BIOMETRICS AND
COUNTER-TERRORISM
Case study of Israel/Palestine
May 2021

privacyinternational.org

Biometrics and counter-terrorism:
Case study of Israel/Palestine

AuthorThis report was compiled by Keren Weitzberg, a tech and migration researcher,in collaboration with Privacy International. To find out more visit
www.kerenweitzberg.com.

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Case study of Israel/Palestine

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Biometrics and counter-terrorism:
Case study of Israel/Palestine

CONTENTSABOUT THIS REPORT3

GLOSSARY

4

ISRAEL AND BIOMETRIC OCCUPATION

6BIOMETRIC ID

8

AUTOMATING CHECKPOINTS12FACIAL RECOGNITION AND VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

13

ASSESSING FACIAL RECOGNITION IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE18

SURVEILLANCE LABORATORIES

21

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Biometrics and counter-terrorism:
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ABOUT THIS REPORTIn 2017, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2396 requiring member
states to develop and implement systems to collect and share biometric data
for the purposes of tackling terrorism. For human rights and civil society groups,
this embrace of biometric technology is worrisome. The “War on Terror” hasalready led to a widespread erosion of civil liberties, a tendency that biometrictechnologies risk only accelerating. Through an in-depth focus on measures
implemented in Israel/Palestine, this report highlights the negative human rights
implications and ethical concerns surrounding the use of biometrics for counterterrorism, focusing on the dangers of unlawful surveillance, limitations to the rightto movement, and the exacerbation of racial and religious inequality via
automated decision making.

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GLOSSARY
Basel System:

An automated biometric identification system developedby the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which regulates
movement of Palestinian workers in and out of theoccupied Palestinian territory

Mabat 2000:

A visual surveillance system in the occupied Old City ofJerusalem

Maoz System:

A biometric registration system for foreign workers in Israel

occupied
Palestinian territory:

Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, namely
East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank

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Biometrics and counter-terrorism:
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Figure 1: Map of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory

Source: United Nations

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ISRAEL AND BIOMETRICOCCUPATION
In 1967, in the wake of the Six-Day War, the state of Israel captured andoccupied East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, territories overwhich it continues to maintain effective control despite delegating limited power
to Palestinian authorities. Israel, considered an occupying power underinternational law, has a long record of human rights violations across theoccupied Palestinian territory.1

Over the last few decades, the Israeli government has implemented an array of
infrastructural technologies to facilitate a regime of occupation and landannexation beyond the Green Line (the 1949 armistice border). These range fromcheckpoints to a segregated network of roads and railways to a separation
barrier that, by snaking into territory well into the West Bank, effectively serves
to annex territory.2 In recent years, these movement restrictions and policing
have become increasingly digitized. This turn towards higher-tech forms ofsurveillance has included a growing reliance on biometrics.

1 Israel is widely considered to be an occupying power under international law. A 2016 Security Council resolution
determined that Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank constituted “a flagrant violation underinternational law” with “no legal validity”. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 2334, 23 December 2016, 2,
https://www.un.org/webcast/pdfs/SRES2334-2016.pdf.
2 Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (Verso Books, 2017).

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Figure 2: Israel’s System of Segregated Roads in the occupied Palestinian territory

Source: Visualizing Palestine7

Biometrics and counter-terrorism:
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The Israeli government has made significant strides in the use of biometrictechnologies for the purposes of routine identification and authentication,
border crossing, and perhaps most alarmingly, surveillance of public spaces andpredictive risk assessment. Its tactics show how biometrics deployed in the nameof counter-terrorism can normalize conditions of segregation and militaryoccupation. National and international corporations, in close coordination with
the Israeli state, have also tested out biometrics on occupied populations andforeign workers before extending such technologies to Israeli citizens andexporting them internationally. As sociologist Elia Zureik notes, just as
technologies “developed in the colonies make their way back to the metropole”
so are “methods adopted to monitor marginal and minority groups… eventuallyextended to the majority”.3 The case of Israel/Palestine4 speaks to thesebroader dangers of technological function creep.

