LONDON: Microsoft Israel’s general manager, Alon Haimovich, is to leave the company after an investigation into its relationship with the country’s military, The Guardian reported.
The inquiry was ordered by Microsoft in the US after a joint investigative piece by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call found that the company’s technology was used to spy on phone conversations between Palestinian civilians.
The publications uncovered evidence that Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200 had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology to store a huge number of intercepted conversations.
Microsoft’s investigation found that the Israeli military violated its terms of service when it used Azure to spy on and store calls, and that Israel-based employees had not been transparent with the parent company about how the technology was used.
Haimovich, The Guardian reported, was vital to developing the relationship between the Israeli military and Microsoft, having attended a meeting in 2021 between CEO Satya Nadella and the then-commander of Unit 8200.
Haimovich later oversaw the relationship, the newspaper added, which allowed Unit 8200 to create a vast network within the Azure platform that enabled members to analyze millions of phone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Israeli business paper Globes reported that Haimovich was later summoned by the Microsoft inquiry team, which included lawyers at US firm Covington & Burling, after it visited the Israeli subsidiary’s offices near Tel Aviv.
Unit 8200 subsequently had its access to the platform and its artificial intelligence technology revoked.
Haimovich did not respond to a request by The Guardian for comment, but boasted to staff in an email last week announcing his departure that he had turned Israel into “one of Microsoft’s fastest-growing markets worldwide.”
Microsoft previously suggested that senior executives had no idea Unit 8200 was using Azure to store intercepted Palestinian phone calls.
Last year, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said: “We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians.”
