> The decision has not affected Microsoft’s wider commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services. The termination will raise questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.
It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.
Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages, and possibly hacking their devices?
Perhaps the actual moral choice isn’t attacking blindly or mass surveillance of an occupied nation - it’s peace?
Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn’t take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and schools is going to kill innocent people.
> Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
The concern is who gets to decide what is or isn't a legitimate target? Today's heroes might be tomorrow's victims. I'd rather no one have that much power over others.
Arguing that mass surveillance is not unethical but actually a way to save lives is pretty disingenuous, absurdly so considering how little the country wielding it cares about collateral damage.
Two things:
1. The death toll has shown that this is the most indiscriminate bombings (Biden's own words) and deaths of civilians in recent memory. So, you could argue the tech is aiding in killing key civil infra staff
2. Sure, they can surveil, let them do it on their own data centers. It's actually strange that they would put such data/tech on a 3rd party data center to begin with.
Per Wikipedia, the idea that the IDF is the "most moral army in the world" comes from Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_of_arms
It's a throwaway line Israeli officials have been using for a long time. I heard Netanyahou himself use it to describe the IDF and explain it can't possibly do wrong.
I think people don't tend to realise how authoritarian the internal structures of companies are.
They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.[0]
For me, this is more proof (not less) that I shouldn't rely on US tech giants. Not because I will be collecting data on a population to do god-knows-what with, but because someone believes themselves to be the moral authority on what the compute I rent should be doing and that moral authority can be outraged for the whims of someone completely random, for any reason.
>They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.
Not that I necessarily agree with what they did here, but I would like to point out that one alternative which has been employed previously would be to silently forward her e-mails to the NSA or state department. Refusing to offer their services is probably the most ethical thing that MS has ever done on behalf of the US federal government.
Companies have a duty to ensure they don't provide services that would enable illegal behaviour. What the IDF is doing is illegal under international law and a crime against Humanity.
I expect this to continue to be the conflict of responsibility and capability in the 21st century.
Alfred Nobel was known as a "merchant of death" for enabling the use of combat explosives that could do (by the standards of the time) preposterous damage to people, but his argument was that he just sold the dynamite; he wasn't responsible for the anarchists getting it and bombing something twice a week in New York. And even then, his conscience weighed on him enough that he endowed a Peace Prize when he died.
The story is different when the data conversion is being done on machines you own, in buildings you own, in a company you own (for practical reasons in addition to moral / theoretical; if someone wants to stop those computations, they're now going after your stuff, not trying to stop a supply-chain).
I'll be honest, these, like the equivalent "cancel culture" statements, can only come from the politically naive or from someone accessory to the oppressive systems. "Normalizing removing services because the tenant does something disagreeable"? What the hell do you mean?, that is already normal. The only difference is that is usually the disadvantaged side that gets hit; when it's the regularly protected entity, and then and only then, we get these statements about "What if it happens to someone you support?".
> is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support?
That's why I never find it "fine." It's only a matter of time before corporate power finds it's way to your hobby horse. I thought part of the "hacker vibe" was being highly suspicious of any form of authority.
> because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable
You do realize that the said tenant is massacring an entire population as we speak, right? Framing that as just something that's "disagreeable" is one hell of a euphemism.
The absolute bare minimum one can do is to not actively provide the technical means to carry out this atrocity, yet you claim it's only moral to do the exact opposite. This neoliberal fantasy that it's moral and good for society to let powerful corporations do whatever it wants is an absurdity not even worth refuting. But it's downright cruel and tone-deaf when it's used to justify taking part in an officially approved genocide.
>"According to sources familiar with the huge data transfer outside of the EU country, it occurred in early August. Intelligence sources said Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) nor Amazon responded to a request for comment."
So was the data moved in August to Amazon (AWS)? I am sure the $3.8bn USD the US gives annually will pay for it anyway. Because it is given as a loan, no accountability is required if it were a grant to Israel, and then the US forgives the loan, so there's not payback or interest for borrowing.