BIOMETRIC IDThis “creep” from the margins to the center is evidenced in the evolution of
Israel’s ID system. The Israeli government has a long history of using identity
documents to legally and spatially fragment the Palestinian population. As
media scholar Helga Tawil-Souri notes, the Israeli state has issued different IDs
to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip since the1967 Six-Day War. These cards are “a widespread low-tech surveillancemechanism and a principal means for discriminating (positively and negatively)
subjects’ privileges and basic rights.”5 More recently, in 2017, the Knesset (Israeli
3 Elia Zureik, “Strategies of Surveillance: The Israeli Gaze”, Jerusalem Quarterly 66 (2016): 26.
4 As it is difficult to neatly distinguish between the borders of the Israeli state and the borders of any future
Palestinian state, this report uses the term Israel/Palestine to refer to the region as a whole. The boundaries
between Israel and Palestine as defined under international law are contested and the Israeli government
effectively controls all the territory that once comprised Mandatory Palestine.
5 Helga Tawil-Souri, “Colored Identity: The Politics and Materiality of ID Cards in Palestine/Israel”, Social Text 29,
107, no. 2 (June 2011): 69-70. See also: Visualizing Palestine Infographic, “Identity Crisis: The Israeli ID System”, 7June 2014, https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/identity-crisis-the-israeli-id-system.

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Parliament) passed a long-debated and controversial law mandating all Israeli
citizens and residents carry a biometric ID and register in a national biometric
database of facial images and fingerprints.6 Yet long before such proposals
were rolled out for Israeli citizens, the military had trialed an earlier biometricidentification and authentication system in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Originally deployed in the Gaza strip in 1999 (just prior to the Second Intifada)
and eventually extended to the West Bank, the Basel system was designed forPalestinian workers from the occupied territory who had to travel to Israel.7

Pairing biometric work permits with biometric verification at checkpoints, theBasel system became the basis for an analogous scheme for foreign workers
residing in Israel, known as the Maoz system. 8 Established in 2004 and madeoperational the following year, the Maoz database of foreign workers wasintended to “enable the deportation of illegal workers and prevent their return
under a false identity”.9 Launched in the absence of any kind of legal regulation,
publication of formal procedures, or pilot program, the database has beenroundly condemned by migrant rights groups.10

6 “Knesset Approves Making Biometric ID Cards Mandatory”, The Times of Israel, 28 February 2017,https://www.timesofisrael.com/knesset-approves-making-biometric-id-cards-mandatory/. On the Biometric
Database Law (Inclusion of Biometric Means of Identification and Biometric Identification Data in Identity
Documents and in an Information Database Law), see
https://www.gov.il/en/Departments/publications/reports/bio_documents_info.
7 Michelle Spektor, “Imagining the Biometric Future: Debates Over National Biometric Identification in Israel”,
Science as Culture 29, no. 1 (2 January 2020): 100–126. See also Julie Peteet, Space and Mobility in Palestine(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 83-4.
8 An Israeli subsidiary of EDS (now owned by Hewlett Packard (HP)) won the contract to develop the Basel andMaoz systems. For more on HP’s involvement with biometric systems in Israel/Palestine, see Who Profits and The
Coalition of Women For Peace, Technologies of Control: The Case of Hewlett Packard (December 2011),
https://whoprofits.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/old/hp_report-_final_for_web.pdf.
9 Rony Shani, “Latest in policing: biometric identification ‘for efficient expulsion of foreign workers’”, YediothAhronoth, 13 Nov 2005, translated from Hebrew, https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3168570,00.html.
10 “Give Me Your Fingerprint or I’ll Break Your Arm”, The Migrant, Sept 2014, http://the-migrant.co.il/en/node/11.

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Figure 3: Identity Crisis: The Israeli ID System

Source: Visualizing Palestine10

Biometrics and counter-terrorism:
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From the Basel system to the Maoz system to the more recent Biometric
Database Law, one can trace the movement of biometrics from Palestinian
workers in the occupied territory to foreign workers in Israel and, now, to Israeli
citizens and residents writ large. As biometric identity systems become
increasingly widespread and obligatory so do concerns that the Israeli
government is aggregating a massive database of sensitive personal
information of citizens and non-citizens alike.

The Palestinian National Authority (PA) recently rolled out biometric passports tomeet international standards and “ease Palestinians’ movement” throughairports.11 Digital rights activist Nadim Nashif questioned whether the PA could
prevent its biometric database from being accessed by Israeli security
agencies.12 The Israeli government not only retains control over many aspects ofgovernance in the West Bank but has also co-opted the PA into its security
apparatus.13 In fact, the current system of occupation calls into question the very
idea of a “national” Palestinian biometric database. Under the best of
circumstances, centralized biometric databases pose privacy and surveillancerisks.14 Under conditions of occupation characterized by highly asymmetric power
relations, such risks are greatly compounded.

