Ireland: Watchdog accused of stalling probe into Microsoft hosting Israeli military app

Irish lawmakers are calling for an investigation into Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which has not given a definitive response to a complaint about Microsoft data centres allegedly hosting parts of an Israeli military app. The complaint says the Almunasseq app is used to monitor Palestinians, raising questions about personal data and the role of cloud services in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Rights groups EKO and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties submitted the complaint last year on behalf of a Palestinian resident and an EU citizen, using evidence from a whistleblower. They say Microsoft’s Azure platform provides storage, databases and computing power for the app, with some components reportedly hosted in Ireland. Launched in 2020, Almunasseq is required for some permit-related services and can access users’ locations, notifications, files and camera; Microsoft and the DPC declined to comment to the article’s publisher.