LONDON: Microsoft has opened an external investigation into allegations that a top Israeli military intelligence unit used its cloud technology to carry out mass surveillance of Palestinians.
The probe follows a joint report by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
According to the report, Israel’s Unit 8200 spy agency, the rough equivalent of the US National Security Agency, used Microsoft’s Azure cloud service to store a vast archive of phone calls intercepted and recorded from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
The joint media report also revealed extensive ties between Microsoft’s Israel office and the spy unit — a finding that prompted alarm among the tech giant’s US executives who feared that Israel-based employees might have concealed information about the nature of their work with Unit 8200.
Microsoft’s Israel office, as part of its work with the unit, created a custom, segregated suite within the Azure platform in order to store the archive of intercepted phone calls.
