TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – In the early days of the pandemic, a panicked Israel began using a tool to massively monitor its civilians, tracking people’s cell phones in hopes of stopping the spread of coronavirus .
The government promoted the technology, which was commonly used to catch wanted Palestinian militants, as a breakthrough against the virus. But months later, the effectiveness of the tool is questioned and critics say its use has come at an immeasurable cost to the country’s democratic principles.
“The idea that a government is monitoring its own citizens 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 the courts. “This is against the foundations of democracy. Democracy cannot be given up during a crisis. “
Little is known about the technology. According to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Shin Bet’s internal security service has been using the tool for two decades, sweeping metadata from anyone using telecommunications services in Israel. The information collected includes the location of the mobile device, web browsing history, and calls and texts received and made, but not their content. According to reports, this has helped the agency track militants and stop attacks, although it is unclear what happens to all the data.
Israel led Shin Bet for the first time in the battle of the virus outbreak in March. By following the movements of people infected with the coronavirus, it was possible to determine who had come in contact with them and was at risk of infection and to order them in quarantine.
With the contacts tracking capabilities of the Israeli Ministry of Health, the Shin Bet was seen as the best option to pick up the march, even though its own leaders were reluctant to deploy the tool. Shin Bet declined to comment.
Officials say the technology has been a key tool in tracking the outbreak and insist they have struck 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 exploitatively. This tool saves lives. “
Initially, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used emergency regulations to approve the use of the tool. After challenging the hasty deployment in the courts, the government was forced to legislate limits on its use in July, subjecting it to parliamentary oversight.
The law states 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 states that Israel must present and popularize a civilian alternative to surveillance, such as a telephone application. Israel has developed this 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 tool, said Israel’s confidence in the Shin Bet prevented it from moving toward a more transparent civilian technology that could have done the job. “We really should have resisted the temptation,” he said.
Under its 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 back up two weeks of data to determine which cell 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, little was written against the inclusion of the Shin Bet by ordinary Israelis, who have much faith in their security services.
But as the months went by, the Israelis were caught in what looked like a dredge that got tens of thousands of contacts. Many claimed the data was inaccurate, forcing them to spend an unnecessary 14-day quarantine at home. To make matters worse, it was difficult to appeal to the Ministry of Health’s direct telephone operators.
The accuracy of the tool inside is said to be problematic. If an infected person is in an apartment, he can quarantine the entire building.
The health ministry says 950,000 people detected by the tool have been sent to quarantine since July, among whom 46,000 were found to be infected. The ministry said some 900,000 have been sent to quarantine by tracing traditional contacts and that 63,000 of those infected have been found since July. As of August, the Israeli military took over the responsibilities of tracking contacts from the Ministry of Health.
Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a member of Israel’s Institute for Democracy, a think tank, discusses figures from the Ministry of Health. Based on his own analysis of official data, he believes Shin Bet has caught far fewer infected than contact tracers. He also estimates that at least 100,000 people were mistakenly quarantined.
An interim October report from the state comptroller, a government oversight body, backed claims that the tool has not been entirely effective, saying contact tracking was much more so. The report also found that Shin Bet did not always adhere to the limits imposed by law, for example, by not deleting information collected in several cases.
A ministerial committee decided last month that Israel would begin reducing the tool 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 a challenge from the Supreme Court against the technology.
Because the tool has been used on its citizens in a health crisis, critics say the door is open for it to be reused in other matters unrelated to state security.
“What happened to the Shin Bet has to be an alarm clock call,” Shwartz Altshuler said. “The state authorities know everything about you, all the time, about where you are. And we will have to think about the long-term consequences of that in the future. It will not go away. They will use it again “.