Hacking
Israeli AI ‘using WhatsApp data’ to target Gaza families for bomb strikes
‘Lavender’ AI set to prioritise hitting targets at home with their families and is said to be using WhatsApp data for its process – but how is Israel getting hold of it?
Israel’s AI system for targeting people for murder in Gaza uses WhatsApp data among its targeting criteria, according to a report in the Israeli 972 magazine and analysis by Paul Biggar of Tech for Palestine.
The platform is marketed as encrypted ‘end to end’, supposedly offering complete security, and WhatsApp told Middle East Monitor that:
WhatsApp has no backdoors and we do not provide bulk information to any government. For over a decade, Meta has provided consistent transparency reports and those include the limited circumstances when WhatsApp information has been requested. Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
However, a 2021 Freedom of Information Request to the FBI revealed that WhatsApp’s owner provides ‘near real-time’ information to US authorities – not the content of messages in most cases, but of who is sending and receiving messages:
WhatsApp will produce certain user metadata, though not actual message content, every 15 minutes in response to a pen register [a special type of federal request], the FBI says. The FBI guide explains that most messaging services do not or cannot do this and instead provide data with a lag and not in anything close to real time: “Return data provided by the companies listed below, with the exception of WhatsApp, are actually logs of latent data that are provided to law enforcement in a non-real-time manner and may impact investigations due to delivery delays.”
This potentially fits with reports in Israeli media that Israel is using an artificial intelligence platform named ‘Lavender’ to identify thousands of human targets in Gaza and flag them for an airstrike, with WhatsApp data forming a key part of the AI’s decision process, based on the WhatsApp connections of supposed ‘militants’ – and that the system is designed to kill large numbers of civilians. One source told 972 that when Lavender identifies a target, Israeli forces:
bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.
But of course, people are in WhatsApp groups of all kinds of topics and for all kind of reasons – and merely being in a group which has a ‘militant’ member is no guarantee of any kind of ‘guilt’ – even if the right to resist occupation is disregarded, as Israel, the US and UK do.
This pattern raises the possibility that Israel is obtaining WhatsApp data, whether directly or from the US government. Another possibility is that Israel is accessing the data through the notorious ‘Pegasus’ hacking programme that has been shown to target WhatsApp users, hijacking their phones through WhatsApp even, in the later Pegasus versions, if they don’t open any suspicious links. Journalists, politicians, human rights activists and others are known to have been hacked by governments using the software, including its use by the Saudis against dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
So serious was the issue that in 2021 tech firm Apple sued NSO, the maker of Pegasus, for targeting Apple users. NSO claimed that the software is used only against ‘terrorists’ – as which Israel, the UK, US and some others have designated Palestinian resistance groups – but there is clearly no guarantee that the definition of ‘terrorist’ is not extended in practice to anyone targeted by Israel. Biggar has accused WhatsApp’s owners of breaking international law and violating human rights.
Facebook, which belongs to the same Meta parent group as WhatsApp, has been accused of shutting down the circulation of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist posts and treating the term ‘Zionist’ as hate speech. In 2020, the company admitted changing its algorithms to filter out left-wing news and analysis from users’ feeds while allowing right-wing propaganda to flow unchecked.
However Israel is accessing the WhatsApp data it is said to be using to target Palestinians and their families, undoubtedly a war crime, the news that it is doing so is a warning for those who dissent from Establishment narratives and use ‘private’ messaging services to do so.
Meta continued its statement to Middle East Monitor:
Our principles are firm – we carefully review, validate and respond to law enforcement requests based on applicable law and consistent with internationally recognized standards, including human rights.
The US and UK governments, however, continue to insist that Israel is following international law and recognised human rights standards, even as it murders tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children.
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Assange: justice denied again as court declines to admit new evidence of US murder plots
Wikileaks founder will remain in Belmarsh prison while judges seek further meaningless ‘assurances’ from US
The High Court has this morning again denied justice to persecuted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Despite admitting that the US is denying Assange’s rights to free speech and is pursuing him in a way that it would not pursue one of its own citizens, judges have decided to keep Assange in Belmarsh prison while it asks for further ‘assurances’ that the US will not kill him – even though there has been longstanding evidence of US plans to murder him outside the US.
Shamefully, the court has also declined to admit fresh evidence of US plots to assassinate him, claiming that the evidence is irrelevant because the US’s incentive to murder Assange would not apply if it had him in custody, as Declassified UK has pointed out:
Incredibly, the High Court has refused to admit fresh evidence of CIA plots to kidnap or kill Julian Assange.
The judges say the rationale for kidnapping or killing Assange would be removed if he is extradited, and the evidence is thus not worth consideration.
Read that again. pic.twitter.com/PqwJIg4yAn— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) March 26, 2024
The extradition case should have been laughed out of court three years ago, when the main US witness admitted he had been lying all along in his claim that Assange induced him to hack US systems. Instead, Assange has been submitted to what former UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer described as sustained psychological torture – and still faces the likelihood of imprisonment for more than a century in US retaliation for Wikileaks exposing its war crimes in Iraq and as a deterrent to other journalists who might expose its crimes in future.
Shame on the UK and its travesty of justice and democracy. Free Julian Assange. Protect real journalism.
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Israel running fake ‘Hamas’ website to hack Palestine Solidarity activists
‘Hamas [dot] com’ full of viruses and hacks to compromise system security of visitors – caution: do not attempt to visit the site
The Israeli regime’s spy agency has set up a fake ‘Hamas’ website at hamas [dot] com in an attempt to entrap and hack Palestine solidarity activists and anyone interested in Palestinian resistance. Skwawkbox has broken the link in the text above for readers’ security.
