Microsoft Disables Azure and AI Services Used by Israeli Military for Mass Surveillance in Gaza

The Guardian recently reported that a division of Israel’s Ministry of Defense had been using Microsoft Azure and AI services to conduct mass surveillance on residents of Gaza, deploying measures across network and communications layers to collect call records and conversations, according to The Guardian.

Unit 8200 of the Israeli military was said to have leveraged customized Microsoft cloud services to store millions of daily phone calls placed in Gaza and the West Bank, subsequently analysing both the call metadata and the conversations themselves to extract up-to-date intelligence. Microsoft disclosed that several Azure cloud and AI services used by the Israeli Ministry of Defense have been disabled.

Brad Smith stressed that Microsoft is neither a government nor a state and reiterated the company’s policy that its technologies must not be employed for mass civilian surveillance.

The company also said it never accessed any data stored by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, limiting its review to business records, financial statements, and internal communications, without examining the specific communications content collected by Israel, though the Guardian’s reporting suggested multiple Microsoft teams were involved and left open whether senior executives could have remained unaware.