“I have warned in the past that the architecture of [technological] oppression is emerging.
Here we are."
Edward Snowden, the famous whistleblower behind the 2013 NSA wiretapping scandal, reacted on Twitter Monday, November 8, to the Washington Post's description of technological surveillance efforts. by the Israeli army in the West Bank.
I once warned that the architecture of oppression was near.
It has arrived.https: //t.co/Ph9s3qhlwH
- Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 8, 2021
The IDF has built up its “secret Palestinian Facebook” - according to one of the former Israeli soldiers interviewed by the American newspaper - connected a facial recognition system used in areas deemed most at risk of the West Bank, to like the city of Hebron.
“Take as many pictures as possible”
It all started almost two years ago with smartphones equipped with a facial recognition program called "Blue Wolf".
They distributed it to Israeli soldiers stationed in Hebron, according to several testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO that works with ex-soldiers to document the abuses of the Israeli army against Palestinians. .
These soldiers then took photos of Palestinians in order to feed a database that has continued to grow to reach several thousand faces linked to names, addresses and any information that the Israeli intelligence services may have on. these individuals.
Children, the elderly, everyone could be photographed.
“We didn't need 'suspicious signs' to do it.
All we were asked was to take as many pictures as possible.
There was even some kind of competition between the units, ”said a former sergeant stationed in Hebron in 2020 in a testimony published by Breaking the silence.
The prizes for the most prolific photographers could be additional night time permissions, the Washington Post said.
This photographic database can then be queried in real time by Israeli soldiers during identity checks in the West Bank.
“We then receive indications by color code for each individual.
The yellow signifying that we have to detain the person, the red that we have to arrest him and the green that we can let him pass ”, tells an ex-soldier to the NGO Breaking the silence.
To obtain this information, "we scan a barcode on the identity papers of the person being checked, or if they do not have one on them, we can directly scan their face with the program on the phone", specifies in another testimony an ex-lieutenant of the Tsahal who was able to test the effectiveness of the system of facial recognition Blue Wolf.
But other mechanisms are also linked to "Blue Wolf". The network of surveillance cameras installed in Hebron also has access to it. This device, called “Hebron Smart City”, thus makes it possible to “recognize Palestinians even before they present their identity papers during a control at a checkpoint”, notes the Washington Post.
The “Hebron Smart City” program - started last year - had so far been described simply as a traditional network of surveillance cameras, used to help the IDF combat the “terrorist risk”.
In an article in the free Israeli daily Israel Hayom published in October 2020, this device is described by the army as “a set of sensors capable of identifying in real time what is out of the ordinary and quickly providing soldiers on the spot. all the useful information about what is going on ”.
A little air of “Big Brother”
But the Washington Post's revelations about the link between “Hebron Smart City” and the Blue Wolf photographic database give this program a much more “Big Brother” Chinese version.
Beijing has, in fact, been widely criticized for its use of facial recognition in order to control the Muslim minority of Uyghurs.
And with its "made in Israel" system, Tel Aviv "is building a little corner of China in the West Bank," lamented on Twitter Haggai Matar, an Israeli journalist known for his hostile positions against the presence of the Israeli army in the West Bank.
>>
To read: How Beijing organizes surveillance 2.0 of Uyghurs
And the Israeli military would not be the only ones to benefit from the information contained in this database, according to ex-soldiers who have testified to its existence. A parallel program, dubbed "White Wolf", is made available to Jewish settlers in the West Bank and allows them to query this database by scanning the identity papers of Palestinians who come to work in Jewish settlements. “It's a watered-down version with a lot less data provided [to the settlers]. They only receive information on work permits and possible movement restrictions, ”said a former IDF lieutenant interviewed by Breaking the Silence.
Contacted by France 24, the Israeli army did not deny the existence of "Blue Wolf" simply adding that it was "naturally impossible to give details on the operational capacities of the Israel Defense Forces".
The use of facial recognition for security purposes is sensitive in Israel as elsewhere.
A law to introduce doped facial recognition cameras throughout Israel, introduced in July 2021, has met strong opposition from privacy groups.
They argue that it is not only a violation of privacy, but that the effectiveness of facial recognition is still far from satisfactory.
Critics which made it possible to block - at least temporarily - the adoption of the text in Israel, but which in no way prevented the IDF from deploying the technology in the West Bank "without the knowledge of the population", notes the Washington Post.
For Breaking the Silence, it is a “further demonstration that when it comes to Palestinians, the military judges that even the most basic human rights do not apply”.
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