Microsoft cuts the arrival of the Israeli army to some cloud computing, Amnesty International Israeli conflict news

The Vice President and President of the company, Brad Smith, confirmed that the technology giant in the United States has canceled the giant Microsoft company for some of its services to the Israeli army on fears that violate the conditions of service using the company’s cloud computing program to spy on millions of Palestinians.

Smith wrote in a blog post on Thursday that the company “stopped and disrupts a set of services” to a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defense in response to August 6, joint investigation By the Guardian newspaper, Magazine +972, and a local call in Hebrew.

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The report claimed that the unity of the Israeli army 8200 used the Microsoft Cloud Computing Platform to store the phone calls that were obtained through the collective monitoring in Gaza, which was torn by the war and the occupied West Bank.

Unit 8200 is the unit of electronic warfare in the Israeli army responsible for secrecy operations, including collecting signaling and monitoring.

The investigation conducted by journalists revealed that after the 2021 meeting between the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella and UNIT 8200 Yossi SARIEL, an agreement was reached to cooperate in transferring large quantities of sensitive intelligence materials on the company’s Azure.

This operation, which has been operated since 2022, allowed unit 8200 to use the storage capacity of no less than the reduction of Azure and computing power to collect, operate and analyze phone calls to millions of Palestinians.

The regime also helped to the group of the costumes of Israel to direct the deadly air strikes and the operations that were formed throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. The report also determined that a large amount of data on the Palestinians seemed to be stored on the AZUROT servers in Microsoft in the Netherlands and Ireland.

Smith from Microsoft said that the company reviewed the allegations submitted in the report “based on two principles” and concluded that the storage of Israeli military data violated the conditions of service to the company.

“First, we do not provide technology to facilitate the collective monitoring of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we insisted on it frequently for more than two decades.”

“Second, we respect and protect privacy rights for our customers,” added Smith.

Smith did not name the specified Israeli unit that loses access to Microsoft services, but confirmed that some of the Israeli Ministry of Defense had been canceled, including “specific cloud storage and artificial intelligence services.”

In February, Associated Press reported that the Israeli army’s use of Microsoft products increased after October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and the beginning of the devastating war on Gaza.

She mentioned like that the Israeli army was using Gigabytes of cloud storage and huge amounts of language translation services that support artificial intelligence for collective monitoring, and to verify artificial intelligence systems to determine who should be targeted in air strikes.

In May, Microsoft admitted that it sold the advanced AI services and the cloud computing of the Israeli army during its war on Gaza and helped in efforts to identify and save the Israeli prisoners in the besieged pocket.

However, the company claimed that after an internal review, I found “no evidence” that Azure was used to target or harm people.

In the wake of the news investigation in August, Microsoft commissioned a second review, which was conducted by an external law firm.

This review continues, but Smith said that it has already revealed evidence that its products are used in ways that violate the conditions of service.

Hossam Nasr, one of more than ten Microsoft employees shot or arrested On the protests against the company’s involvement in the Gaza war, she praised this step as an “unprecedented victory”, but said that “the great bone of Microsoft’s contract with the Israeli army is still sound.”

Nasr said: “Microsoft has disabled only a small sub -group of services for only one unit in the Israeli army,” Nasr said.