Israeli intelligence using Microsoft servers to store intercepted phone call data

ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE IS USING Microsoft’s cloud service to store recordings and metadata from millions of intercepted telephone conversations placed by residents of Gaza and the West Bank, according to a new investigation. The investigation was jointly conducted by British newspaper The Guardian and Israeli weekly magazine Sikha Mekomit (Local Call), which published it last week.

Citing conversation with 11 sources from Microsoft and within Israel, the investigation reveals that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Unit 8200 is the primary force behind the interception and data storage project. Operating under Aman, Israel’s military intelligence directorate, Unit 8200 is responsible for collecting signals intelligence (SIGINT), cyber warfare, and code decryption, among other tasks.

Israeli security sources cited in the report explain that the commander of Unit 8200, Brigadier General Yossi Sriel, approached Microsoft because the Israeli intelligence unit lacked enough storage space and processing power to store “billions of files”. General Sriel has led a large-budget project that has significantly expanded the scope of information-gathering on Palestinians and has integrated various databases.

In November 2021, an meeting, described in the report as “extraordinary”, took place at Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington. On one side were Microsoft Chief Operating Officer, Satya Nadella, and other company executives, while on the other side were General Sriel and other senior officials of Unit 8200. The agenda centered on a plan, promoted by Sriel, to transfer intelligence information held by the Unit to the computing giant’s servers. According to an internal Microsoft document, which was leaked by The Guardian, Sriel requested the transfer to Microsoft’s cloud of 70% of the unit’s data, including “secret and top secret” data.

The meeting allegedly led to the development of one of the world’s most invasive surveillance systems, which has been employed by Israel to monitor Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to documents cited by The Guardian, as of July this year, 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data—equivalent to 862 billion documents or 195 million hours of audio—were stored on Microsoft Azure public cloud servers in the Netherlands. A smaller portion of the data was stored in Ireland and Israel.

“A million calls per hour—that’s the order of magnitude. It’s a crazy amount”, an intelligence officer said about the cloud project. Other sources also confirmed that the phrase “a million calls per hour” was used. It is not possible to know for sure from the documents how much of this data belongs to Unit 8200, as some of it may belong to other Israeli government units, including some under the Israel Security Agency (ISA). It is worth noting that Sikha Mekomi previously reported that the Israeli army also utilizes Amazon servers.

Three Israeli sources stated that information stored in the Microsoft cloud helped facilitate multiple airstrikes in Gaza after October 7, 2023, and was also used to facilitate arrests of individuals in the West Bank. An intelligence officer said that, as the war progressed, the IDF began to understand that Gaza would remain under military rule for a long time. Internal enthusiasm for the external data storage project grew. “They realized that they needed it in Gaza as well [as the West Bank], that they were heading towards long-term control there”, the source said.

“Suddenly, the public is our enemy. [Because] we are dealing with a civilian population, not an army or a terrorist group”, said another source who served in General Sriel’s unit during those years. Instead of traditional surveillance of specific targets, mass data collection was carried out on everyone, and insights were derived from this data using smart search engines and artificial intelligence technologies.

The new revelation is likely to increase pressure on Microsoft. Last month, 60 of the company’s investors, who collectively own $80-million-worth of shares, demanded that the firm review its methods for identifying and monitoring customers who “misuse” artificial intelligence tools “in the face of serious charges of complicity in genocide and other international crimes”. Microsoft stated that “[a]t no time during this engagement has [the Company] been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cellphone conversations using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review it commissioned”.

► Author: Avner Barnea* | Date: 11 August 2025 | Permalink

* Dr. Avner Barnea is a research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).