Israel uses facial recognition program
Palestinians’ data being gathered quietly
TEL AVIV, Israel — Within minutes of walking through an Israeli military checkpoint along the Gaza Strip’s central highway Nov. 19, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was asked to step out of the crowd. He put down his 3-year-old son, whom he was carrying, and sat in front of a military jeep.
Half an hour later, Abu Toha heard his name called. Then he was blindfolded and led away for interrogation.
“I had no idea what was happening or how they could suddenly know my full legal name,” said the 31-year-old, who added that he had no ties to the militant group Hamas and had been trying to leave Gaza for Egypt.
It turned out Abu Toha had walked into the range of cameras embedded with facial recognition technology, according to three Israeli intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. After his face was scanned and he was identified, an artificial intelligence program found that the poet was on an Israeli list of wanted persons, they said.
Abu Toha is one of hundreds of Palestinians who have been picked out by a previously undisclosed Israeli facial recognition program that was started in Gaza late last year. The expansive and experimental effort is being used to conduct mass surveillance there, collecting and cataloging the faces of Palestinians without their knowledge or consent, according to Israeli intelligence officers, military officials and soldiers.
The technology was initially used in Gaza to search for Israelis who were taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7 crossborder raids, the intelligence officials said. After Israel embarked on a ground offensive in Gaza, it increasingly turned to the program to root out anyone with ties to Hamas or other militant groups. At times, the technology wrongly flagged civilians as wanted Hamas militants, one officer said.
The facial recognition program, which is run by Israel’s military intelligence unit, including the cyberintelligence division Unit 8200, relies on technology from Corsight, a private Israeli company, four intelligence officers said. It also uses Google Photos, they said.
Three of the people with knowledge of the program said they were speaking out because of concerns that it was a misuse of time and resources by Israel.
An Israeli army spokesperson declined to comment on activity in Gaza but said the military “carries out necessary security and intelligence operations, while making significant efforts to minimize harm to the uninvolved population.” He added, “Naturally, we cannot refer to operational and intelligence capabilities in this context.”
Facial recognition technology has spread across the globe in recent years. China and Russia have deployed the technology against minority groups and to suppress dissent. Israel’s use of facial recognition in Gaza stands out as an application of the technology in a war.
Matt Mahmoudi, a researcher with Amnesty International, said Israel’s use of facial recognition was a concern because it could lead to “a complete dehumanization of Palestinians” where they were not seen as individuals. He added that Israeli soldiers were unlikely to question the technology when it identified a person as being part of a militant group, even though the technology makes mistakes.
Israel previously used facial recognition in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to an Amnesty report last year, but the effort in Gaza goes further.
In Gaza, which Israel withdrew from in 2005, no facial recognition technology was present. Surveillance of Hamas in Gaza was instead conducted by tapping phone lines, interrogating Palestinian prisoners, harvesting drone footage, getting access to private social media accounts, and hacking into telecommunications systems, Israeli intelligence officers said.
After Oct. 7, Israeli intelligence officers in Unit 8200 turned to that surveillance for information on the Hamas militants who breached Israel’s borders. The unit also combed through footage of the attacks from security cameras, as well as videos uploaded by Hamas on social media, one officer said. He said the unit had been told to create a “hit list” of Hamas members who participated in the attack.
Corsight was then brought in to create a facial recognition program in Gaza, three Israeli intelligence officers said.