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Microsoft Disables Some Services to Israel’s Defense Ministry

Microsoft said it found that Israel was violating some terms of service for its products and that it does “not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians.”

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A scene of wreckage in Gaza.
Microsoft’s review found evidence that Israel was using its cloud storage services to hold surveillance data on Palestinians, according to a company blog post. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

Microsoft said on Thursday that it had disabled some services to Israel’s Defense Ministry, after a company review concluded that Israel was violating the terms of service for its products.

The review found evidence that Israel was using Microsoft’s cloud storage services to hold surveillance data on Palestinians, according to a company blog post. The data included records of millions of phone calls made daily between Palestinians, confirming reporting this year from The Guardian and the Israeli news site +972.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in the blog post that the company had “a shared interest in privacy protection, given the business value it creates by ensuring our customers can rely on our services with rock solid trust.”

Microsoft would not provide technology to “facilitate mass surveillance of civilians,” he said.

Israel’s Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft is one of the first tech companies to take action to remove or disable services to Israel since the start of the war with Gaza nearly two years ago.

Israel has established a vast technology infrastructure to surveil Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and within Israel, monitoring phone calls, text messages and social media, The New York Times has reported. Israel has used the information for military raids and airstrikes in Gaza.


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