for longer period,” Israeli sources told The Guardian in January this year.
Advanced facial recognition technology has also played a leading role in the forced disappearance and abduction of scores of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel.
Earlier this year, Google announced plans to acquire the Israeli cloud security startup Wiz in a $32 billion deal. The Israeli startup was founded by and consists of members of Unit 8200.
Last year, Google fired dozens of employees after they staged a series of sit-in protests across the US to oppose Project Nimbus, which aims to provide the Israeli army with advanced AI and cloud services.
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