Redazione RHC : 28 September 2025 10:31
The Israeli intelligence unit, the Israeli equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA), has been stripped of access to some Microsoft Azure cloud services by the Redmond-based company. Unit 8200 had previously been accused of spying on Palestinians in Israeli-controlled territories using Microsoft technology.
Microsoft has blocked the Israeli Ministry of Defense from accessing some of its Azure cloud services after media reports emerged that they were being used for mass surveillance of West Bank and Gaza residents, The Register reports.
Microsoft Chairman Brad Smith issued a public statement following the publication of an article in the British newspaper The Guardian, which accused the Israeli army’s Unit 8200 of using the “Redmond giant’s” technology to process and store “millions of phone calls per hour.”
The publication claimed that this intelligence unit collected caller ID data, classified it using artificial intelligence algorithms, and then stored the resulting data on Azure servers in the European region, in the Netherlands. This information would then be used to plan military operations.
“We have informed the Israeli Ministry of Defense of Microsoft’s decision to deactivate certain Israeli Ministry of Defense subscriptions and services, including certain cloud storage and artificial intelligence services and technologies ,” Brad Smith wrote on the company blog.
Brad Smith thanked the publication for information about the cloud database used by the Israeli military since 2022. He also announced his intention to deprive the Ministry of Defense of access to some of the Microsoft services it uses. As The Register notes , the surveillance system now uses Amazon Web Services instead of Microsoft Azure.
The decision to cut services to Unit 8200, according to Smith, was taken following an internal investigation to verify the facts presented in the Guardian report .
During the investigation, Microsoft specialists did not have access to customer data in the Azure cloud, but focused on examining their own corporate archives, the company says.
After reviewing the contract with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, Microsoft concluded that the customer had violated some of the terms and conditions set forth therein.
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