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 preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
The government praised the technology, normally used to capture wanted Palestinian militants, as an advance against the virus. But months later, the tool’s effectiveness is being questioned and critics say its use has an immeasurable cost for the country’s democratic principles.
“The idea of a government watching over its own citizens so closely should sound the alarm,” said Maya Fried, a spokeswoman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has repeatedly challenged the use of the tool in court. “This is against the foundations of democracy. You cannot just give up democracy during a crisis. “
Little is known about the technology. According to Yediot Ahronot, the homeland security service Shin Bet has been using the tool for two decades, collecting metadata from anyone using Israeli telecommunications services. The information collected includes the location of the mobile device, web browsing history and incoming and outgoing calls and texts, but not their content. This would have helped the agency to track down militants and stop attacks, although it is unclear what happens to all the data.
Israel brought the Shin Bet for the first time to the battle against the virus outbreak in March. By tracking the movements of people infected with the coronavirus, he could determine who had come into contact with them and was at risk of infection, and quarantine them.
With Israel’s Ministry of Health’s ability to track contacts limited, Shin Bet was seen as the best option to offset the problem, although its own leaders were reluctant to deploy the tool. Shin Bet declined to comment.
Officials say technology has been a critical tool in 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. “We have not seen this tool used in an exploratory way. This tool saves lives. “
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially used emergency regulations to approve the use of the tool. After the hasty deployment was challenged in court, the government was forced to legislate limits on its use in July, subjecting it to some parliamentary oversight.
The law says that Shin Bet must keep information separate from other data it collects for other purposes and that, after a certain period, 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 developed this application, but it is not widely used.
Critics say there is no adequate oversight over how Shin Bet data is collected, stored, used or deleted.
Michal Cotler-Wunsh, the legislator of the parliamentary committee that oversees the tool, said Israel’s dependence on Shin Bet has prevented it from moving towards more transparent civil technology that could have done the job. “We really should have resisted the temptation,” she said.
As part of the partnership, the Ministry of Health sends the names, identification numbers and contact details of people diagnosed with COVID-19 to Shin Bet. The security agency can then analyze data for two weeks to determine which cell phones were within two meters (six feet) of the sick person for more than 15 minutes. They are then alerted and quarantined.
At the time, there were few protests against the inclusion of the Shin Bet by ordinary Israelis, who have great faith in their security services.
But over the months, the Israelis found themselves caught in what appeared to be a trawl that gathered tens of thousands of contacts. Many claimed that the data was inaccurate, forcing them into an unnecessary domestic quarantine for 14 days. To make matters worse, it was difficult to appeal to the Ministry of Health’s overworked hotline operators.
The accuracy of the tool indoors is considered problematic. If an infected person is in an apartment, this can quarantine the entire building.
The Ministry of Health reports that, since July, 950 thousand people detected by the tool have been placed in quarantine, among which 46 thousand have been diagnosed. The ministry said about 900,000 were quarantined through traditional contact tracking and 63,000 of them have been found infected since July. Beginning in August, the Israeli military assumed responsibility for tracking contacts for the Ministry of Health.
Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior researcher at the Israel Institute of Democracy, a study center, disputes the figures from the Ministry of Health. Based on her own analysis of official data, she believes the Shin Bet has arrested far fewer infected people than HIV trackers. contact. She also estimates that at least 100,000 people were wrongly quarantined.
An interim October report from the state controller, a government oversight body, supported claims that the tool was not fully effective, saying that contact tracking was significantly more effective. The report also found that Shin Bet did not always comply with the limits imposed by the law, for example, failing to erase information collected in several cases.
A ministerial committee decided last month that Israel would begin to reduce the use of the tool and limit its use. But the decision is not final and, more recently, Israel has indicated that it will seek to continue its widespread use, despite a Supreme Court challenge against the technology.
With the tool being used by 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 the Shin Bet needs to be a warning sign,” said Shwartz Altshuler. “State officials know everything about you, all the time, about where you are. And we will need to think about the long-term consequences of this in the future. Does not go away. They will use it again. “