‘1,000,000 calls an hour’: Israel counting on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

[ad_1] One afternoon in late 2021, Microsoft’s chief government, Satya Nadella, met with the commander of Israel’s navy surveillance company, Unit 8200. On the spy chief’s agenda: transferring huge quantities of prime secret intelligence materials into the US firm’s cloud.

Assembly at Microsoft’s headquarters close to Seattle, a former rooster farm turned hi-tech campus, the spymaster, Yossi Sariel, received Nadella’s help for a plan that may grant Unit 8200 entry to a customized and segregated space inside Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

Armed with Azure’s near-limitless storage capability, Unit 8200 started constructing a strong new mass surveillance instrument: a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and shops recordings of hundreds of thousands of cell phone calls made every day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Financial institution.

Revealed right here for the primary time in an investigation by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Journal and Hebrew-language outlet Native Name, the cloud-based system – which first grew to become operational in 2022 – allows Unit 8200 to retailer an enormous trove of calls every day for prolonged durations of time.

Microsoft claims Nadella was unaware of what sort of information Unit 8200 deliberate to retailer in Azure. However a cache of leaked Microsoft paperwork and interviews with 11 sources from the corporate and Israeli navy intelligence reveals how Azure has been utilized by Unit 8200 to retailer this expansive archive of on a regular basis Palestinian communications.

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In keeping with three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based storage platform has facilitated the preparation of lethal airstrikes and has formed navy operations in Gaza and the West Financial institution.

Because of the management it exerts over Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, Israel has lengthy intercepted telephone calls within the occupied territories. However the indiscriminate new system permits intelligence officers to play again the content material of mobile calls made by Palestinians, capturing the conversations of a a lot bigger pool of bizarre civilians.

Satya Nadella speaks at a Microsoft occasion in New York on 26 October 2016. {Photograph}: Lucas Jackson/Reuters Intelligence sources with information of the undertaking mentioned Unit 8200’s management turned to Microsoft after concluding it didn't have enough space for storing or computing energy on the navy’s servers to bear the load of a whole inhabitants’s telephone calls.

A number of intelligence officers from the unit, which is akin to the US Nationwide Safety Company (NSA) in its surveillance capabilities, mentioned {that a} mantra emerged internally that captured the undertaking’s scale and ambition: “1,000,000 calls an hour”.

The system was constructed to sit down on Microsoft’s servers behind enhanced layers of safety developed by the corporate’s engineers with Unit 8200’s directions. The leaked Microsoft recordsdata recommend that a big proportion of the unit’s delicate information might now be sitting within the firm’s datacentres within the Netherlands and Eire.

Disclosures in regards to the position of Microsoft’s Azure platform within the surveillance undertaking come because the US tech large faces stress from workers and buyers over its ties to Israel’s navy and the position its know-how has performed within the 22-month offensive in Gaza.

In Might, an worker disrupted a keynote speech by Nadella in an act of protest, at one level yelling: “How about you present how Israeli conflict crimes are powered by Azure?”

After the Guardian and others revealed in January Israel’s reliance on Microsoft know-how through the conflict in Gaza, the corporate commissioned an exterior assessment of the connection. The assessment, Microsoft mentioned, had “discovered no proof up to now” that Azure or its AI merchandise have been “used to focus on or hurt folks” within the territory.

A senior Microsoft supply mentioned the corporate had held conversations with Israeli defence officers and stipulated how its know-how ought to be utilized in Gaza, insisting Microsoft programs should not be employed for the identification of targets for deadly strikes.

A sign intelligence–gathering set up of Unit 8200, an Israeli intelligence corps unit accountable for accumulating alerts intelligence (Sigint) and code decryption, situated on an commentary level on the Israeli-Lebanese border close to Rosh HaNikra crossing often known as Ras al-Naqoura crossing. {Photograph}: Eddie Gerald/Alamy Nevertheless, Unit 8200 sources mentioned intelligence drawn from the large repositories of telephone calls held in Azure had been used to analysis and establish bombing targets in Gaza. One of many sources mentioned that when planning an airstrike on a person situated inside densely populated areas the place excessive numbers of civilians are current, officers would use the cloud-based system to look at calls made by folks within the rapid neighborhood.

The sources additionally mentioned use of the system had elevated through the marketing campaign in Gaza, which has killed greater than 60,000 folks within the territory, nearly all of whom are civilians, together with over 18,000 youngsters.

Q&A What number of Palestinians have been killed in Israel's marketing campaign towards Gaza? Present In keeping with well being officers in Gaza, not less than 60,000 folks have been killed throughout Israel’s present navy marketing campaign, launched after the Hamas-led assault on 7 October 2023 which killed practically 1,200 folks.

