September 25, 2025
Yuval Abraham
The decision followed an exposé last month by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian revealing how Unit 8200, the Israeli army’s elite cyber warfare agency, was housing intercepted recordings of millions of mobile phone calls by Palestinians on Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, creating one of the world’s most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group. According to the joint investigation, this data has been used over the past two years to plan lethal airstrikes in Gaza, as well as to arrest Palestinians in the West Bank.
As far as is known, this is the first time a major U.S. tech company has revoked the Israeli army’s access to any of its products since the start of its war on Gaza. Microsoft nonetheless continues to work with other Israeli military units that are longstanding clients.
Microsoft’s letter to the Israeli Defense Ministry, which was seen by the Guardian, noted that the company had launched an “urgent” external inquiry following our exposé, finding that the Israeli army had violated Microsoft’s terms of service by utilizing its cloud platform to store the surveillance trove. According to the Guardian, the letter stated that because the company “identified evidence” in support of our reporting, it had decided to suspend the storage and AI services connected to the project under review. It added that Microsoft “is not in the business of facilitating the mass surveillance of civilians.”
On Thursday, the Guardian reports, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, Brad Smith, sent an email to staff informing them of the decision, explaining that the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel ministry of defense.” He added: “We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades.”
The unprecedented step comes amid growing protests against Microsoft and other tech giants whose services Israel has relied on for its two-year onslaught in Gaza, where civilians have made up the vast majority of those killed. Last month, activists staged a demonstration outside Microsoft’s data center in the Netherlands after our investigation revealed that it was housing 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data — equivalent to about 195 million hours of audio.
According to the Guardian, Unit 8200 swiftly transferred the trove of surveillance data out of Microsoft’s servers abroad within days of our investigation being published; according to their sources, the unit planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform instead, upon whose services the army has also grown increasingly dependent since October 7.
Still, many other Israeli military projects involving Microsoft’s services remain unaffected. In January, an investigation by +972, Local Call, and the Guardian based on leaked documents from Israel’s Defense Ministry and Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary revealed that the tech giant “has a footprint in all major military infrastructures in Israel,” with dozens of Israeli army units — including in the air, ground, and naval forces — relying on Microsoft’s cloud services. Moreover, during the most intense period of Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, sales of Microsoft’s AI services to Israel’s Defense Ministry rose significantly.
The mass surveillance project housed on Microsoft’s cloud servers was born in November 2021, when Yossi Sariel, then-commander of Unit 8200, traveled to the tech giant’s headquarters in Seattle to meet with CEO Satya Nadella. According to an internal Microsoft document summarizing the meeting, obtained by the Guardian, Sariel informed senior company officials that he wanted to store vast quantities of intelligence — up to 70 percent of the unit’s data, including highly classified material — on Azure servers.
An intelligence officer told +972, Local Call, and the Guardian that prior to its partnership with Microsoft, Unit 8200 only had the storage capacity on its internal servers to house recordings of the phone calls of tens of thousands of Palestinians whom the army defined as “suspects.” But thanks to Azure’s near-limitless storage capacity, the unit could begin saving the intercepted calls of many more Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank on its servers, enabling what multiple Israeli sources described as the project’s ambitious goal: to store “a million calls an hour.”
This mass collection of surveillance data allowed the army to obtain potentially incriminating information on virtually any Palestinian in the West Bank — data that could, in practice, be used for blackmail, placing people in administrative detention, or even retroactively justifying killings.
Not everyone in the unit looked favorably on Sariel’s decision to transfer the army’s classified intelligence onto Microsoft’s servers overseas, due to both the expense involved and the sensitivity of the material. But Sariel insisted, making clear his excitement for the project’s potential.
Our investigation also found that Microsoft’s leadership viewed the cultivation of ties with Unit 8200 as a lucrative business opportunity. In the 2021 meeting in Seattle, Nadella said the partnership with Unit 8200 was “critical” for Microsoft, while internal documents described the joint project as “an incredibly powerful brand moment.”
But in the face of mounting internal and public outrage against the company — and as a growing number of human rights organizations have determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — Microsoft’s calculus may have changed.
The company initially announced in May, following our January investigation, that an internal review had found no evidence that Israel’s military was using its technology to harm Palestinians. But the external inquiry launched in response to our latest investigation, overseen by lawyers at the U.S. firm Covington & Burling, led the company to block Unit 8200’s access to some of its cloud storage and AI services.
According to the Guardian, Smith’s email to staff noted that our exposé had brought to light “information [Microsoft] could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments.” He added: “Our review is ongoing.”
Yuval Abraham
The
tech giant blocked access after we revealed the Israeli army had been using its
servers to store millions of Palestinians' intercepted phone calls.