11 Amira Hass, “Palestinian Authority to Launch Biometric Database Next Year”, Haaretz, 10 July 2013,https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-pa-to-launch-biometric-database-in-2014-1.5293782.
12 Nadim Nashif (digital rights activist), interview with author, 7 April 2020.
13 Visualizing Palestine Infographic, “The Palestinian Authority Guide To Keeping Yourself Occupied”, January
2016, https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/palestinian-authority-occupied#&gid=1&pid=1; and Tariq Dana,
Sabrien Amrov, and Alaa Tartir, “Focus on: Palestinian-Israel Security Coordination”, Al-Shabaka, The
Palestinian Policy Network, 21 March 2017, https://al-shabaka.org/focuses/focus-palestinian-israeli-securitycoordination/.
14 PI, “Have a Biometric ID System Coming Your Way? Key Questions to Ask and the Arguments to Make”, 11 July
2019, https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3067/have-biometric-id-system-coming-your-way-keyquestions-ask-and-arguments-make.

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AUTOMATING CHECKPOINTSIn more recent years, the Israeli government has been also incorporating facialrecognition technologies into its existing identification, checkpoint, and CCTV/ IP
video surveillance systems. Within the occupied territory, the most evident use of
facial recognition technology is at recently upgraded fixed checkpoints in theWest Bank, which control the movement of people in and out of the West Bank.
This shift towards automation is part and parcel of Israel’s broader strategy tohumanize and “civilian-ize” the existing checkpoint system.15

This software for the cameras at the access control systems were reportedly
provided by AnyVision Interactive Technologies, an Israeli startup that until
recently enjoyed venture capital funding from Microsoft.16 Prior to AnyVision’senhancements, Israeli checkpoints were notorious for endless delays, caged
entryways, and long queues of frustrated Palestinian workers waiting to bescreened by soldiers.17 At newly upgraded checkpoints, Palestinian workers withpermissions to work in Israel, who have been granted biometric IDs, simply
approach an optical turnstile, scan their digital IDs, and stare into a camera.
Within seconds, AnyVision’s facial recognition software is able to authenticate
their identity. If verified, electronic panels open, allowing them passage. 18 Thoughsuch technologies have reduced friction and significantly shortened waitingtimes for Palestinians, as Jessica Montell of the Israeli human rights group
15 Who Profits and The Coalition of Women For Peace, Technologies of Control (Dec 2011), 15,
https://whoprofits.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/old/hp_report-_final_for_web.pdf.
16 Jeffrey Dastin, “Microsoft to Divest AnyVision Stake, End Face Recognition Investing”, Reuters, Technology
News, 27 March 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-anyvision/microsoft-to-divest-anyvisionstake-end-face-recognition-investing-idUSKBN21E3BA.
17 Stefanie Dekker, “West Bank Checkpoints: ‘Endless’ Delays, Every Day”, Al Jazeera, 18 January 2019,https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/west-bank-checkpoints-endless-delays-day190118174334086.html.
18 Daniel Estrin, “Face Recognition Lets Palestinians Cross Israeli Checkposts Fast, But Raises Concerns”, NPR, 22
August 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/08/22/752765606/face-recognition-lets-palestinians-cross-israelicheckposts-fast-but-raises-conc.

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HaMoked argues, they also help “maintain what should be an unsustainablesituation of military occupation.”19

In spite of such technological innovations, checkpoints remain highly securitizedbottlenecks that divide occupied Palestinian territory (where Palestinians live
alongside but segregated from Israeli settlers) from Israel, enabling Israel tosystematically displace Palestinians from East Jerusalem by restricting their
movement, and simultaneously allow hundreds of thousands of settlers to movefreely on a daily basis. Israel has deemed that the vast majority of Palestinians
are a threat, and does not allow them to enter Israel or parts of the occupied
Palestinian territory, primarily Jerusalem. In addition, some Palestinians are on alist that bars them from moving across these checkpoints.20 Professor and lawyer
Yael Berda “estimates that upward of 250,000 people are on this list, and that
number is only growing.”21 Increasingly, such technologies are being used toscreen Palestinians, limit their mobility into settlements and Israel proper, andmaintain Israel’s fragmented patchwork of segregated enclaves.

