Latest: Middle East Eye published my new piece on the failure of Israel’s cyber-sabotage campaign against Iran. Please give it a read.
Frontline Defenders published a major report that six Palestinian human rights staff members working for NGOs designated by the Israeli defense ministry as terror groups, were hacked by NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. Apparently, the hack was part of this campaign to criminalize the advocacy efforts of the Palestinian NGOs. It sought compromising information which would buttress the government’s claim that they are affiliates of the banned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and funnel donations to fund its terror activities.
Recent reports published by The Intercept and 972 Magazine indicated that a dossier compiled by Israeli intelligence and circulated to the Biden administration in an attempt to justify the terror designation, did not contain any specific evidence to support these charges. Apparently knowing this, the Israelis sought to uncover further information from the hacked staff members telephone communications, which might compromise them and their employers. The effort seems to have failed as none of the material in the reports appears to come from the compromised phones.
Ronen Bergman just published a Ynet report on the incident which reveals critical hitherto unknown details about both the Pegasus hack and Israel’s response to the US blacklisting of NSO. Commerce Department decision is part of a campaign by the Biden administration to signal its overall disapproval of Israeli government policy toward the Palestinians. The US intended this to be a shot across Israel’s bow.
Until now, media reports did not specify which NSO client targeted the Palestinian human rights workers. But Bergman offers strong evidence that it was the Shin Bet:
The Frontline Defenders report includes a detailed timeline [regarding the hacks] that not only offers overwhelming evidence that the Shin Bet is using Pegasus to penetrate the phones of human rights activists, but [attests to] a much broader conspiracy.
Though he did not refer to “Palestinian” human rights activists, he might just as well have. In a watered-down version of his report published by the NY Times, Bergman implicitly ties the attack to the Shin Bet, noting that while foreign clients of NSO may not target Israeli or Palestinian phone numbers, Israeli government agencies (such as the Shin Bet) may do so.
Amira Hass explicitly attributes the attacks to the Shin Bet. Writing in Haaretz (English):
Even if the Palestinian NGOs, the three digital rights groups that uncovered the Pegasus outbreak, and the journalists who reported it cannot directly point to the culprit – it is clear to everyone that it is Israel, that is, the Shin Bet.
…The stipulations of the arms export license granted by the Ministry of Defense to NSO state that only the Israeli security services are allowed to monitor telephones with Israeli numbers, and the Israeli telephone prefix (as well as the Palestinian prefix) is blocked from all other corporate clients. In other words, no other country in the world other than Israel, is permitted to spy on…Al-Haq [and the other Palestinian NGOs]…
NSO and Shin Bet Hack US Citizen
AP reports that one of the six Palestinian staff members is a US citizen:
Ubai Aboudi, a 37-year-old economist and U.S. citizen….runs the seven-person Bisan Center for Research and Development in Ramallah…one of the six groups Gantz slapped with terrorist designations on Oct. 22.
NSO and the Shin Bet, in utilizing Pegasus to violate the privacy of a US citizen, has offered the Biden administration red flag evidence to bolster the Commerce Department’s claim that the company not only violated human rights protections, but conflicted with US national security interests.
Bergman describes an Israeli national security apparatus which was shocked by the Commerce Department announcement. He describes the response as “What the fuck?!” Though Israel was thrown back on its heels by this, it has decided to mount a vigorous campaign against the Biden administration (Bergman uses the term “war”), intending to remove NSO from the blacklist. It will soon convene an all-hands-on-deck meeting of officials from the defense, foreign affairs, justice ministries, and prime minister’s office to plot a strategy to address the damage caused and repair it.
It’s critical to note, as I have here in the past, that Israeli cyber-security companies like NSO, Candiru, Circles, Cellebrite and Anyvision, are not just discreet commercial entities divorced from the State. They comprise a network of willing accessories who advance Israeli security interests globally, in addition to their own corporate profits. So when the State calls upon them, they offer their services. When these cyber-warefare companies face obstacles like the US blacklist, the state comes to their aid.
Bergman confirms this symbiotic relationship:
…The company’s biggest backer, the government of Israel, considers the software a crucial element of its foreign policy and is lobbying Washington to remove the company from the blacklist, two senior Israeli officials said Monday.
His anonymous Israeli source feigns shock that the US could contemplate that Israel could condone such behavior:
If the United States is accusing NSO of acting against its interests, the officials said, then it is implicitly accusing Israel, which licenses the software, of doing the same.
