Microsoft is investigating how Israel's military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, utilizes its Azure cloud platform due to concerns about transparency from staff in Israel. A joint investigation revealed that Unit 8200 employs a segregated area within Azure to store millions of intercepted Palestinian phone calls. Intelligence from this data is reportedly used to identify bombing targets in Gaza. Senior executives are now assessing the situation to understand what data is stored and how it pertains to military operations. A previous review found no evidence of harm linked to Azure, raising doubts about the accuracy of information provided by employees.
Unit 8200 has used a customised and segregated area within Azure to store recordings of millions of calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank.
Intelligence drawn from the enormous repository of phone calls held in the cloud has been used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza.
Concerns have emerged about whether some of its Israel-based employees have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 uses Azure.
An internal effort is now under way to determine the nature of the information being housed in Microsoft's datacentres.
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