A facial recognition AI program has been increasingly retasked to identify anyone potentially linked to Hamas and other groups since Israel's ground offensive began in the Gaza Strip, sometimes erroneously implicating civilians, a New York Times' investigation claimed.
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A Palestinian poet named Mosab Abu Toha had a startling encounter with Israeli forces at a checkpoint in central Gaza on November 19th last year, according to a report by The New York Times. The 31-year-old was unexpectedly separated from other travelers, made to put down his young son, and detained in front of a military vehicle, sources revealed to the Times.
About half an hour later, Abu Toha, who maintains no ties to Hamas, was suddenly called by name, blindfolded, and taken away for questioning by Israeli authorities. The reason? He had walked into an area under surveillance by Israel's secret facial recognition AI system in Gaza, the Times reported.
According to multiple Israeli intelligence sources speaking on condition of anonymity to the Times, Abu Toha's face was captured, scanned, and mistakenly matched to a list of wanted individuals, despite him merely being a civilian trying to travel to Egypt.
Abu Toha is just one of numerous Palestinians who have been flagged and tracked by this previously unacknowledged mass facial recognition program Israel has been operating in Gaza since late 2022, as first disclosed by The New York Times' reporting. The widespread and experimental technology inconspicuously identifies and catalogs the faces of Palestinians without their knowledge or consent.
While initially deployed to locate potential Israeli hostages seized during Hamas raids in October, the facial recognition AI was increasingly retasked to identify anyone potentially linked to Hamas and other groups once Israel's ground offensive began, sometimes erroneously implicating civilians, according to the Times' investigation.
Combining software from Israeli tech firm Corsight with Google's image recognition, the clandestine system allows Israel's military cyber intelligence unit to pick out individuals from crowds and aerial footage. However, some personnel have expressed ethical concerns internally about Israel's disproportionate and overreaching use of mass biometric surveillance against Palestinians in the occupied territories of Gaza, the Times revealed.
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