Doubtless, these officials would have us share in their shock at such an outrageous possibility. But that is indeed what Israel and NSO have done. They’ve sabotaged US telecommunications companies like Whatsapp. As an aside, the US 9th Circuit today dismissed NSO’s attempt to throw out the lawsuit the US company filed against it. The former argued that because it was an instrument of foreign governments (i.e.. its clients), and they are immune under the Sovereign Immunities Act, that therefore NSO enjoyed the same immunity.
In further jeopardizing American interests, it enabled spying on a senior US diplomat. It played a key role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a Washington Post columnist. And now they’ve hacked a Palestinian-American US citizen.
The Israeli defense ministry office which regulates and licenses the export of cyber-security products, has never denied an export permit to any of these businesses. The ministry is not in the business of overseeing the companies and determining that they adhere to ethical standards. Rather, it is in the business of promoting the products and facilitating their distribution globally. In one case, it even acted as a middleman between the security services of a Gulf state and NSO.
Bergman ominously concludes his Ynet report:
This is not just a mobilization for a [single Israeli] commercial company, but a war concerning a number of key, secret and highly sensitive issues that concern senior Israeli security officials and the security of the State.
IDF Maintains Massive “Blue Wolf” Facial Recognition Database of Palestinians
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the IDF has compiled a massive database of scores, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinian faces in a database used for security purposes. It determines which individuals to arrest and who will be permitted entry to Israel. There are several versions of the program called variously White or Blue Wolf. This is the online promotional content the army offers the troops to encourage them to participate:
Doing all we can to prevent the next terror attack!
Serving in Judea and Samaria? A new unit will turn you into a Blue Wolf!
Israel has also mounted thousands of security cameras and sensors throughout the West Bank to monitor the movement of Palestinians. Israeli soldiers involved in the program claim that the surveillance equipment can also view the interiors of Palestinian homes. In many cases, IDF units were tasked with taking the photographs of individual Palestinians as they patrolled the streets. These photos were downloaded via cell phone app to a Blue Wolf database. Some units took as many as 1,000 photos in a single week. Their commanders turned the process into a competition and offered winners special prizes.
The images are part of a larger database which links them to extensive personal dossiers on each individual. That in turn allows Israeli authorities to give each person their own grade or category, which govern decisions like making arrests of suspects or approving them for entry into Israel.
Blue Wolf is reminiscent of the mass surveillance programs instituted by Chinese law enforcement, which installed millions of cameras throughout the country and registered almost all citizens in such databases. The authorities even give individuals social-credit scores concerning their standing:
China’s social-credit scoring is best understood not as a single system but as an overarching ideology: encompassing punishments and rewards, to improve governance and stamp out disorder and fraud. Commercial schemes mostly handle the perks, state schemes the punishments. Both work in concert to encourage socially responsible behavior.
But they are undeniably intrusive. Government agencies compile and share data on judgments against individuals or companies. Fail to pay a fine or court-ordered compensation, or default on your debts, and you will be put on the “List of Untrustworthy Persons.” Blacklisted individuals cannot make “luxury purchases,” such as high-speed rail and air tickets or hotel rooms. Five million people have been barred from high-speed trains and 17 million from flights under the scheme, according to the official website. “The ripple effect on every part of your life becomes a multiplier on punishments,” says professor Frank Pasquale, a Big Data expert at the University of Maryland.
The technology is used even more intrusively to monitor millions of Uighurs in the restive Xinjiang province. It is a critical element in the massive experiment in social control, including concentration camps which imprison and “re-educate” detainees to rid them of any Muslim separatist or political aspirations.
I have not been able to determine whether Blue Wolf was developed by the IDF itself or by an Israeli facial recognition company. It’s worth noting that the Post article does point to AnyVision, an Israeli cyber-security/facial recognition company, which is involved in this field:
In 2019, Microsoft invested in an Israeli facial recognition start-up called AnyVision [which] work[ed] with the army to build a network of smart security cameras using face-scanning technology throughout the West Bank. (Microsoft said it pulled out of its investment in AnyVision during fighting in May between Israel and the Hamas militant group in Gaza.)
