Pressured on Israel work, Microsoft asks employees to flag violations (www.detroitnews.com)

Microsoft has added a "Trusted Technology Review" channel to its internal Integrity Portal so employees can flag legal, ethical and security concerns—including potential human‑rights abuses—anonymously and without retaliation. The move follows months of scrutiny after reports alleged Israel’s Unit 8200 used Azure to store mass surveillance data on Palestinians. Microsoft’s first probe found no evidence of targeting; a second investigation in August/September corroborated some reporting and prompted Microsoft to cut specific cloud services to Unit 8200 for violating its terms of service. Brad Smith said the company will strengthen pre‑contract reviews for engagements that require extra human‑rights due diligence and share lessons learned. The change is significant for AI/ML and cloud providers because it institutionalizes employee oversight and contract-level safeguards around how compute, storage and cloud-based analytics can be used by state actors—setting a potential precedent for enforcing terms of service against human‑rights misuse. It also comes amid workplace protests (including the No Azure for Apartheid actions that led to firings and arrests) and wider industry pressure from controversies like Amazon/Google’s Project Nimbus. For practitioners and vendors, the development underscores rising expectations to bake human‑rights reviews, monitoring and contractual constraints into AI/cloud agreements and operational controls.