Microsoft has terminated the
Israeli army’s access to technology it was using to store vast troves of
intelligence on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, the tech giant
informed Israel’s Defense Ministry in a letter late last week, according to the
Guardian.
The decision followed an exposé last month by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian revealing how Unit 8200, the Israeli army’s elite cyber warfare agency, was housing intercepted recordings of millions of mobile phone calls by Palestinians on Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, creating one of the world’s most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group. According to the joint investigation, this data has been used over the past two years to plan lethal airstrikes in Gaza, as well as to arrest Palestinians in the West Bank.
As far as is known, this is the first time a major U.S. tech company has revoked the Israeli army’s access to any of its products since the start of its war on Gaza. Microsoft nonetheless continues to work with other Israeli military units that are longstanding clients.
Microsoft’s letter to the Israeli Defense Ministry, which was seen by the Guardian, noted that the company had launched an “urgent” external inquiry following our exposé, finding that the Israeli army had violated Microsoft’s terms of service by utilizing its cloud platform to store the surveillance trove. According to the Guardian, the letter stated that because the company “identified evidence” in support of our reporting, it had decided to suspend the storage and AI services connected to the project under review. It added that Microsoft “is not in the business of facilitating the mass surveillance of civilians.”
On Thursday, the Guardian reports, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, Brad Smith, sent an email to staff informing them of the decision, explaining that the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel ministry of defense.” He added: “We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades.”
The unprecedented step comes amid growing protests against Microsoft and other tech giants whose services Israel has relied on for its two-year onslaught in Gaza, where civilians have made up the vast majority of those killed. Last month, activists staged a demonstration outside Microsoft’s data center in the Netherlands after our investigation revealed that it was housing 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data — equivalent to about 195 million hours of audio.
According to the Guardian, Unit 8200 swiftly transferred the trove of surveillance data out of Microsoft’s servers abroad within days of our investigation being published; according to their sources, the unit planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform instead, upon whose services the army has also grown increasingly dependent since October 7.
Still, many other Israeli military projects involving Microsoft’s services remain unaffected. In January, an investigation by +972, Local Call, and the Guardian based on leaked documents from Israel’s Defense Ministry and Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary revealed that the tech giant “has a footprint in all major military infrastructures in Israel,” with dozens of Israeli army units — including in the air, ground, and naval forces — relying on Microsoft’s cloud services. Moreover, during the most intense period of Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, sales of Microsoft’s AI services to Israel’s Defense Ministry rose significantly.
The mass surveillance project housed on Microsoft’s cloud servers was born in November 2021, when Yossi Sariel, then-commander of Unit 8200, traveled to the tech giant’s headquarters in Seattle to meet with CEO Satya Nadella. According to an internal Microsoft document summarizing the meeting, obtained by the Guardian, Sariel informed senior company officials that he wanted to store vast quantities of intelligence — up to 70 percent of the unit’s data, including highly classified material — on Azure servers.
An intelligence officer told +972, Local Call, and the Guardian that prior to its partnership with Microsoft, Unit 8200 only had the storage capacity on its internal servers to house recordings of the phone calls of tens of thousands of Palestinians whom the army defined as “suspects.” But thanks to Azure’s near-limitless storage capacity, the unit could begin saving the intercepted calls of many more Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank on its servers, enabling what multiple Israeli sources described as the project’s ambitious goal: to store “a million calls an hour.”
This mass collection of surveillance data allowed the army to obtain potentially incriminating information on virtually any Palestinian in the West Bank — data that could, in practice, be used for blackmail, placing people in administrative detention, or even retroactively justifying killings.
Not everyone in the unit looked favorably on Sariel’s decision to transfer the army’s classified intelligence onto Microsoft’s servers overseas, due to both the expense involved and the sensitivity of the material. But Sariel insisted, making clear his excitement for the project’s potential.
Our investigation also found that Microsoft’s leadership viewed the cultivation of ties with Unit 8200 as a lucrative business opportunity. In the 2021 meeting in Seattle, Nadella said the partnership with Unit 8200 was “critical” for Microsoft, while internal documents described the joint project as “an incredibly powerful brand moment.”
But in the face of mounting internal and public outrage against the company — and as a growing number of human rights organizations have determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — Microsoft’s calculus may have changed.
The company initially announced in May, following our January investigation, that an internal review had found no evidence that Israel’s military was using its technology to harm Palestinians. But the external inquiry launched in response to our latest investigation, overseen by lawyers at the U.S. firm Covington & Burling, led the company to block Unit 8200’s access to some of its cloud storage and AI services.
According to the Guardian, Smith’s email to staff noted that our exposé had brought to light “information [Microsoft] could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments.” He added: “Our review is ongoing.”
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