{"id":52566,"date":"2021-11-09T13:02:06","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T11:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=52566"},"modified":"2025-09-03T10:52:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T07:52:41","slug":"media-israeli-forces-deploy-facial-recognition-against-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/media-israeli-forces-deploy-facial-recognition-against-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"Media: Israeli forces deploy facial recognition against Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Israeli army has rolled out an extensive facial-recognition system to track Palestinians on the <span data-descr=\"the territory, according to the UN Security Council, is under Israeli occupation\" class=\"old_tooltip\">West Bank<\/span>, according to former soldiers cited by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/middle_east\/israel-palestinians-surveillance-facial-recognition\/2021\/11\/05\/3787bf42-26b2-11ec-8739-5cb6aba30a30_story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Six soldiers described a Blue Wolf smartphone program. It photographs Palestinians, and, in the event of a match, detains or arrests the individual.<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Wolf database \u2014 a condensed version of another Wolf Pack system \u2014 contains information on every Palestinian on the West Bank, including photographs, family ties, and &#8220;the threat level to others&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The army has been populating the database with thousands of Palestinian images over the past two years and even held &#8220;competitions&#8221; in which soldiers were rewarded for taking the most photographs.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;The database is essentially Facebook for Palestinians,&#8221; said one of the former soldiers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Israeli military has also installed cameras throughout <span data-descr=\"the largest city on the West Bank, where 200,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis live\" class=\"old_tooltip\">Hebron<\/span>, scanning Palestinians&#8217; faces and identifying them for soldiers at checkpoints. A number of devices, some of which are aimed at residents&#8217; homes, provide around-the-clock real-time surveillance.<\/p>\n<p>According to one soldier and four locals, biometric identification in Hebron is used without notice or consent.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In November, Facebook said it would soon <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/facebook-to-drop-its-facial-recognition-system-and-delete-related-data\">abandon the facial-recognition system<\/a> and delete related data.<\/p>\n<p>In June, rights groups said the New York Police Department has the ability <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/amnesty-international-nypd-operates-15280-facial-recognition-cameras\">to track and identify city residents using 15,000 cameras<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In May, a Chinese programmer told reporters that <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/china-tests-emotion-detection-ai-on-uyghurs\">the authorities in China are testing an emotion-recognition system on Uyghurs in Xinjiang police stations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to ForkLog&#8217;s Telegram news: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/forklogAI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">ForkLog AI<\/a> \u2014 all the news from the world of AI!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Israeli army has deployed an extensive facial-recognition system to track Palestinians on the West Bank, according to former soldiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[438,734,1515],"class_list":["post-52566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-israel","tag-tracking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"32","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52568,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52566\/revisions\/52568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}