FACIAL RECOGNITION AND VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

Far less transparent (and arguably far more troubling) is the use of facialrecognition for ambient surveillance of public spaces. For many years, Israel has
maintained an extensive network of closed-circuit television (CCTV), internet
protocol (IP) cameras, and license plate recognition (LPR) cameras throughout
19 Ibid.
20 The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Restrictions on Movement, 2017,https://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement.
21 Hannah Brown, “An Artificial Intelligence Company Backed by Microsoft is Helping Israel Surveil Palestinians”,
Vox, Updated 31 October 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/10/31/20937638/israel-surveillance-networkcovers-palestinian-territories.

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the occupied Palestinian territory. This already-existing network of video
cameras has facilitated the transition to more dynamic, responsive, automatedforms of visual surveillance that utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and facialrecognition. As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warns: “Today’s
capture-and-store video systems are starting to be augmented with active
monitoring technology” that “allow computers not just to record but also tounderstand the objects and actions that a camera is capturing.”22 Some of themost cutting-edge innovations in video analytics have been developed andtested out in Israel/Palestine.

Jerusalem, in particular, has long been an epicenter for multinational
corporations like Cisco, AnyVision, and Mer Group, in partnership with the Israeli
government, to develop and experiment with visual surveillance technologies.23
In the predominately Palestinian-inhabited Old City of Jerusalem, occupied byIsrael since 1967, Israel use a surveillance security system in place since 2000.
Known as Mabat 2000 (its meaning both the Hebrew word for “gaze” and an
acronym for “technological & surveillance center”), this program has “entailed
saturating the streets, corners and alleyways” with 400 cameras, approximately
one “per every 100 persons in the Old City’s four quarters.”24 Legal expert Usama
Halabi noted in 2010 that the Jerusalem police had not developed any kind ofcode of practice specifically relevant to Mabat 2000, raising myriad questions
about the protections (if any) afforded to Palestinian residents under its

22 Jay Stanley and the ACLU, The Dawn of Robot Surveillance: AI, Video Analytics, and Privacy (American Civil
Liberties Union, June 2019), 3, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/061819robot_surveillance.pdf.
23 Alex Kane, “How Israel Became a Hub for Surveillance Technology“, The Intercept, 17 October 2016; and Who
Profits, Company Feature: Cisco’s Involvement in the Israeli Occupation (September 2019),
https://whoprofits.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/CISCOfinal-web.pdf.
24 Who Profits, Flash Report: “Big Brother” in Jerusalem’s Old City: Israel’s Militarized Visual Surveillance System in
Occupied East Jerusalem (November 2018), 9, https://whoprofits.org/flash-report/big-brother-in-jerusalemsold-city. According to Who Profits, the Israeli conglomerate C. Mer Group installed and maintains Mabat 2000,
which uses hardware from a number of companies, including VideoTec, a private Italian company; Dahua
Technology, a public Chinese company; and Evron Systems Ltd., a private Israeli company. The watchdog
group has also documented the use of Sony cameras at Bab Al Amud (the Damascus Gate). In recent years, theIsraeli police has expanded the Mabat system beyond the Old City to include other neighbourhoods inJerusalem.

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surveillance.25 In 2017, the Israeli police upgraded this visual surveillance system
to include facial recognition software. 26
In the West Bank, where Palestinians do not have Israeli citizenship rights, facialrecognition technologies are often deployed in particularly covert ways. Last
year, AnyVision came under fire after investigative reports from Haaretz’s The

Marker and NBC News revealed that it was powering a secretive surveillance
program in the West Bank, an allegation that the company publicly denies.27
According to its own marketing materials, AnyVision products use AI and facial
and body recognition technology to identify and track suspects in real-time,
predict suspicious behavior, and do analysis post-event. Whereas Mer Group(which maintains Mabat 2000) has added facial recognition technology to apreexisting network of state-controlled surveillance cameras, AnyVision boasts
the ability to remotely and covertly install its software on any camera, eventhose that are relatively low-tech.28 If marketing materials are to be believed,“Better Tomorrow”, the software system purportedly used in the West Bank, cantrace a person-of-interest across multiple cameras; find repeated appearancesof an individual; detect suspects and suspicious objects caught on camera;
rapidly perform historic video analysis for forensic purposes; and extract, analyze
and store face images of all individuals who pass within a camera’s view.29

