March 29, 2024

Israel will start tracking citizens' phones to determine who has contacted infected coronavirus

Israel will start tracking citizens' phones to determine who has contacted infected coronavirus

Government of Israel Authorizes Servicecountry’s security (Shabak) use mass surveillance of residents' mobile phones to track their movement and identify those who have been in contact with infected people.

From the local police and the Ministry of HealthThere are already similar monitoring tools, but due to the rapid spread of the virus, the authorities decided to strengthen control over compliance with quarantine measures. Now counterintelligence will be able to use data about the connection of devices to cell towers to determinemoving patients and figuring out who they interacted with in recent days.

Shabak will transmit this information toThe Ministry of Health, which organizes the distribution of messages to everyone who was less than two meters from an infected person for more than 10 minutes, indicating that they are quarantined. After that, the collected data will be deleted.

The plan to activate continuous surveillance is still awaiting approval from the Clandestine Services Subcommittee.

The Government of Israel assures that it is onlytemporary measures to combat the pandemic, and counterintelligence will receive only limited access to metadata, but critics are sounding the alarm. According to them, such methods directly violate confidentiality and civil liberties, and can also lead to the use of infrastructure to organize secret monitoring of the population in real time.

Human rights activists fear that this practice may spread to other states, at least during the outbreak of coronavirus.

Previously, we also reported that Chinese elevators and hospitals began to install holographic panels to avoid physical contact with buttons.

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