Yossi Sariel was in charge of one of the branches of Israel’s intelligence agency. When he took over Unit 8200 he arrived with ambitious plans – to use tech to change the way intelligence was gathered and analysed.
The Guardian’s Harry Davies tells Nosheen Iqbal about an investigation he carried out with Yuval Abraham, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. It found Sariel had a plan to transfer large amounts of Unit 8200’s data, including top-secret information, into Microsoft’s cloud platform, which is called Azure. Having this much data storage would allow Sariel to fulfil his plans to carry out mass surveillance on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Microsoft says it did not know what it was storing and that there is no evidence linking its technologies to the targeting or harm of civilians. But what exactly did Microsoft agreed to … and how might that data be used to target Palestinians?
