How Is Technology Used to Surveil Palestinians?
Microsoft and Israel… When Technology Becomes a Surveillance Tool Against Palestinians
Reports Reveal: Israel Stores Millions of Palestinian Calls on Microsoft Cloud Servers
Recent media reports have revealed that Israel has been recording and storing millions of phone calls made by Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as part of an extensive surveillance program that began in 2022, relying on Microsoft cloud services (Azure).
According to an investigation published by the British newspaper “The Guardian”, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, personally approved this collaboration following a meeting with a senior official from “Unit 8200”, the intelligence arm specialized in surveillance within the Israeli military.
Leaked documents show that Microsoft allocated a dedicated section within the Azure platform to host this project, which is used to store massive quantities of daily calls, without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian civilians whose communications were being monitored.
Sources from within “Unit 8200” also indicated that this voice data played a key role in guiding airstrikes and identifying targets for Israeli military operations in Gaza.
This step is considered an extension of Israel’s long-standing control over the telecommunications infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territories, but modern technologies have allowed it to expand the scope of espionage to cover a larger number of civilians through advanced tools relying on artificial intelligence and cloud storage.
Leaks indicate that the project was developed under the motto: “Record one million calls per hour”, with the bulk of the data stored in Microsoft data centers in both the Netherlands and Ireland.
This disclosure comes at a sensitive time, as Microsoft faces mounting criticism over its role in supporting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza for nearly two years, amid internal demands from company employees to end cooperation with the Israeli government and stop providing the military with Azure cloud services.
Microsoft had previously commissioned an independent body earlier this year to review the use of its services, following escalating criticism directed at it regarding its potential role in the ongoing conflict. The company announced at the time that it “had not found any evidence so far” indicating that the Azure platform or its AI technologies were being used to “target or harm civilians” in Gaza.
However, the new report directly contradicts this announcement, as it clarifies that the intelligence extracted from call recordings played a pivotal role in identifying targets for Israeli airstrikes.
In its response to the report, Microsoft stated that it “has no information regarding the nature of the data the Israeli government stores on its servers”. A company spokesperson also said:
“Microsoft was not aware of the surveillance of civilians or the recording of their calls using our services at any time within this partnership”.
According to sources, the use of this intelligence system reached its peak during the ongoing war on Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of nearly 60,000 people, including more than 18,000 children, according to official statistics issued by humanitarian organizations.
It is worth noting that Microsoft is not the only tech company accused of complicity in supporting Israeli military activities. A separate report revealed the involvement of Google employees in repeatedly cooperating with the Israeli military and Ministry of Defense, with the aim of expanding the Israeli government’s use of AI tools.
This collaboration sparked widespread outrage within Google itself, with many of its employees demanding a reconsideration of these relationships, affirming that their continuation contradicts the company’s stated principles regarding the use of technology for humanitarian and ethical purposes.
