Microsoft helping “Israel” with surveillance to attack Palestinians: report

A joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call has uncovered that “Israel's” elite military intelligence Unit 8200 is utilizing Microsoft's Azure cloud platform for an extensive surveillance program, storing millions of Palestinian phone calls.

This cloud-based system, operational since 2022, has significantly expanded “Israel's” intelligence capabilities, raising serious human rights concerns .

Unit 8200 reportedly sought Microsoft's assistance due to insufficient storage and computing power on its own servers, aiming to process "a million calls an hour".

By July 2025, an estimated 11,500 terabytes of “Israeli” military data, equivalent to approximately 200 million hours of audio, are projected to be housed on Microsoft's servers, primarily in the Netherlands.

This marks a shift from monitoring "tens of thousands of suspects" to "millions of Palestinians" . Intelligence sources allege this data has been used to identify bombing targets in Gaza and for coercive purposes, including blackmail and justifying arrests in the West Bank.

The collaboration, initiated after a late 2021 meeting between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and then-Unit 8200 Commander Sariel, was viewed internally by Microsoft leadership as a "lucrative business opportunity".

Despite Microsoft's public statements of finding "no evidence" its technology was used to harm Palestinians or aid civilian surveillance, leaked documents suggest Microsoft engineers were aware the data would include raw intelligence and audio files.

The revelations have intensified protests from Microsoft employees, who have formed campaigns like "No Azure for Apartheid," demanding an end to the company's contracts with the “Israeli” military.