Microsoft cuts cloud services to the Israeli military unit on Palestinian monitoring

Microsoft has cut the arrival of the Israeli Ministry of Defense to some technologies and services after an internal investigation found that the institution seems to use its technology to store monitoring data on the phone calls conducted by the Palestinians.

The technology giant announced on Thursday that it had taken the decision to “stop and disrupt” some subscriptions from the Israeli army. This affects the subscriptions of Azzure and some artificial intelligence services.

“We do not provide technology to facilitate the collective monitoring of civilians, and the president of Microsoft and President Brad Smith wrote in a Blog post. “We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have repeatedly insisted on it for more than two decades. For this reason we have publicly explained on August 15 that the standard service conditions prohibited by Microsoft in the use of our technology to collective monitoring of civilians.”

Microsoft told Israel its decision last week, according to Guardian.

The decision follows the continuous Microsoft review of this issue, which started in August. The investigation ignited a story in Guardian I stated that unit 8200, the military intelligence unit in Israel, was using AZURE storage to house data on the phone calls obtained by monitoring the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

In his blog post, Smith also said that the company estimated the initial reports of Guardian. Smith wrote that without it, they will not know that they would look at the matter because of the customer’s privacy rights, they cannot reach the customer’s content.

“As employees, we all have a common interest in privacy protection, due to the value of the work it creates by ensuring that our customers can rely on our services using Rock Solid Trust,” Smith wrote.

The company said that the review continues, but it refused to comment on Techcrunch regarding what was still under review.

Microsoft has been criticized by both employees and strangers to participate with Israel during the past year. Protests related to Microsoft’s relationship with Israel It broke out in 50 company^Y Celebrating the anniversary in April. In August, many employees I organized a sit -in In the Smith office, forced the lock.

The company launched Many employees In the last months of its activity related to Microsoft contracts with Israel.