25 Usama Halabi, “Legal Analysis and Critique of Some Surveillance Methods Used by Israel”, in Surveillance andControl in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power, eds. Elia Zureik, David Lyon, and Yasmeen AbuLaban (Routledge, 2013), 210.
26 Who Profits, Flash Report: “Big Brother” in Jerusalem’s Old City, 11-12, https://whoprofits.org/flash-report/bigbrother-in-jerusalems-old-city.
27 Amitai Ziv, “This Israeli Face-Recognition Startup is Secretly Tracking Palestinians”, Haaretz, 15 July 2019,https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-this-israeli-face-recognition-startup-is-secretlytracking-palestinians-1.7500359; Olivia Solon, “Why did Microsoft Fund an Israeli Firm that Surveils West Bank
Palestinians”, NBC News, 28 Oct 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-israelifirm-surveils-west-bank-palestinians-n1072116; Amitai Ziv, “Exclusive: The Mysterious Israeli Startup Working
Secretively in the Occupied Territories Surveilling Palestinians”, translated from Hebrew, The Marker, 14 July 2019.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-israeli-firm-surveils-west-bank-palestiniansn1072116.
28 Ziv, “This Israeli Face-Recognition Startup is Secretly Tracking Palestinians”, https://www.haaretz.com/israelnews/business/.premium-this-israeli-face-recognition-startup-is-secretly-tracking-palestinians-1.7500359;
and Nadim Nashif, interview with author, 7 April 2020.
29 Solon, “Why did Microsoft Fund an Israeli Firm that Surveils West Bank Palestinians”,
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-israeli-firm-surveils-west-bank-palestinians-

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According to reports, it is nicknamed “Google Ayosh”, where "Ayosh" is a Hebrew
acronym that describes the occupied Palestinian territory and "Google" denotes
the technology’s ability to search for people’s faces with the same ease as a
keyword search on Google. (Google is not actually involved in this project.)30
AnyVision’s software also performs heat mapping.31 A recent development in AI
video surveillance, heat mapping uses “algorithms to detect unusual movements
and crowd formations” as well as traffic patterns. This technique has particularly
worrying implications for Palestinians’ right to protest and assemble.32

Figure 4:by
Surveillance
CameraSolutions,in Jerusalem’s Old City
n1072116; and “Better Tomorrow
AnyVision”, Genetec
Photograph by David Hamann
https://www.genetec.com/partners/technology-partner-solutions/solutions-detail?appId=3284.
30 Solon, “Why did Microsoft Fund an Israeli Firm that Surveils West Bank Palestinians”,
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-israeli-firm-surveils-west-bank-palestiniansn1072116.
31 “8 AI-based Video Analytics Platforms Advance Security Implementation”, Asmag, 29 July 2019,https://www.asmag.com/showpost/28633.aspx. AnyVision also uses heatmapping for commercial purposes:
NVIDIA, “AnyVision—Store Analytics and AI-Generated Heatmaps”, 11 November 2019, YouTube video,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUHuiy8bXnmK5nisYHUd1J5g&v=l7-Doxe9Myk.
32 Steven Feldstein, The Global Expansion of AI Surveillance Working Paper (Washington DC: Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, Sept 2019), 11, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/17/globalexpansion-of-ai-surveillance-pub-79847.

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Shrouded in secrecy, the extent and function of video surveillance in theoccupied territory remains an open question. Faced with public outcry andallegations that it was breaching its own ethical guidelines, Microsoft
announced in 2020 that it was divesting from AnyVision after an external audit.33
In a brief public statement regarding its audit of the company, Microsoft claimed
that: “The available evidence demonstrated that AnyVision’s technology has notpreviously and does not currently power a mass surveillance program in theWest Bank that has been alleged in media reports.”34 The ambiguity surrounding
the term “mass surveillance”, however, leaves significant scope for interpretation.
Indications that Palestinians are being routinely surveilled in their daily lives
abound. In October, Ma’an reported that Palestinian teenagers outside
Ramallah had discovered a hidden surveillance system and video camera
purportedly made by AnyVision camouflaged in a false rock in a cemetery.35