The precise demise toll is more likely to be considerably larger, because the determine solely contains Palestinians killed by bombs or bullets whose our bodies have been recovered, leaving out 1000's trapped below the rubble or killed by hunger and different oblique victims of the marketing campaign.

In keeping with the info – which incorporates the deaths of militants – girls, youngsters, and aged folks account for roughly 55% of the recorded deaths.

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However the preliminary focus of the system was the West Financial institution, the place an estimated 3 million Palestinians reside below Israeli navy occupation. Unit 8200 sources mentioned the data saved in Azure amounted to a wealthy repository of intelligence about its inhabitants that some within the unit claimed had been used to blackmail folks, place them in detention, and even justify their killing after the very fact.

“When they should arrest somebody and there isn’t a ok cause to take action, that’s the place they discover the excuse,” one mentioned, referring to the data saved within the cloud.

A Microsoft spokesperson mentioned it had “no info” in regards to the sort of information saved by Unit 8200 in its cloud. They mentioned the corporate’s “engagement with Unit 8200 has been based mostly on strengthening cybersecurity and defending Israel from nation state and terrorist cyber-attacks”.

“At no time throughout this engagement,” they added, “has Microsoft been conscious of the surveillance of civilians or assortment of their cellphone conversations utilizing Microsoft’s companies, together with via the exterior assessment it commissioned.”

‘Monitoring everybody, on a regular basis’ The driving pressure behind the cloud undertaking – described by one supply as a “revolution” throughout the unit – was Sariel, commander of Unit 8200 between early 2021 and late 2024. A profession intelligence officer, Sariel was a robust advocate for tasks of this scale.

Following a 2015 wave of lethal so-called “lone wolf” assaults by younger Palestinians, lots of whom have been youngsters unknown to the safety companies, Sariel had overseen a major enlargement of the amount of Palestinian communications that Unit 8200 intercepted and saved.

His reply was to start “monitoring everybody, on a regular basis”, mentioned an officer who labored for Sariel on the time. As an alternative of conventional surveillance of particular targets, Sariel’s undertaking relied on mass surveillance of Palestinians within the West Financial institution and used novel AI strategies to extract insights.

“All of a sudden your complete public was our enemy,” mentioned one other supply who labored on the undertaking, which sought to foretell whether or not somebody represented a risk to Israeli safety.

One system developed on this interval, sources mentioned, scanned all textual content messages between Palestinians within the West Financial institution and assigned every message a threat ranking based mostly on an automatic evaluation of whether or not it included phrases deemed to be suspicious. Nonetheless in use, the system – referred to as “noisy message” – can establish textual content messages by which folks discuss weapons or focus on desirous to die.

Nablus within the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution on 1 November 2022. {Photograph}: Issam Rimawi/Anadolu by way of Getty Photos When Sariel grew to become Unit 8200 commander in early 2021, he prioritised forging a partnership with Microsoft that may give the unit the power to go additional and seize and analyse the content material of hundreds of thousands of telephone calls every day.

At his assembly with Nadella later that yr, Sariel doesn't seem to have explicitly said his plan to retailer Palestinian telephone calls within the cloud, referring as an alternative to “delicate workloads” of secret information, in response to inside information of the assembly.

However paperwork recommend that Microsoft engineers understood the info saved in Azure would come with uncooked intelligence, together with audio recordsdata, whereas some Israel-based Microsoft workers, together with alumni of Unit 8200, seem to have recognized about what the unit hoped the joint undertaking would obtain.

“You don’t should be a genius to determine it out,” one supply mentioned. “You inform [Microsoft] we don’t have any more room on the servers, that it’s audio recordsdata. It’s fairly clear what it's.”

Microsoft’s spokesperson mentioned: “We aren't conscious of Azure getting used for the storage of such information.” They mentioned Unit 8200 was merely a buyer of its cloud companies and Microsoft “didn't construct or seek the advice of with Unit 8200” on a cloud-based surveillance system.

Nevertheless, in early 2022, Microsoft and Unit 8200 engineers labored shortly and intently collectively to design and implement superior safety measures inside Azure to fulfill the unit’s requirements. “The rhythm of interplay with [the unit] is every day, prime down and backside up,” one doc famous.

Amongst Microsoft workers, the undertaking was shrouded in appreciable secrecy and engineers have been instructed to not point out Unit 8200 by identify. Beneath the plan, huge troves of uncooked intelligence materials would sit in Microsoft’s datacentres abroad.

A alerts intelligence–gathering set up of Unit 8200 situated close to an commentary level in Misgav Am, a kibbutz near the border with Lebanon in northern Israel. {Photograph}: Eddie Gerald/Alamy Information recommend that by July this yr, 11,500 terabytes of Israeli navy information – equal to roughly 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers within the Netherlands, whereas a smaller proportion was saved in Eire. It’s unclear if all of this information belongs to Unit 8200; some might belong to different Israeli navy models.

