Israelis ‘target’ Palestinians for photo database

ISRAELI soldiers competed for prizes by photographing thousands of Palestinians for an elaborate facial recognition network called “Blue Wolf ”, it has been claimed.

The sweeping personal data collection programme involved Israeli troops targeting Palestinians in parts of the occupied West Bank in an effort to integrate facial recognition technology with a growing network of cameras and smartphones.

Soldiers on patrol in the flashpoint city of Hebron are equipped with specialised devices and “take photos of every Palestinian that they see, completely arbitrarily”, Ori Givati, the advocacy director for Breaking the Silence, an NGO that gathers anonymous soldiers’ testimonies, told AFP.

To build the database used by Blue Wolf, soldiers competed last year to photograph Palestinians, with prizes including time off for the most pictures collected by each unit, The Washington Post reported.

It is thought that thousands of people’s faces have been logged. After the picture is taken, the system known as Blue Wolf generates four possible results, according to Mr Givati, who said the findings were based on testimony from six soldiers who participated in the surveillance effort.

A red result means the individual should be arrested, yellow means the person should be detained while an army superior is consulted, and green indicates the individual is free to go. But no result means the Palestinian is not yet in the Blue Wolf system.

That prompts the soldier to collect more data.

The database is so extensive that one former soldier described it to The Washington Post as the army’s secret “Facebook for Palestinians.”

Asked for comment, Israel’s army said it “conducts routine security operations” in the West Bank as part of its “fight against terrorism”.

“Naturally, we cannot comment on the IDF’S operational capabilities in this context,” a spokesman said, referring to the Israeli Defence Forces.

Hebron is the only Palestinian city with Jewish settlers living inside it, making the city “the best place” to test Blue Wolf, Breaking the Silence deputy director Nadav Weiman told AFP.