Azure Exposé: How Unit 8200 Leverages Microsoft Cloud to Spy on Millions of Palestinians
A deep dive into the murky alliance between Israel’s elite cyber-intelligence unit and Big Tech to enable mass surveillance and military targeting
Global, PUREWILAYAH.COM - In a provocative joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, Local Call, and others, Israeli military intelligence’s Unit 8200 has been revealed to rely on a bespoke version of Microsoft’s Azure platform to store and analyse vast amounts of intercepted communications from Palestinians living in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The partnership began in late 2021 when Unit 8200 commander Yossi Sariel secured support from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the company’s Seattle headquarters. Sariel sought—and received—agreement to set up a dedicated, segregated environment within Azure capable of accommodating “sensitive workloads” and unprecedented data volume.
By 2022, that infrastructure had been activated in what insiders describe as one of the most comprehensive surveillance regimes ever aimed at a single population. The system records millions of Palestinian phone calls per day, storing them indefinitely across Azure data centres in Europe, primarily in the Netherlands and Ireland.
Unit 8200 insiders say the unit’s internal slogan became “a million calls an hour”, underscoring the vast scale of the operation. The Azure platform’s storage and AI capabilities have reportedly been used to support high‑stakes military decision‑making, including planning airstrikes, facilitating detentions, and carrying out blackmail campaigns.
Microsoft has insisted that its leadership was unaware of the true nature of the data and has claimed no knowledge of its possible use to target civilians. Still, leaked internal documents and interviews with both Microsoft and Israeli military staff reveal that engineers worked closely with Unit 8200 to meet the unit’s security demands—and some Microsoft employees were former Unit 8200 veterans, easing collaboration.
While Microsoft maintains that Azure isn’t used to “identify targets for lethal strikes”, surveillance insiders say otherwise. The cloud‑based archives have enabled analysts to replay calls made near a location to refine target selection, even in densely populated civilian areas.
From 2022 to mid‑2025, Unit 8200 moved approximately 11,500 terabytes of intelligence data—equivalent to more than 200 million hours of recordings—onto Microsoft’s infrastructure. Although Microsoft claims its systems were used strictly as a customer service contract, sources indicate the data was central to shaping IDF operations in the occupied territories.
The revelations have raised widespread concern over ethical, legal, and human rights implications, particularly given the scale of civilian surveillance and opaque civilian–military tech collaboration in conflict zones. (PW)
Source: Al Mayadeen