Microsoft Stops Select Services For Israeli Defence Forces
Microsoft reported that they found evidence of mass surveillance of civilians undertaken by Israel's defence forces, which led to them terminating these services.
Microsoft disabled and stopped certain services to a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defence, according to a blog post from the tech giant.
"Microsoft is not a government or a country. We are a company. Like every company, we decide what products and services to offer to our customers," Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft said.
The firm reported that they had found evidence of mass surveillance of civilians undertaken by the Israel's defence forces which lead to them terminating these services.
This comes after Microsoft had said that it would launch an investigation into its Azure services being used by the Israeli Defence Forces, after The Guardian's investigative report stated that Microsoft was supplying its Azure cloud services for mass surveillance.
Microsoft employed the Covington & Burling law firm to investigate these claims.
"First, we do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades. This is why we explained publicly on August 15 that Microsoft’s standard terms of service prohibit the use of our technology for mass surveillance of civilians.
Second, we respect and protect the privacy rights of our customers. This means, among other things, that we do not access our customers’ content in this type of investigation," Smith said.
The mass surveillance, according to The Guardian, was undertaken by an Israeli spy agency which collected phone calls from Palestinian civillians.
This led to widespread dissent marked by a number of Microsoft employees, who resorted to public protests at company's events and even held a sit-in demonstration at the office of Brad Smith.
This had led to the firing of six Microsoft employees who were laid off for what the software giant called "serious breaches of company policies" and "significant safety concerns". The protests were organised by a group called 'No Azure For Apartheid'.
Smith, while commenting on the company's disabling of select services for the Israeli forces, said, "As I said at our recent employee townhall, this does not impact the important work that Microsoft continues to do to protect the cybersecurity of Israel and other countries in the Middle East, including under the Abraham Accords."