33 Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee (BNC), “BNC Statement: Boycott
AnyVision: Israel’s “Field-Tested” Facial Recognition Surveillance Company”, BDS Movement, 30 August 2019,https://bdsmovement.net/news/boycott-anyvision-israels-field-tested-facial-recognition-surveillancecompany; and “Press Release: Microsoft Drops AnyVision-#DROPANYVISION Campaign Celebrates”, Jewish
Voice for Peace, 28 March 2020, https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/dropanyvision-win/. See also
#DROPANYVISION Campaign, www.DropAnyVision.org.
34 “Joint Statement by Microsoft and AnyVision—AnyVision Audit”, Microsoft Venture Fund, 27 March 2020,
https://m12.vc/news/joint-statement-by-microsoft-anyvision-anyvision-audit/.
35 “Palestinian Teens Find IDF Surveillance Camera, Microsoft Faces Backlash”, Jerusalem Post, 9 October 2009,https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Palestinian-teens-find-IDF-surveillance-camera-Microsoftfaces-backlash-603820.

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ASSESSING FACIAL RECOGNITION IN
ISRAEL/PALESTINE
In a recent New York Times article, Bruce Schneier argued that banning facialrecognition (while arguably welcome) “misconstrues the nature of thesurveillance society”, which relies on a wide spectrum of interconnected
technologies.36 Though facial recognition may evoke dystopian images of “BigBrother”, fixation on a single technology (particularly one that attracts
considerable press attention) can easily overshadow the much more mundane
yet often far more invasive technologies deployed by governments. As Israel’s
recent efforts to combat COVID-19 made evident, the government has longpossessed the capacity to monitor and track the population throughconventional cell phone data.37 Moreover, there are limits to the efficacy andscalability of facial recognition technologies.38 Algorithms are only as good as
the data; prospective analysis of rare events (like “lone wolf” attacks) are often
swamped by false positives.39 Following Schneier, it is imperative to view facialrecognition as one of many technologies within Israel’s as well othergovernments’ wider surveillance regime.

Still, Israel’s facial recognition technology warrants our attention for several
reasons. According to independent researcher Rohan Tolbert, the growing use ofsuch technologies enables the automation of many aspects of the occupation.40
36 Bruce Schneier, “We’re Banning Facial Recognition. We’re Missing the Point.” The New York Times, 20 January
2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/facial-recognition-ban-privacy.html?smid=nytcore-iosshare.
37 “Coronavirus: Following Adalah’s Petition, Israeli Supreme Court Issues Interim Injunction Limiting Security
Service’s Tracking of Cellphones”, Adalah, 19 March 2020, https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/9924; andRichard Silverstein, “Israel is Militarizing and Monetizing the COVID-19 Epidemic”, Jacobin, 16 April 2020,
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/4/israel-military-surveillance-coronavirus-covid-netanyahu.
38 PI, “Facial Recognition”, https://privacyinternational.org/learn/facial-recognition.

39 Xianhang Zhang (tech analyst), interview with author, 1 April 2020.
40 Rohan Tolbert (independent researcher), interview with author, 2 April 2020.

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Such automation—which reduces interactions between Israeli soldiers andPalestinians—also argued to help normalizing and streamlining conditions ofindefinite military occupation. As journalist Amira Hass notes, “the lack of humancontact doesn’t merely speed up the process, but also makes it easier
psychologically.”41 AnyVision has sought to project a humane image of Israel’s
upgraded checkpoints, which it claims removes unnecessary hurdles and eases
life for Palestinian travelers. Comparing its systems to routine airport immigration
controls, the company argues that “facial recognition drastically decreases wait
times at border crossings” and “provide[s] an unbiased safeguard at the borderto detect and deter persons who have committed unlawful activities.”42

Such technologies serve to blur the distinction between a military checkpoint
and an international border. It also makes the fragmentation of Palestinian
territory appear technically feasible. Activists have raised alarms about facialrecognition’s potential to further policies of segregation and demographic
engineering. Tolbert cited the risks posed to Palestinians who possess East
Jerusalem residency IDs.43 Aided by facial recognition and other biometrictechnology, the Israeli government can theoretically monitor the movement of
East Jerusalem residents and revoke permits from anyone who does not actively
maintain a “center of life” in Jerusalem.44

Particularly under conditions of military occupation, facial recognition
technologies hold acute risks to civil rights. As journalist Hannah Brown notes:“Palestinians living in the West Bank don’t hold Israeli citizenship and, therefore,

