Media: Israeli forces deploy facial recognition against Palestinians

The Israeli army has rolled out an extensive facial-recognition system to track Palestinians on the West Bank, according to former soldiers cited by The Washington Post.

Six soldiers described a Blue Wolf smartphone program. It photographs Palestinians, and, in the event of a match, detains or arrests the individual.

The Blue Wolf database — a condensed version of another Wolf Pack system — contains information on every Palestinian on the West Bank, including photographs, family ties, and “the threat level to others”.

The army has been populating the database with thousands of Palestinian images over the past two years and even held “competitions” in which soldiers were rewarded for taking the most photographs.

“The database is essentially Facebook for Palestinians,” said one of the former soldiers.

The Israeli military has also installed cameras throughout Hebron, scanning Palestinians’ faces and identifying them for soldiers at checkpoints. A number of devices, some of which are aimed at residents’ homes, provide around-the-clock real-time surveillance.

According to one soldier and four locals, biometric identification in Hebron is used without notice or consent.

The army argued that the deployment of the surveillance system was necessary to prevent terrorism, said the former soldiers. Yet they found the system troubling:

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable if they used it in a shopping mall in my hometown. People are worried about fingerprinting, but this is several times worse.”

In November, Facebook said it would soon abandon the facial-recognition system and delete related data.

In June, rights groups said the New York Police Department has the ability to track and identify city residents using 15,000 cameras.

In May, a Chinese programmer told reporters that the authorities in China are testing an emotion-recognition system on Uyghurs in Xinjiang police stations.

Subscribe to ForkLog’s Telegram news: ForkLog AI — all the news from the world of AI!