British The Guardian revealed in August that the military intelligence unit 8200 stored large amounts of sensitive surveillance data on Microsoft's cloud service Azure.
This concerns Palestinians' mobile phone calls, which were mass-intercepted and stored on servers in the Netherlands. The secret project should, with the help of Azure's large storage capacity and computing power, have made it possible to analyze a whole population's telephone calls, according to The Guardian.
Microsoft announced last week to Israeli authorities that the intelligence unit 8200 had violated the company's terms of use by storing surveillance data, according to the newspaper's sources.
Microsoft confirms that they have shut down the unit's access to certain services.
"Our investigation is still ongoing, but we have found evidence that supports parts of The Guardian's reporting", writes Microsoft's top executive Brad Smith in a blog post.
He adds that they have secured information about the Israeli military's "use of Azure's storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services".