41 Amira Hass, “Renovated Checkpoints Mean Palestinians No Longer Feel Like Cows Being Led to the Slaughter”,
Haaretz, 25 May 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-renovated-checkpoints-meanpalestinians-no-longer-feel-like-cow-led-to-slaughter-1.7283924.
42 “Ethical and Responsible AI at AnyVision” AnyVision, 6 August 2019,https://www.anyvision.co/2019/08/06/ethical-and-responsible-ai-at-anyvision.
43 Rohan Tolbert, interview with author, 2 April 2020.
44 “Israel: Jerusalem Palestinians Stripped of Status: Discriminatory Residency Revocations”, Human Rights
Watch, 8 August 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/08/israel-jerusalem-palestinians-stripped-status.

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are not protected by Israeli privacy laws.”45 Coupled with predictive policing
based on social media posts, such technologies have the potential to criminalize
routine forms of expression and daily life.46 False positives may also be of lessconcern to a state able to round up and indefinitely detain people, including
minors, without trial.47

Moreover, centralized systems of surveillance, whose function is selectively
broadcast to the public, encourage internalized acts of self-censorship andself-regulation. The highly publicized 2018 trial of Israeli citizen Dareen Tatour,
who posted a poem online entitled “Resist, my people resist them”, drewattention to the Israeli government’s practice of monitoring and effectuatingarrests based on social media posts.48 According to a recent study by 7amleh –The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media – Palestinian youth selfcensor on social media due to a “general atmosphere of repression”.49 By thesame token, facial recognition may have chilling effects on populations
cognizant that they are being monitored, but unaware of how such opaque
technologies might be used. Raising questions about proportionality, Usama
Halabi asks: “Is it desirable and acceptable to keep thousands of innocent

45 Brown, “An Artificial Intelligence Company Backed by Microsoft is Helping Israel Surveil Palestinians”,
https://www.vox.com/2019/10/31/20937638/israel-surveillance-network-covers-palestinian-territories. See
also Benjamin G. Waters, “An international right to privacy: Israeli intelligence collection in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories,” Georgetown Journal of International Law 50, no. 2 (2019): 573-597.
46 “Israel Claims 200 Attacks Predicted, Prevented with Data Tech”, CBS News, 12 June 2018,https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-data-algorithms-predict-terrorism-palestinians-privacy-civil-liberties.
47 Amnesty International, Starved of Justice: Palestinians Detained Without Trial by Israel (London: Amnesty
International, 2012), https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/starved-of-justice-palestinians-detained-withouttrial-by-israel.
48 “Dareen Tatour Sentenced to Five Months in Prison over Poem”, Al Jazeera, 31 July 2018,https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/dareen-tatour-sentenced-months-prison-poem180731084215893.html.
49 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, Silenced Networks: The Chilling Effect Among
Palestinian Youth in Social Media (Oct 2019), 5, https://7amleh.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/10/7amleh_Net_0919_ENGLISH1.pdf.

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Case study of Israel/Palestine

people under strict daily surveillance because a few crimes might be spotted bysome of these cameras?”50

