Israel has reportedly recorded and archived millions of phone calls from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since 2022 as part of a major surveillance operation. the guardian, +972 review AND Local calls. The report suggests that the country has moved these records to Microsoft Azure cloud servers.
The company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, is said to have personally approved the initiative after meeting with a commander of Unit 8200 of the Israeli military surveillance service. It would have given the country a separate, purpose-built area within the Azure platform to store millions of phone calls each day without the Palestinians’ knowledge or consent.
According to Unit 8200 sources, these documents helped plan deadly airstrikes and shape military operations across the region. Israel has a long history of wiretapping conversations in occupied territories because it essentially controls those territories. entire Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure.
However, this new method would capture the conversations of a large number of ordinary citizens. The mantra during the project was to record “one million calls per hour”. Leaked Microsoft files suggest that most of this data is stored in Azure facilities in the Netherlands and Ireland.
Microsoft has come under increasing scrutiny for its role in Israel’s 22-month offensive in Gaza. CEO Nadella was interrupted by an employee In a speech in May, the worker called on the executive branch to “show how Azure is running Israeli war crimes.”
The company ordered one earlier this year. external verification that “To date, no evidence has been found” that Azure or its AI products “have been used to attack or harm people” in the area. Today’s reports suggest otherwise. Unit 8200 sources indicate that information obtained from this data was used to identify bombing targets. Microsoft says it has “no information” about what kind of data Israel stores on its servers.
“During this effort,” a company representative added, “at no time was Microsoft aware of any surveillance of citizens or collection of their phone calls using Microsoft services, even as part of the commissioned external review.” Sources say use of the surveillance system has increased during the Gaza campaign. Today, 60,000 people live in the region. was killedincluding more than 18,000 children.
Microsoft is not the only company accused of supporting Israel in what many are calling for a genocide in Gaza. A recent report shows that Google employees have repeatedly worked with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IDM) to expand the government’s access to artificial intelligence.