Also in 2019, the Israeli military announced the introduction of a public facial-recognition program, powered by AnyVision, at major checkpoints where Palestinians cross into Israel from the West Bank. The program uses kiosks to scan IDs and faces, similar to airport kiosks used at airports to screen travelers entering the United States. The Israeli system is used to check whether a Palestinian has a permit to enter Israel, for example to work or to visit relatives, and to keep track of who is entering the country, according to news reports. This check is obligatory for Palestinians…
Balance the above with claims made by AnyVision’s chief marketing officer, Dean Nicholls, e-mailed me:
Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his team at Covington & Burling have completed their audit of AnyVision. The available evidence demonstrated that AnyVision’s technology has not previously and does not currently power a mass surveillance program in the West Bank that has been alleged in media reports
Either Nicholls is entirely ignorant of the activities of his own company in the West Bank, or he’s lying. I suppose the operative phrase in the above statement is “available evidence.” Everyone knows that when a law firm is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by a company to undertake such an “audit,” the former is extremely careful to limit the scope of the investigation to exclude evidence that might force a finding unpalatable to the client. AnyVision wanted a clean bill of health and Holder dutifully provided it. That is by no means a conclusive finding that any reasonable person might accept.
Though the IDF has its own capability through its AMAN military intelligence division or through its SIGINT Unit 8200 to develop Blue Wolf, it’s possible it would partner with a private company as well.
Palestinian Guinea Pigs Exploited to Field Test Tools of Israeli Repression
I’ve written extensively here about the “selling” of the Israeli surveillance state. NSO’s Pegasus spyware was developed directly via the expertise of Unit 8200 cyber-hackers schooled in the tools which spy on Palestinians, and invade every aspect of their daily lives. The Israeli state uses Palestinians as guinea pigs to field test not only weapons used in conventional warfare, but cyber-weapons used in the digital realm, an increasingly dominant new form of warfare. The tools of the surveillance state impose control over the captive Palestinian population and suppress its political aspirations. They serve to maintain the illegal Occupation, crush resistance, and defer any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
NSO Group and projects like Blue Wolf also serve as templates for other states around the world who see Israel as a pioneer in the field of militarizing social control. These countries (NSO has at least 50 different nation-state clients) not only buy and use these spy tools, but they import all of the Israeli values which undergird them.
Israel has lost any claim to be a democracy like western nations with which it likes to compare itself. Democratic principles like freedom of the press, religion and speech have virtually disappeared. The right to privacy has also been fatally compromised by the needs of the national security state. Any state which imports Israeli surveillance technology is also importing the warped ideology that inspired it.
Nor are Palestinians the only victims. All Israeli citizens, including Jews, are subject to this massively intrusive regime. Calcalist recently published They See Everything You Do, noting:
Israel is becoming a surveillance state: countless cameras and surveillance devices record our every step, our internet traffic and every online purchase. They store this information in huge databases most of which are unsecured – and some of which have already been misused….The public space has become the realm of Big Brother.
Major American cities like Boston and San Francisco have already banned the use of facial recognition technology. Others are considering similar legislation. However, Anyvision has many US clients. According to Reuters, they include:
Los Angeles hospital Cedars-Sinai, oil giant BP, Macy’s, home improvement chain Menards, Mercedes-Benz, facilities of the Houston Texans and Golden State Warriors sports teams, casino operators MGM Resorts International and Cherokee Nation Entertainment.
If we want to see where this sort of intrusive technology can take us, we have only to look at the degraded status of Palestinians.
My warning above also relates to the Biden administration blacklisting of NSO Group, which a cyber-rights group called one of the world’s leading “digital-predators.” NSO and all companies like it (many of the Israeli ones listed above) must be driven out of business. There should no room for mass surveillance on a captive civilian populace in a democratic society.
Excellent coverage, so very important to know the intelligence alliance between repressive states. A window into the future I’m afraid. Thx.
as usual nowgantz and his goons are crying wolf. they want the entire gov. to kiss ass to entire biden staff in order to reverse. if biden does reverse then he’s no better than trump even worse.
gantz wants to reverse not cuz he needs it, cuz he lost face, now he’s so against the entire coalition merely cuz he was supposed to be THE P.M. NOW, and its a nothing bennett in his eyes that sits on coveted throne. its all ego and money
Biometrics planned for AnyVision JV’s first drones for military use
sted of wasting money of hungry palestinians. let them enforce israel internet infrastructure , additional firewalls for utilities, banks and gov sites. sted of wasting time looking for an emir wife hanky panky, protect my surfing from ransomware , noooooooo its more convenient to sow evil it pays better . yah rite
dunno to cry or laugh. please help me. with the latest gantz boohoohoo
from jpost today
“As defense minister, I work hard to enable a respectable life for the Palestinians, our neighbors.