SURVEILLANCE LABORATORIES
Dubbing itself the “startup nation”, Israel has actively sought to project animage of itself as the next Silicon Valley, focusing on cybersecurity, defense, andartificial intelligence.51 In 2019, Israel saw the sale of its surveillance systems
almost double.52 It has also used the occupied territory as testing grounds for
new surveillance and military technology that can then be showcased topotential investors and clients.53 For example, drones produced by two Israeliarms manufacturers, which were developed for use in the Gaza strip, part of theoccupied Palestinian territory, are now being adopted by Frontex in the
Mediterranean.54 Conditions of occupation make it possible for the Israeli
government and multinational corporations to test out invasive biometric
50 Usama Halabi, “Legal analysis and critique of some surveillance methods used by Israel”, in Surveillance andControl in Israel/Palestine, eds. Elia Zureik, David Lyon, Yasmeen Abu-Laban (Routledge, 2010), 199-218.
51 Omer Keilaf, “An Oasis of Mobility Innovation: The Origins of Israel’s Silicon Wadi”, Forbes (3 July 2020),
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/07/03/an-oasis-of-mobility-innovation-the-originsof-israels-silicon-wadi/?sh=228d4f8023a0; and Rihard Behar, “Inside Israel’s Secret Startup Machine”, Forbes, 11
May 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2016/05/11/inside-israels-secret-startupmachine/#72e9d7611a51.
52 “Israel reports drop in arms sales, but exports of spy tech nearly double”, Middle East Eye, 22 June 2020,
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-arms-sales-fall-exports-spy-tech-nearly-double.
53 Helga Tawil-Souri, “Digital Occupation in Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure”, in State Power 2.0: Authoritarian
Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide, ed. Muzammil M. Hussain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 5768; Coalition of Women for Peace and Hamushim, A Lab and a Showroom: The Israeli Military Industries and theOppression of the Great March of Return in Gaza (June 2018),
https://enhamushim.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/report-with-covers1.pdf; and Al-Haq, The Surveillance
Industry and Human Rights: Israel’s Marketing of the Occupation of Palestine, Submission to the UN Special
Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression (13 Feb 2019),
http://www.alhaq.org/cached_uploads/download/alhaq_files/images/stories/PDF/Submission_to_the_UN_S
pecial_Rapporteur_on_the_Promotion_and_Protection_of_the_Right_to_Freedom_of_Opinion_and_Expression.
pdf.
54 Daniel Howden, Apostolis Fotiadis, and Antony Loewenstein, “Once migrants on Mediterranean were saved bynaval patrols. Now they have to watch as drones fly over”, The Guardian, 4 August 2019,https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/04/drones-replace-patrol-ships-mediterranean-fears-moremigrant-deaths-eu.

21Biometrics and counter-terrorism:
Case study of Israel/Palestine

technologies on populations who have little legal recourse. AnyVision, forinstance, has marketed itself as a “field tested” company.55 Its facial recognitionand surveillance software have been used throughout the US and by
multinational corporations like Telefónica, public entities such as the city of Nice,and security companies like G4S.56

The UN Security Council has required member states to develop and implement
biometric systems for counter-terrorism in compliance with international humanrights law, international refugee law, and international humanitarian law.57 Yet
the ambiguity surrounding the UN’s requirements coupled with inadequate
national and international legal frameworks open up enormous scope forabuse.58 There are few provisions in place when countries infringe on the basic
human right to privacy or use biometric technologies in ways that violate
international law.59 Israel is a paradigmatic case of such dangers.

55 A former AnyVision employee told NBC News: “It was heavily communicated to us [by AnyVision’s leadership]that the Israeli government was the proof of concept for everything we were doing globally. The technology
was field-tested in one of the world’s most demanding security environments and we were now rolling it out tothe rest of the market”, (Solon, “Why did Microsoft Fund an Israeli Firm that Surveils West Bank Palestinians”,
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-israeli-firm-surveils-west-bank-palestiniansn1072116). The AnyVision website refers to their “20+ years of academic research and field experience”(https://www.anyvision.co/).
56 Paresh Dave and Jeffrey Dastin, “EXCLUSIVE: Why a U.S. hospital and oil company turned to facialrecognition”, Reuters, 20 April 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/exclusive-why-us-hospitaloil-company-turned-facial-recognition-2021-04-20/; “AnyVision and Telefónica announce integration
partnership”, Security News Desk, 10 December 2018, https://securitynewsdesk.com/anyvision-telefonicaannounce-integration-partnership; Laura Kayali, “How facial recognition is taking over a French city”, 26
September 2019, https://www.politico.eu/article/how-facial-recognition-is-taking-over-a-french-riviera-city;and AnyVision, “Excited to announce our partnership with G4S.” Facebook, 9 April 2019,https://www.facebook.com/AnyvisionBT/photos/excited-to-announce-our-partnership-with-g4s-lookingforward-to-working-together/403406813793629/.
57 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 (2017), https://undocs.org/S/RES/2396(2017).
58 Krisztina Huszti-Orbán and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, The Use of Biometric Data to Identify Terrorists: Best Practice orRisky Business? Report prepared under the aegis of the Mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the
promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism (University of
Minnesota Human Rights Center, 2020), https://www.law.umn.edu/sites/law.umn.edu/files/2020/07/21/hrcbiometrics-report-july2020.pdf.
59 PI, Briefing on the Responsible Use and Sharing of Biometric Data (2020)
https://privacyinternational.org/advocacy/4064/briefing-responsible-use-and-sharing-biometric-datacounter-terrorism.

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