Microsoft has announced that it ended the provision of cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army after complaints that the Azure platform had been used to monitor Palestinian calls in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The decision was communicated by internal email signed by Brad Smith, president of the company, and obtained by the British newspaper The Guardian.
In the statement, Smith stated that the company disabled “a series of services linked to a unit of the Ministry of Defense of Israel” and reiterated that Microsoft does not provide technology that facilitates “mass vigilance of civilians.” According to Guardianthe guideline had already been applied in other countries.
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The cut hits the intelligence arm of the Israeli Armed Forces. The group would have used a segregated area of the Azure platform, customized to store called intercepted for longer periods and cross information with AI tool support.
O Guardian Reports that access to this restricted environment was canceled after the publication of a journalistic investigation that exposed the cooperation between Microsoft and Israeli military.
The reports pointed out that technology was used to watch Palestinian civilians in the midst of Israel’s conflict with Hamas, which is about to turn two years old.
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Migrated data to another provider
Sources heard by the British newspaper said the monitored connection repository was on a Microsoft Data Center in the Netherlands. After the revelation, the data would have been transferred to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud service. The company did not comment on the issue.
Collaboration between Microsoft and Israeli military unity would have started in 2021 after a meeting between the then commander of the unit, Yossi Sariel, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
