“We’ve got monsters.” That is how Sasson (Sassi) Elia, the outgoing head of the Information Systems Technology division of the internal Israel Security Agency (also known as Shin Bet or Shabak), characterised the organisation’s technological capacity.
One of the Shin Bet’s long-time ‘monsters’ is “The Tool,” the database into which telecommunication licensees (the cellular, internet, & landline service provider) feed a wide variety of communications metadata about the traffic passing through them.
Israel Police
The Tool includes not only the metadata that the Israel Police can obtain by means of a court order (location, identity & traffic) but also metadata in a broader sense – that is, everything except the actual communications content, as defined by the Israeli Wiretap Law.
For the last 2 decades, the Tool has been taking metadata about each & every Israeli citizen.
On Mon., nearly a year after the Israeli Ministry of Health began utilising the Shin Bet’s surveillance measures for COVID-19 location tracking, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that the Shin Bet will curtail its coronavirus cellular location tracking activities & limit them to cases of a refusal or inability to cooperate with epidemiological investigations.
Coronavirus Surveillance
Is it really possible to put an end to the Shin Bet’s bulk coronavirus surveillance & focus on a limited number of specific cases, as the ruling stipulates? The answer is no. Israeli public discussion regarding Shin Bet location tracking of confirmed coronavirus carriers & those with whom they have been in close contact has at times created the impression that the Shin Bet’s collection capabilities were being employed especially towards this end.
In fact, The Tool will continue to track Israelis; the only difference is that Shin Bet’s authority to run queries on the data it gathers in order to facilitate epidemiological investigations will be restricted (& eventually eliminated, as the law authorising coronavirus surveillance is set to expire by early July).
Points in Cyberspace
In media interviews, senior Shin Bet officials regarded the database as an endless collection of points in cyberspace that do not mean anything as long as no one accesses them. In their view, as long as the data have not been scanned by a human eye, their mere collection poses no threat to human rights.
However, the coronavirus pandemic has taught Israelis that the country’s ‘knee-jerk’ decision to rely on the Shin Bet to deal with a civilian crisis has had a chilling effect.
The low number of downloads of the Magen 2.0 contact tracing application & marginal other developments including a spike in purchases by young people of unidentifiable ‘dumb’ cell-phones indicate the real-world impact of the ongoing tracking of people’s movements.
Bulk Surveillance
The dozens of hearings on this issue held by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) Foreign Affairs & Defence Committee did not revolve around the question of whether the Shin Bet should be permitted to undertake in bulk surveillance of the country’s residents, but only around information transfer between the Shin Bet & the Israeli Ministry of Health.
Substantial questions were unanswered. For example, whether there is a real need for the Shin Bet to retain the history of Israelis’ phone calls & movements?; & what safeguards are in place to ensure that the data is not misused or accessed without proper authorisation?
Foreign Affairs & Defence Committee
The Shin Bet’s internal controls of The Tool, & the service’s willingness to limit itself voluntarily, are thought by many to be not enough. Despite the many Foreign Affairs & Defence Committee sessions, the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight has been shown to be an open question..
The Committee dragged its feet & ultimately proved unable to promote a civilian alternative to the Shin Bet coronavirus location tracking.
Treasure Trove of Data
The last few months have shown that given the existence of this treasure trove of data, it was only a matter of time until other Israeli agencies would ask to make use of it. In the past, the Shin Bet turned down a number of such requests, but occasionally allowed the police access to its data.
Recent reports about an internet monitoring system operated by the Israel Police indicate that other organisations are eager to obtain similar data-collection capacity & demonstrate how important oversight it.
Independent Oversight Body
In a recently published study, the establishment of an independent oversight body, similar to the UK model was proposed.
A book by Eli Bahar, the former legal advisor to the Shin Bet, proposed removing the Tool from the Shin Bet & placing it in the hands of a separate organisation (similar to the situation in the Netherlands), along with changes in access policies & a narrower purposive scope of the database.
Within 2 weeks, the Shin Bet will narrow the scope of its assistance to the epidemiological investigations. However, The Tool & the other “monsters” in the service of the Shin Bet are still in use. Until this use is regulated by detailed & transparent legislation & placed under effective oversight, the Israeli public might be well-advised to keep cell-phones in ‘flight mode.’
https://www.cybernewsgroup.co.uk/virtual-conference-march-2021/
