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.
The country has turned to Google, Amazon, Oracle and others to host and store the surveillance-related data. Last year, The Times reported that Israel’s facial recognition program in Gaza used some of Google’s free services. Google also has a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government and military.
Employees at some of Silicon Valley’s largest companies have criticized their employers’ work with the Israeli government. In April 2024, Google fired more than 50 employees who protested the company’s work with the country.
Microsoft employees have also pressured the company to cut off Israel’s use of the company’s software. Last month, some current and former employees entered Mr. Smith’s office to lodge their protests, hanging banners and occupying some rooms at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. Five employees who participated in the protests were fired.
Microsoft did not specify which services it was cutting Israel off from, but said in the blog post that it would continue to support the country’s cybersecurity efforts.
An official from Israel’s Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Microsoft was cutting off the country’s access to its cloud storage services, which were used to store surveillance data such as phone logs of calls made between Palestinians. Before Microsoft’s review, Israel had moved its cloud services to other platforms, including Amazon, he said.