to add salt to injury the 3 main coalition partner sorta peed on gantz by coming out all 3 together stating that israel had no vested interest in nso those were lapid benett and liberman. so i stand corrected its gantz only gantz and very personal
If Israel is a ‘surveillance State’, than so too is Great Britain, a country which faces far fewer security threats than does Israel.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/met-police-facial-recognition-new
@ Kareem: The level of intrusiveness into personal & private life in the UK is nothing compared to that of Israel. Especially the lives of Palestinians. Just one small example: have you ever seen the UK install surveillance devices, cameras, etc. on private homes without the permission of the owners? No, you haven’t. Israel does it in Palestine. Do UK surveillance cameras peek into private homes? I strongly doubt it. They do in Palestine. Does UK surveillance target one particular ethnic group above and beyond others? It does in Palestine.
You’ve got to up your hasbara game my friend.
Let’s keep it real my friend.
There’s one security camera for every 11 people in Britain, making it the most surveilled county in the world.
Israel is a laggard by comparison
https://theconversation.com/ai-driven-cctv-upgrades-are-coming-to-the-worlds-most-watched-streets-will-they-make-britain-safer-157789
And, BTW, there are tons of privacy intrusions in Britain with neighbors training their private video cameras on other neighbors.
Yes, Israel is targeting Palestinians in the disputed territories, parts of which Israel now occupies, but Israel isn’t ‘targeting’ Palestinian civilians living in Israel, are they?
That ethnic group, makes up 20% of Israel’s population and is currently suffering under a long and deadly crime wave.
Israel Palestinians decry that the government of Israel isn’t doing enough to protect them!
Oh yes they do target them and how. They firce them tospy or else they either tossed back or any kind of punishment that they may dream of
@ Kareem: Your claim Britain is “the most surveilled on earth,” is false. There are more surveillance cameras and systems in China, the US and Germany. The link in the article which supposedly attests to yr claim no longer serves a pg. You didn’t bother checking that, did you? I did. So I have no idea what the source you’re claiming says. But I assure you that aside from surveillance states like China, Palestine is far more surveilled than any on earth. Not to mention the interception of all digital and conventional communications by Israeli intelligence services.
As for private individual snooping on neighbors, you know as well as I that there is a difference between a peeping Tom and a peeping state. The Israeli state Conducts this as a part of its overall policy, not a peeping Tom.
As for Israeli Palestinians, you bet the security services target them. Everything they do including the content they publish on social media. As Israeli citizens they have slightly more rights, but only slightly. And if the security services target you, they will treat you as badly as they treat an occupied Palestinian.
The crime problem in these communities derives from Israel’s overall racist approach to non-Jewish citizens. Decades of neglect & racism have degraded these communities. Better security is a stopgap measure. And how can a police force riddled with racism and corruption hope to offer security to a community it routinely hates and oppressed? Transforming society in a non-racist, fully equal one is the only answer.
“The crime problem in these communities derives from Israel’s overall racist approach to non-Jewish citizens.”
So what accounts for crime among Israel’s Jewish citizens?
The point isn’t whether China or Great Britain have the most cameras. The point is that countries, large and small, free or authoritarian, are using surveillance devices on citizens.
Israel is no exception, but the number of surveillance devices per capita in Israel, is less than China, UK, USA, Australia, etc.
Far less, unless of course, you can substantively prove otherwise.
@ Kareem: This was your last comment in this thread.
Don’t change the goal posts in the middle of the game. You raised the issue of crime among Israeli Palestinians in the vain attempt to justify surveillance against them by Israeli authorities. Do not attempt to change the discussion by bringing up the subject of crime among Israeli Jews. It’s a red herring.
However, it’s important to note that Israeli Jews are heavily surveilled as well. Just not as heavily as Israeli Palestinians.
The arguments about others countries supposedly doing the same thing as Israel is a red herring as well. The surveillance in western democracies has an entirely different motive than in Israel. Among them, only Israel uses surveillance and other intrusive forms of monitoring communication & social media content specifically to target a single ethnic group. China does it as well against Uighurs.
First, the issue isn’t the number of surveillance devices in Israel, but in Palestine. That’s where the most massive surveillance regime is installed. And we’re not just talking about CCTV, but also about facial recognition, surveillance of social media, Unit 8200 interception of e mail, phone calls, etc.
