Microsoft to tighten human rights measures after inquiry into Israel’s use of its tech

Microsoft has announced a series of new measures that include changes to how the company oversees employees with security clearances issued by foreign governments. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images View image in fullscreen Microsoft has announced a series of new measures that include changes to how the company oversees employees with security clearances issued by foreign governments. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Microsoft to tighten human rights measures after inquiry into Israel’s use of its tech Announcement seeks to close a difficult chapter for the company after the Guardian revealed its platform was used in mass surveillance of Palestinians Microsoft has said it will tighten human-rights controls when working with national security agencies after an inquiry into how the Israeli military used its cloud technology for the mass surveillance of Palestinians. On Thursday, Microsoft announced the completion of the inquiry and a series of new measures that include changes to how the company oversees employees with security clearances issued by foreign governments. Microsoft ordered the inquiry last year in response to a Guardian investigation with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call revealing how the Israeli military used the company’s cloud to store a vast trove of intercepted Palestinian phone calls. Shortly after the inquiry was launched, Microsoft terminated the Israeli military’s access to cloud and AI services used to support the surveillance project after initial findings showed its spy agency, Unit 8200, had violated the company’s terms of service. In a summary of the inquiry’s outcome , Microsoft said its “factual findings remain the same” and it would adopt a series of recommendations intended to improve the “effectiveness of our human-rights governance”. Described as a “final update” on the situation, the announcement attempts to draw a line under a challenging episode for Microsoft that placed a spotlight on the role played by its technology in the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza and operations in the occupied West Bank. The Guardian investigation last year found Unit 8200 had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to operate an indiscriminate system that allowed its intelligence officers to collect, play back and analyse the content of millions of Palestinian cellular phone calls every day. The revelations prompted concerns at a senior level within Microsoft that some employees at its Israeli subsidiary had not been fully transparent with headquarters about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used the company’s technology. Sources familiar with the inquiry said it had examined how some of Microsoft’s Tel Aviv-based employees had felt conflicting loyalties between their obligations to the company and their support for the Israeli military after the Hamas-led 7 October attacks on southern Israel. Last month, Microsoft said the head of it