TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – In the early days of the pandemic, a panicked Israel began using a mass surveillance tool on its civilians, tracking people’s cell phones in hopes of stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
The government promoted the technology, normally used to catch wanted Palestinian militants, as a breakthrough against the virus. But months later, the effectiveness of the instrument is called into question, and critics say its use has cost an immeasurable cost to the country’s democratic principles.
“The idea of a government pursuing its own citizens should sound the alarm,” said Maya Fried, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Civil Rights Association, which has repeatedly challenged the use of the instrument in court. “This is against the foundations of democracy. You can’t just give up democracy during a crisis. “
Little is known about the technology. According to the daily Yediot Ahronot, the Shin Bet internal security service has used the tool for two decades, collecting metadata from anyone who uses telecommunications services in Israel. The information collected includes the location of the cellular device, the web browsing history, and calls and texts received and made, but not their content. This would have helped the agency track the militants and stop the attacks, although it is not clear what is happening with all the data.
Israel first brought Shin Bet into its fight against the virus in March. By following the movements of people infected with coronavirus, it could determine who had come in contact with them and risk being infected and quarantine them.
With limited contacts in the Israeli Ministry of Health, Shin Bet was seen as the best option to lift the weakness, even though its own leaders were reluctant to implement the instrument. Shin Bet declined to comment.
Officials say the technology has been a critical tool for tracking the outbreak and insist they have found a balance between protecting individual rights and public health.
“We believe the cost is certainly reasonable,” Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch told a parliamentary committee last month. “I have not seen this tool used exploitatively. This tool saves lives. “
Initially, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used emergency regulations to approve the use of the instrument. After the hasty conduct was challenged in court, the government was forced to legislate limits on its use in July, subjecting it to parliamentary oversight.
The law says that Shin Bet must keep the information separate from other data it collects for other purposes and that, after a certain period of time, it must be deleted. The law also limits those who can access the information and stipulates that Israel must present and popularize a civilian alternative to surveillance, such as a telephone application. Israel has developed such an application, but it is not widely used.
Critics say there is no proper oversight of how Shin Bet data is collected, stored, used or deleted.
Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a lawmaker in the parliamentary committee overseeing the instrument, said Israel’s dependence on Shin Bet prevented it from moving to more transparent civilian technology that could have done the job. “We really should have resisted the temptation,” she said.
As part of their partnership, the Ministry of Health sends Shin Bet the names, identification numbers and contact details of those diagnosed with COVID-19. The security agency can then return through two weeks of data to determine which mobile phones were within a two-meter (six-foot) radius of the sick person for more than 15 minutes. They are then warned and ordered to self-quarantine.
At the time, there was little outcry against the inclusion of Shin Bet on the part of ordinary Israelis, who have great faith in their security services.
But as the months passed, the Israelis found themselves caught in what appeared to be a dragnet that garnered tens of thousands of contacts. Many claimed that the data were inaccurate, forcing them to reach an unnecessary quarantine of 14 days. To make matters worse, it was difficult to turn to the overwhelmed hotline operators of the Ministry of Health.
The accuracy of the instrument inside is said to be problematic. If an infected person is in an apartment, they could quarantine the entire building.
The Ministry of Health says that since July, 950,000 people detected by the instrument have been sent to quarantine, of which 46,000 have been found infected. The ministry said about 900,000 had been sent to quarantine through traditional contact tracking and 63,000 had been found infected since July. Starting in August, the Israeli army took over the responsibilities of following up the contacts for the Ministry of Health.
Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior member of the Israeli Institute for Democracy, a think tank, disputes figures from the Ministry of Health. Based on her own analysis of official data, she believes Shin Bet captured far fewer of those infected than contact followers. She also estimates that at least 100,000 people were wrongly quarantined.
An October interim report from the state comptroller, a government oversight body, argued that the instrument was not fully effective, saying that tracking contacts was much more important. The report also found that Shin Bet did not always comply with the limits imposed by law, for example, by not deleting the information collected in several cases.
A ministerial committee decided last month that Israel would start reducing the instrument and limiting its use. But the decision is not final, and more recently, Israel has indicated it will try to continue its widespread use, despite the Supreme Court’s challenge to the technology.
As the tool was used for its citizens in a health crisis, critics say the door is open for it to be used again in other matters unrelated to state security.
“What happened to Shin Bet must be a wake-up call,” said Shwartz Altshuler. “State authorities know everything about you, all the time, about where you are. And we will have to think about their long-term consequences in the future. It will not disappear. They will use it again. “