Israel used Microsoft's data center in the Netherlands for mass surveillance
Microsoft has acknowledged that its massive data center in "Muiden", north of Amsterdam, was used by the Israeli military for extensive surveillance operations on Palestinians. This revelation came from the company's Vice President Brad Smith, who confirmed in a post on Microsoft's blog that the company has since cut off the Israeli Ministry of Defense's access to specific cloud services.
Smith said that Microsoft has "suspended and disabled a set of services for a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defense." This decision comes after weeks of controversy sparked by a report published by The Guardian, revealing that the Israeli army stored vast amounts of surveillance data on Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands.
According to The Guardian, the files indicated that by July of this year, the Israeli army had stored 11,500 terabytes of data — equivalent to about 200 million hours of audio recordings — on Microsoft’s Dutch servers, while a smaller amount of data was stored in Ireland. This information included phone calls collected through mass surveillance in Gaza and the West Bank.
Microsoft launched a review in August and has since confirmed that some of what was reported in The Guardian is true. Evidence included the extensive use of Azure storage spaces by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in the Netherlands, as well as the use of Microsoft's artificial intelligence services.
The company announced that it has now suspended Israel's access to specific services, including cloud storage and artificial intelligence technologies. However, Smith clarified that the broader investigation into the extent of Israel's use of Microsoft's infrastructure is still ongoing.