Microsoft has terminated the Israeli army’s access to technology it was using to store vast troves of intelligence on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, the tech giant informed Israel’s Defense Ministry in a letter late last week, according to the Guardian.

The decision followed an exposé last month by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian revealing how Unit 8200, the Israeli army’s elite cyber warfare agency, was housing intercepted recordings of millions of mobile phone calls by Palestinians on Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, creating one of the world’s most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group. According to the joint investigation, this data has been used over the past two years to plan lethal airstrikes in Gaza, as well as to arrest Palestinians in the West Bank.

The decision to cut off Unit 8200’s ability to use some of its technology results directly from an investigation published by the Guardian last month. It revealed how Azure was being used to store and process the trove of Palestinian communications in a mass surveillance programme.

In a joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, the Guardian revealed how Microsoft and Unit 8200 had worked together on a plan to move large volumes of sensitive intelligence material into Azure.