A cross-party push is underway in Ireland’s national parliament to launch a formal investigation into the country’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), the national EU data oversight body, over its year-long failure to issue a definitive ruling on a high-stakes human rights complaint linked to Microsoft’s Irish cloud infrastructure. The complaint, jointly filed last year by rights groups EKO and the Irish Centre for Civil Liberties (ICCL), alleges that components of the Almunasseq app – a surveillance tool operated by Israeli military body Cogat, which governs civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories – are hosted on Microsoft’s Grange Castle data campus on the outskirts of Dublin. Almunasseq, which translates to “the coordinator” in Arabic, was launched in 2020 to streamline Palestinian permit applications for travel to Israel for work, healthcare, family visits and education, but has since evolved into a pervasive monitoring system that can track users’ real-time location, access private device notifications, saved files and even activate device cameras, according to whistleblower evidence submitted to regulators. Prior to the app’s rollout, Palestinians seeking movement permits were required to visit in-person Cogat offices to verify their status, but the Israeli military has since made the app mandatory for all permit-related services, leaving the more than one million users who have downloaded it from the Google Play Store with no viable alternative to access critical life services. Testimony collected for EKO’s newly published “Apartheid in Your Pocket” report documents widespread fear among Palestinian users, many of whom have discarded devices and purchased new handsets to avoid continuous surveillance. Multiple respondents confirmed that after October 2023, the app was used to arbitrarily revoke thousands of previously issued medical and work permits, including for children and elderly people, with no formal appeal process. The app’s own terms of use grant the Israeli military full authority to block access or modify content at any time for unspecified “security or policy considerations”, often leaving affected Palestinians with no digital proof of their legal movement status to present at military checkpoints. The whistleblower evidence, independently verified by Middle East Eye, confirms that Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform provides the full underlying technical stack for Almunasseq, including cloud storage, database management and raw computing power, with portions of the app’s server infrastructure physically hosted on Irish soil – placing the system under the full jurisdiction of EU General Data Protection Regulation rules. Sinead Gibney, a sitting member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish legislature, told Middle East Eye that Microsoft’s Irish data centres are actively “fuelling the crime of apartheid against Palestinians” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, citing a growing body of UN documentation that formally categorizes Israel’s system of rule over Palestinian territories as an apartheid regime. Gibney confirmed she will formally advocate for Ireland’s Department of Enterprise to open a full public investigation into the DPC’s prolonged inaction on the complaint, and demand full transparency from Microsoft regarding its contracts with Israeli state security bodies. The complaint was originally filed on behalf of a dual resident of Gaza and the West Bank, alongside an EU citizen, to trigger formal regulatory review. Neither the DPC nor Microsoft responded to repeated requests for comment from Middle East Eye. The new allegations arrive amid expanding global scrutiny of Microsoft’s multi-million dollar commercial ties to the Israeli military: prior reporting from The Guardian and +972 Magazine revealed that Israeli intelligence Unit 8200 used Microsoft Azure to store tens of thousands of hours of intercepted Palestinian audio communications, a revelation that led Microsoft to temporarily suspend access to that specific military instance. Earlier this year, Middle East Eye exclusively reported that the Israeli Defense Ministry renewed a $125 million three-year cloud services contract with Microsoft in 2024, during the first year of the ongoing Gaza war. Rewan al-Addad, senior campaign director at EKO, emphasized that the Almunasseq app directly controls nearly every aspect of Palestinian movement, determining access to life-saving medical care, family reunification and livelihoods, and that Microsoft’s continued provision of hosting infrastructure makes the tech giant a direct enabler of systemic human rights abuses. Rasha Abdul Rahim, coordinator of the Tech Justice for Palestine campaign, added that unaccountable big tech firms can no longer hide behind vague infrastructure claims to avoid responsibility for enabling violations of international law, including apartheid, illegal occupation and crimes against humanity, and called on Irish regulators to set a global precedent by ending the era of impunity for firms that profit from human rights violations.
Ireland: Watchdog accused of stalling probe into Microsoft hosting Israeli military app