In keeping with the recordsdata, Unit 8200 knowledgeable Microsoft that it deliberate to maneuver over time as a lot as 70% of its information, together with secret and prime secret information, into Azure and was prepared to “push the envelope” with the sort of delicate and labeled info that intelligence businesses usually held on their very own servers. “They’re all the time making an attempt to problem the established order,” one government famous.

Requested about Sariel’s assembly with Nadella, Microsoft’s spokesperson mentioned it “isn't correct” to say the CEO supplied his private help for the undertaking with Unit 8200. They mentioned Nadella “attended for 10 minutes on the finish of the assembly” and there was “no dialogue” of the content material of the info the unit deliberate to maneuver into Azure.

Nevertheless, in response to inside Microsoft information of the assembly seen by the Guardian, Nadella supplied help for Sariel’s aspiration to maneuver a lot of the elite surveillance unit’s information into the cloud, described earlier within the assembly as together with delicate intelligence materials.

“Satya steered that we establish sure workloads to start with after which regularly transfer in the direction of the 70% mark,” one document states. It provides that Nadella mentioned “constructing the partnership is so essential” and “Microsoft is dedicated to offering assets to help.”

‘The answer to our issues’ A number of months earlier than assembly Microsoft CEO Nadella in 2021, Sariel had revealed a e-book about synthetic intelligence below a pen identify – revealed by the Guardian to be the spy chief’s – by which he urged militaries and intelligence businesses to “migrate to the cloud”.

Identified inside Israeli intelligence as a tech evangelist, Sariel valued what he characterised to colleagues as a pleasant relationship with Nadella, in response to a senior intelligence supply. “Yossi bragged quite a bit, even to me, about his reference to Satya,” they mentioned. (Microsoft denied that Nadella and Sariel had a detailed relationship.)

“He offered [the partnership] internally and obtained an enormous funds,” one other former intelligence colleague mentioned. “He claimed it was the answer to our issues within the Palestinian enviornment.”

Sariel declined to remark and referred the Guardian’s questions in regards to the undertaking to the Israel Defence Forces. An IDF spokesperson mentioned its work with corporations resembling Microsoft was based mostly on “legally supervised agreements”.

They added: “The IDF operates in accordance with worldwide legislation, with the intention of countering terrorism and making certain the safety of the state and its residents.”

For its half, Microsoft seen the multiyear partnership as a profitable industrial alternative. Executives anticipated tons of in hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in income and “an extremely highly effective model second” for Azure, in response to the recordsdata.

Professional-Palestinian demonstrators maintain banners and indicators as they protest outdoors the Microsoft Construct convention on the Seattle conference heart in Seattle, Washington, on 19 Might 2025. {Photograph}: Jason Redmond/AFP by way of Getty Photos “[Unit 8200’s] management hopes to broaden the mission-critical work tenfold within the coming years,” one government famous.

As Unit 8200 started to utilize Azure’s storage capabilities in 2022, intelligence officers quickly grasped the brand new powers at their disposal. “The cloud is infinite storage,” one supply aware of the system mentioned.

Calls – which embody calls made by Palestinians to worldwide and Israeli numbers – are usually retained within the cloud for about one month, although storage will be scaled up, permitting the unit to maintain maintain of requires longer durations of time when wanted, a number of intelligence sources defined.

This permits the unit to return in time and retrieve the telephone conversations of people that turn into of curiosity, they mentioned. Beforehand, surveillance targets would must be pre-selected for his or her conversations to be intercepted and saved.

A number of of the sources insisted the cloud-based system had prevented lethal assaults towards Israelis. One mentioned “saving lives” of Israelis was the principal motivation behind Sariel’s imaginative and prescient for the system. But it surely notably failed to stop the Hamas-led assaults of seven October 2023 by which practically 1,200 folks have been killed in southern Israel and 240 folks have been kidnapped.

Within the wake of the assaults, Sariel confronted criticism for his obvious prioritisation of “addictive and thrilling” know-how over old style intelligence strategies, which some critics mentioned contributed to the catastrophe. Sariel resigned final yr, accepting duty for “8200’s half within the intelligence and operational failure”.

Within the ensuing conflict in Gaza, the cloud-based system pioneered by Sariel has been put to frequent use alongside a collection of AI-driven goal advice instruments additionally developed on his watch and debuted by the navy in a marketing campaign that has devastated civilian life and created a profound humanitarian disaster.

Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s telecoms infrastructure has lowered the amount of telephone calls within the territory however sources mentioned the data held within the cloud remained helpful. In keeping with one, enthusiasm for the system had grown amongst intelligence officers engaged on Gaza because the conflict progressed and so they noticed the navy is “heading in the direction of long-term management there”.