Microsoft is providing data centre storage to the Israeli military, but the company has denied any involvement in surveillance of the Palestinian population in Gaza or the West Bank.
A report by the Guardian newspaper alleges that an Israeli military agency, Unit 8200, has developed a surveillance system that includes the collection and storage of audio from millions of telephone calls and other communications material.
The Guardian says this enormous data trove feeds into the planning of Israeli military attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, according to unidentified Unit 8200 sources quoted by the newspaper.
A Microsoft spokesperson in Ireland said Microsoft’s engagement with Unit 8200 was based on enhancing cybersecurity and protecting against potential cyber threats.
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“At no point during this engagement has Microsoft been aware of, or involved in, any surveillance of civilians using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review we commissioned [earlier this year],” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the specific involvement of Irish data centres in the provision of storage facilities to Unit 8200.
A customised and segregated area of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform is being used to store the material being collected, the Guardian report said.
Leaked files from Microsoft suggest a “large proportion” of the sensitive data is being stored by Microsoft in the Netherlands and in Ireland, it said.
Guardian reporter Harry Davies told The Irish Times the most recent of the leaked files he reviewed showed just 1 per cent of the data was being held in Ireland as of last month.
However, the amount of data involved is still enormous.
The leaked files suggest 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data, equivalent to about 200 million hours of audio, were being held by Microsoft in July in the Netherlands and in Ireland, the report said.
There was no response to a request for comment from the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.
Microsoft and its LinkedIn subsidiary employ about 6,000 in the Republic of Ireland.
A Microsoft source told the Guardian the company stipulated to the Israeli military that its systems could not be used for identifying “targets” in Gaza.
However, Israeli military sources told the Guardian the huge amount of data being stored was used to research and identify targets, including in Gaza.
There have been numerous reports that the Israeli military is using digital tools, including surveillance and artificial intelligence (AI), to plan targeted attacks in Gaza.
According to the Guardian, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, met the then head of Unit 8200, Yossi Sariel, in Seattle in late 2021 to discuss the use of a segregated area of the Azure platform for the storage of Israeli military data.
The valuable deal for Microsoft was negotiated after Israel decided it did not have the storage capacity or computing power on its military servers to house the Palestinian population’s phone calls.
Last September Mr Sariel announced his resignation from Unit 8200 about a year after Israeli military intelligence failed to detect the Hamas plan to attack Israel from Gaza on October 7th, 2023, the event that sparked the war.