Not how this works: you make a claim, you prove it. It’s not my responsibility to disprove an unfounded claim of yours. It’s yours to prove your own claim.
few years back i was in shanghai, in the main tourist center in addition to the cameras fixed on poles, they’d bring these ambulance truck like with 4 to 8 cameras that they raise about 2 mt. from floor and the amount of police surveillance. at once i thought there were more cops than tourist way back 2017. helpful if you needed directions although most didnt understand anything more than chinese but annoying to elbow a cop to go into a shop. so no for intrusion no one beats Xi’s domain
Palestinian Human Rights activist admits her guilt, and cops a plea.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s15go5kwy
@ Kareem: Here’s how to correctly interpret this story. If Israeli secret police arrest you on a security offense, you have only 2 options: 1. is to refuse to admit guilt 2. is to cop a plea. If you choose 1 you will rot in jail for years, if not decades. You will have the satisfaction of refusing to admit guilt, but you will never be tried, nor have any hope of being tried. Except in extremely rare cases, the State will not put a security suspect on trial. You will simply remain in jail forever. If you cop a plea, you know you are not guilty, but you at least know the length of your sentence. Instead of rotting in jail for 5, 10, or 20 years without admitting guilt, you may get a year or 5 under a “reduced sentence.”
Yes, Israel gets to say you admitted guilt and that it has proven that you support terrorism. But none of this is true. You are not guilty, you are not a terrorist. You have simply made a deal with a filthy, corrupt devil. So be happy with this filthy system you defend. But do not under any circumstances attempt to argue that the Shin Bet has proven that this poor woman is anything that it claims she is. She is a decent, upright human rights defender squashed like a bug by the secret police, just like under any garden variety dictatorial regime.
In future, do not under any circumstances post off-topic comments, as this one was. Comments must be directly related to the specific subject of the post. I will delete any future comments of yours which violate the comment rules.
Israel is a nation of ne’er-do-wells, numpties, Right-wing dinks (Netanyahu family), religious fanatics, racists who should be back inside the Leningrad oblast’, religious fanatic child molesters, and the tiny minority of sane people who are hanging on by their fingernails because they want to go to Paris or Montreal or London or Madrid than deal with the Israeli madhouse. So their Stasi-wannabes doing crap like this is just another nail in the coffin.
hey, you forgot polygamist , a rabi no less was given permission by the israel gran rabbinate to marry a second wife. hey try to do that where you live. can’t can you, move here you can have your wife on mondays wednesdays and fridays. you mistress on sundays, tuesdays thursdays and rest like the lord on saturday , too bad there’s no nfl on this day, oh wll
SUCCESS — just as i predicted, read long haaretz expose. nso is a defense baby and now that the golden faucet has been shut, NSO IS BLACKMAILING THOSE WHO PROMOTED IT , THE LIKES OF GANTZ BIBI BNETT AND ALL THE REST (READ MOST OF RIGHT ) that if they dont get biden to backtrack nso will let “some” juicy tidbits out in the open . the tiny pet crocodile turned into a big aligator. i hope he bites and bites big
when it rains it pours. today nov 17 in the morning haaretz they asked why would 2 emirati princes need each his own nso software, they are both living in the same country. probably to spy one on each other, and this afternoon eset mentions that the saudis had used candiru left right and center, i mean they used nso to kill hashoggi, that’s not even enough that they also bought candiru.
and what made my heart flutter, was the spanish curator that decided that the painting supposedly done by Da Vinci and that some dubai coughed up 450 millions was not terribly authentic. it was nice probably painted by same period painters but not the master himself.
Here’s an interesting case.
A Islamic firebrand and Hamas member, teaching and preaching under the noses of Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem.
You’d think the oppressive foot of the Zionist State would be on this guy’s neck, but no, Israel never arrested this guy and left him unmolested while he exhorted his brethren to resist Israel at all costs.
Where’s the intrusive surveillance of the oppressive Israeli State?
A mob his supporters come out, and throw stones at Border Police, and nothing happens to them either!
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sk00ebqodt#autoplay
@ Kareem: There are 2 possibilities: either the Shin Bet screwed up bigtime by not considering the shooter a security threat. Or the shooter was, before he decided to go rogue, a Shabak informant who rebelled and like Samson, got revenge on his captors. Both are eminently possible.
Israeli surveillance and informants undoubtedly knew everything that the shooter did and said at Al Aqsa and elsewhere. But the best surveillance tech does not guarantee security unless the humans monitoring it interpret and act upon it properly. In this case, it appears Shabak screwed up.
You are done in this thread.
[Comment deleted: you seem to be under the mistaken impression that this is a Football match and you must cheer for the home team. Comments must be on topic and contain a coherent argument. Slogans and cheers are not that.]