The site is registered with Israeli web company Wix – which a genuine Hamas site would never use – and a scan of the site by virus checkers shows it is riddled with viruses and malware:
Even more sinisterly, the official ‘@israel’ Twitter published the site link as if it was the genuine Hamas website in an attempt to drive traffic to the site, where visitors machines were likely to end up hacked:
Israel’s propaganda machine has flopped catastrophically since the start of its genocide in Gaza, with every piece of attempted atrocity propaganda and misdirection of blame exposed almost as soon as it was put out – and in many cases Israel simply lies, as when it claimed that the UN had validated its false rape claims when in fact the UN spokespeople admitted they had found no evidence whatever to support the claims. Its attempt to hack the global base of people who stand against genocide was exposed just as quickly.
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Exclusive: how the Poplar and Limehouse trigger ballot was rigged against Apsana Begum
Allegations of irregularities become concrete example of branch fix that prevented Muslim woman MP being automatically selected to stand again
In 2022, Poplar and Limehouse’s left-wing Muslim woman MP Apsana Begum faced a ‘vicious and misogynistic’ campaign to deselect her that had left campaigners and women’s groups horrified.
The campaign followed a party attempt to remove Begum as the London constituency’s MP by prosecuting her for housing fraud. The stitch-up fell apart when a court threw out the charges brought by allies of her allegedly-abusive ex-husband – forcing Labour party vultures, who had been at the court in anticipation of a guilty verdict to announce a contest to replace her, to slink away disappointed and unable to install a favoured right-winger in the overwhelmingly Labour-voting seat.
After the ‘lawfare’ failed, Begum’s many supporters accused the party of gross abuse of process, of bullying and intimidation, and even of outright rigging in its determination to ‘trigger’ Begum and force her into a selection contest – and Begum was even threatened with ‘serious abuse’ by a relative of her ex.
Now Skwawkbox has received details from local members of one of the selection meetings demonstrating how the trigger vote was rigged – a vote that both exemplifies the stitch-up tactics and would have ensured Begum was selected again automatically had the party reacted and investigated properly. These can now be exposed and they corroborate earlier evidence at the time of the process.
Begum’s trigger ballot process started in May 2022, just after the local council elections – and from the start, locals say it was marred by blatant breaking of party rules.
Only an MP and her supporters are allowed to campaign during the process, and no-one is allowed to campaign as if they were an alternative candidate. Opponents of Begum who supported her being triggered completely ignored these rules. Many complaints were made to the party but were ignored.
The trigger ballot meeting for Lansbury and Poplar – a branch consisting of two wards combined – was the first of the CLP’s votes to be held, on 31st May 2022. A large group of people vocally supporting a vote to trigger Begum gathered outside the hall, telling people to vote for the trigger and giving out slips of paper with marked up dummy ballot papers to guide any unsure of the process, acts completely against party rules. Branch officials told these agitators that what they were doing was completely against the rules, but they refused to stop.
Inside the hall, the meeting was in uproar before it even began, with aggression and abuse by Begum’s opponents, who were even ‘yelling and jumping up and down and waving fists in the faces of branch officers’. Some went as far as openly demanding that Labour’s official protocol for the meeting be abandoned and to go straight to a vote, so they could – in as many words – ‘vote for the trigger and go home!’
At this point, a senior officer of the constituency-wide party (CLP) turned up at the meeting, despite having no official role there – Skwawkbox understands that several CLP officers are close to Begum’s ex-husband and determined to oust her.
As people were being ticked off the eligible voter list to ensure only those entitled to vote took part, several people arrived who were not on the list, fuelling the aggressive and intimidatory atmosphere as they demanded to be let in.
The CLP officer said they would check eligibility through their phone – and insisted that four extra people be allowed into the meeting and given ballot papers. Requests to clarify where this information came from were ignored.
When the vote was taken, the result was 43-43 – meaning that if the four pro-trigger voters were not eligible to vote, the real result would have been a victory for Begum by 43-39. This would have meant Begum won the required ten percent in the CLP section vote – which under Labour’s rules meant she had won the trigger process and would automatically stand again as Labour’s candidate in the next parliamentary election.
Labour ignored a string of complaints about this meeting and dismissed the few it responded to. But when the membership system was finally accessible again (after being out of action because of a hacking attack), branch members were able to confirm that the one extra ‘member’ allowed in by the CLP officer – the only one known personally to other members present – was not eligible to vote, because her membership had been confirmed well before the trigger meeting to have lapsed. There was no way she could have been on the CLP officer’s ‘list’.
The names of the other three names allowed in were written at the time on the master copy of the attendee list – but the CLP observer, also an opponent of Begum – insisted on taking it away with him. But even if they were bona fide members – which they were not because they appeared on no membership list – Begum still won the vote 43-42, and so would have automatically been selected to stand again.
Members have lodged multiple complaints about this abuse of process but have been ignored. Even if the other branch votes were held in perfect propriety – which goes against reports of the way they were conducted – the real result in Lansbury and Poplar was enough to select Begum uncontested.
Labour has been accused repeatedly, up and down the country, of rigging trigger and selection processes, sometimes successfully – for example in nearby Ilford South to remove incumbent Sam Tarry – and occasionally not, as when Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne was able to fight off repeated attempts.
So bad has the party’s conduct been that even journalist Michael Crick – no left-winger – who runs the ‘tomorrowsmps’ Twitter account detailing the latest selection news has publicly voiced his own concerns about Labour’s rigging and abuse of its selection processes. Now the mechanism – or at least one of them – for rigging in Poplar and Limehouse to oust a popular left-wing MP has been laid bare by the evidence and the testimonies of locals.
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