This is off-topic, but I'd like to hijack your comment to remind everyone that your comment is _technically_ against the rules. I hope this particular example reveals that the rule against "RTFA" is misguided and should be changed or removed because it creates a culture where people are deliberately misinformed seeking only a summary in the comment section (if that) and some kind of hot take to fume about.
I agree but there are some dodgy links that make it through and a good way to lower risk is being hesitant to click random links, or at least not being the first person to do so.
Are you asking whether Microsoft engineers routinely poke around their customer’s private clouds (including ones used by foreign intelligence agencies) to make sure everything is kosher?
Well, MS reviewed previously, and said they've seen nothing wrong, now they are saying some employees (coincidentally, Israeli) might have not been all transparent ...
> The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review.
You think, that is plausible?
To me, Nope, it's just that, the money was too good.
Only after Guardian's report, they realized:
"Oops, we got caught, now do the damage control dance"
And here we are ...
Also, are those employees going to get fired? I doubt. But the protestor, standing up for something, did. Who is more damaging?
Oh right, the protestor, because, they ruined the big cake.
Did the unit that breach the contract lose anything? Nope, they got enough time to move their data safely, and will continue doing the same thing.
It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
“I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the Guardian,” [Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith] wrote, noting that it had brought to light “information we could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments”. He added: “Our review is ongoing.”
Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to privacy commitments.
I actually think understanding exactly how your customers do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
I've had sales, customer reps, even engineers and customers describe how a customer / they work ... and then I go and look and ... it's not how anyone said they work IRL.
The first one seems to be after Microsoft's claim "and Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets".
The second one looks similar "Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian".
The 3rd one seems to be a genuine example that Microsoft employees were reporting this specific contract violation concern - but I feel like there are more genuine examples I've heard of than just this one report.
The 4th one is a bit unclear, it seems to be a general complaint about the contract - not about specific violations of it.
Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian". It's not like these kinds of claims are new, or in small papers only, but maybe The Guardian was able to put together hard evidence from outside that allowed Microsoft to determine things without themselves going in breach of contract details?
I don't know if it's _true_, but it seems right? I don't want Microsoft to have this level of visibility into my usage of Azure, just like I don't want my phone provider to eavesdrop on my conversations. I'm no privacy ayatollah, but this seems like a reasonable amount of privacy from Microsoft
The whole point of confidential computing is that the cloud provider can't access your data and can't tell what you're doing with it. This is a must have requirement in many government contracts and other highly legislated fields.
I've personally never seen anything requiring confidential computing in anything. Is this required in the USA? I find that hard to believe, because the technology on a cloud level is still very beta-feeling. I think that Microsoft just never looked because they did not want to know.
The reality is that no one can tell whose ass it is safe to kiss now a days, so it’s all scandal driven actions. Unless someone can create a big enough scandal, no one is going to do squat.
That’s the best part, they cannot. Well, they technically can, but the answer from the company that runs chinese azure servers is gonna be “none of your business.”
JIDF and Unit 8200 have infiltrated a lot of US tech companies.
This is a very significant issue for American tech companies, they either need to restore the trust of global customers, or they will lose it completely.
> 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands
The Israel Azure region wasn't launched until 2023, and AFAIK has substantially less services available than the others. I know Google's Israel region doesn't have as many GPU options, for example.
But why do you think the Netherlands govt was in anyway involved in this? I host some bsremetal in the Netherlands but I don't need to report to the government what I store..
Israel (like many governments) is very Microsoft Windows centric, so if I had to guess it wasn't chosen due to technical merits but instead based on existing business relationships.
Not sure about that. To many companies or individuals, it might make them choose another provider. Unless... they already are Azure customers, in which case they might probably want to avoid the cost of moving from a cloud provider
Readit News
It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.
Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn’t take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and schools is going to kill innocent people.
The concern is who gets to decide what is or isn't a legitimate target? Today's heroes might be tomorrow's victims. I'd rather no one have that much power over others.
2. Sure, they can surveil, let them do it on their own data centers. It's actually strange that they would put such data/tech on a 3rd party data center to begin with.
That would only be true if your goal was not to completely obliterate the population you are attacking and bombing, as Israel has demonstrated.
