human rights

Microsoft confirmed it fired two employees after a group of protesters — including current and former staffers — broke into the Redmond office of company president Brad Smith and staged a brief sit‑in as part of an intensifying campaign over Microsoft’s ties to the Israel Defense Forces and...

Microsoft president Brad Smith’s compact public line — “some of what was reported needs to be tested” — is the latest punctuation in a rapidly escalating crisis for Azure, Microsoft’s relationships with the Israeli security establishment, and the cloud industry’s role in wartime intelligence and...

A sit‑in at Microsoft’s Redmond campus that ended with arrested protesters inside the office of company president Brad Smith has erupted into a global ethics crisis for the maker of Windows and Azure, exposing fundamental tensions between cloud economics, employee activism, human‑rights...

Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told reporters from his office at the Redmond campus that the company will “investigate and get to the truth” after a Guardian-led investigation alleged that Israel’s Unit 8200 had used Microsoft Azure to store and process vast troves of intercepted Palestinian...

Microsoft’s Redmond campus erupted into a high-stakes showdown this month as employee-led protesters occupied public spaces, splashed paint on the company sign, and drew law-enforcement intervention — all over one fundamental allegation: that Microsoft Azure has been used at scale by the Israeli...

In a volatile escalation of employee activism and public scrutiny, 18 people were arrested at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus on August 20, 2025, after demonstrators — including current and former Microsoft staff — splashed red paint on the company’s signage, set up an encampment on...

A small but highly visible standoff at Microsoft’s Redmond campus this week crystallized a wider crisis for the company: employees confronting management over allegations that Microsoft’s cloud and AI technologies have been used by the Israeli military to store and process mass surveillance data...

Microsoft employees have erected a protest encampment on the company’s Redmond campus, turning a high-profile workplace dispute over Israel ties into a public test of Microsoft’s ethics, governance, and operational transparency. protest is the latest escalation in a year-long campaign by...

Microsoft has opened an externally supervised review after investigative reporting alleged that Israel’s intelligence services used a bespoke environment running on Microsoft Azure to ingest, store and analyse very large volumes of intercepted Palestinian communications — a development that...

A coordinated pair of stories surfaced this week that together sketch two urgent and contrasting dilemmas at the intersection of technology, power, and public life: investigative reporting that Israeli military intelligence has been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud to store and analyze massive...

Microsoft has opened an externally supervised inquiry into allegations that Israel’s military intelligence used a bespoke area of Microsoft Azure to ingest, store and analyse enormous volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls — a development that escalates a months‑long policy, legal and...

Microsoft has opened a formal review into allegations that its cloud and AI technologies were used by Israeli security forces for large‑scale surveillance in Gaza and the West Bank — a development that escalates months of investigative reporting, employee protests, and policy debate about the...

Microsoft has opened an urgent external review after media investigations alleged that Israel’s Unit 8200 used a bespoke area of Microsoft’s Azure cloud to collect and store immense volumes of intercepted Palestinian communications—raising fresh questions about cloud governance, data residency...

Microsoft’s Azure cloud has quietly become the focus of one of the most consequential tech-and-human-rights controversies of the decade after investigative reporting alleged that Israel’s elite signals intelligence unit used a bespoke Azure environment to ingest, store and analyze enormous...

Microsoft has opened a formal inquiry after fresh reports allege that Israel’s elite intelligence unit used Microsoft Azure to store and analyse vast volumes of intercepted Palestinian communications, raising urgent questions about cloud governance, corporate responsibility, and the role of big...

Microsoft has opened a formal, externally supervised review into allegations that its Azure cloud was used to store and process vast quantities of intercepted Palestinian communications — a probe that elevates a months‑long ethics and policy crisis inside the company into an urgent legal...

Microsoft Azure’s evolution from a commercial cloud storage service to a platform implicated in large-scale intelligence operations has exposed one of the most consequential fault lines of our digital era: when enterprise-grade infrastructure meets state surveillance, the consequences can be...

Arkane Studios’ Lyon-based union has publicly joined calls for Microsoft to sever ties with the Israeli military, putting one of the games industry’s most respected studios at the center of a widening debate about cloud providers, AI, corporate responsibility, and the ethics of doing business in...

Microsoft’s cloud business is at the center of a fraught ethical, legal and commercial storm after new reporting tied Azure to intelligence workloads used by Israel’s military, forcing a reckoning over what cloud providers can — and should — do when sovereign customers appear to repurpose...

Arkane Studios union members have joined a high-profile call for Microsoft to sever ties with the Israeli military, saying the parent company’s cloud and AI services “have no place being accomplice of a genocide,” and aligning their demands with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)...