Well, why wouldn't they? It's Microsoft, they're not exactly stewards of privacy.
https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1745501858611786029?lang=en
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The IDF's "Wolf" system have been well known for years.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facia...
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.[0]
For me, this is more proof (not less) that I shouldn't rely on US tech giants. Not because I will be collecting data on a population to do god-knows-what with, but because someone believes themselves to be the moral authority on what the compute I rent should be doing and that moral authority can be outraged for the whims of someone completely random, for any reason.
[0]: https://www.aurasalla.eu/en/2025/05/26/mep-aura-salla-micros...
Not that I necessarily agree with what they did here, but I would like to point out that one alternative which has been employed previously would be to silently forward her e-mails to the NSA or state department. Refusing to offer their services is probably the most ethical thing that MS has ever done on behalf of the US federal government.
Alfred Nobel was known as a "merchant of death" for enabling the use of combat explosives that could do (by the standards of the time) preposterous damage to people, but his argument was that he just sold the dynamite; he wasn't responsible for the anarchists getting it and bombing something twice a week in New York. And even then, his conscience weighed on him enough that he endowed a Peace Prize when he died.
The story is different when the data conversion is being done on machines you own, in buildings you own, in a company you own (for practical reasons in addition to moral / theoretical; if someone wants to stop those computations, they're now going after your stuff, not trying to stop a supply-chain).
That's why I never find it "fine." It's only a matter of time before corporate power finds it's way to your hobby horse. I thought part of the "hacker vibe" was being highly suspicious of any form of authority.
You do realize that the said tenant is massacring an entire population as we speak, right? Framing that as just something that's "disagreeable" is one hell of a euphemism.
The absolute bare minimum one can do is to not actively provide the technical means to carry out this atrocity, yet you claim it's only moral to do the exact opposite. This neoliberal fantasy that it's moral and good for society to let powerful corporations do whatever it wants is an absurdity not even worth refuting. But it's downright cruel and tone-deaf when it's used to justify taking part in an officially approved genocide.
So was the data moved in August to Amazon (AWS)? I am sure the $3.8bn USD the US gives annually will pay for it anyway. Because it is given as a loan, no accountability is required if it were a grant to Israel, and then the US forgives the loan, so there's not payback or interest for borrowing.
Are we supposed to believe Microsoft was unaware of the contents but decided to terminate coincidentally when reports of what they're doing came out?
> The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review.
You think, that is plausible?
To me, Nope, it's just that, the money was too good.
Only after Guardian's report, they realized:
"Oops, we got caught, now do the damage control dance"
And here we are ...
Also, are those employees going to get fired? I doubt. But the protestor, standing up for something, did. Who is more damaging?
Oh right, the protestor, because, they ruined the big cake.
Did the unit that breach the contract lose anything? Nope, they got enough time to move their data safely, and will continue doing the same thing.
It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
When the customer is indicted by the Hague for crimes against humanity? Yes, it's difficult to imagine a more clear-cut case of professional ethics.
Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to privacy commitments.
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-palestine-is...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-prote...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-build-israel-gaza-prote...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-protest-employees-fired...
I've had sales, customer reps, even engineers and customers describe how a customer / they work ... and then I go and look and ... it's not how anyone said they work IRL.
The first one seems to be after Microsoft's claim "and Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets".
The second one looks similar "Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian".
The 3rd one seems to be a genuine example that Microsoft employees were reporting this specific contract violation concern - but I feel like there are more genuine examples I've heard of than just this one report.
The 4th one is a bit unclear, it seems to be a general complaint about the contract - not about specific violations of it.
Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian". It's not like these kinds of claims are new, or in small papers only, but maybe The Guardian was able to put together hard evidence from outside that allowed Microsoft to determine things without themselves going in breach of contract details?
Deleted Comment
This is a very significant issue for American tech companies, they either need to restore the trust of global customers, or they will lose it completely.
It’s a fucking disgrace to any government to be facilitating anything like this, and the Netherlands seems extra complicit.
Note: I've used Azure and it sucks. :)
Uses the same awful UI/plaform as their Xbox account settings
Microsoft always somehow succeeds in spite of the quality of everything they build.