security
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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Exclusive: police try to gag Greenstein, invade privacy through bail conditions
Human rights activist arrested by anti-terror police for a single tweet faces censorship and snooping for speaking out against genocide
Image: S Walker
Brighton-based Jewish left-winger and human rights activist Tony Greenstein faces censorship and an assault on his privacy after he was arrested last week for a single tweet supporting Palestinian resistance in Gaza against Israeli genocide.
Greenstein was bailed until spring after a nine-hour detention and the confiscation of his electronics, but Skwawkbox understands that the bail conditions imposed upon him represent a severe invasion of his privacy and an assault on his freedom of speech:
- Greenstein must reside at his flat and sleep there every night – a significant issue when he has a son with special emotional needs living at a separate address
- He is banned from commenting on Twitter/X about Gaza and Palestine
- If he buys a new phone – his previous one remains with police – he must notify police of the phone number and also of the IMEI number of his handset
Phone manufacturer Blackview strongly recommends that anyone with a mobile phone keep their IMEI number – the unique 15-digit identifier of the physical handset – private and do not share it with anyone untrustworthy(!), because of the grave security risks, because possession of the IMEI allows a third party to:
- Track your phone. If your phone is stolen, the person who stole it can use your IMEI number to track your phone’s location [even if it is switched off or the SIM card is swapped]
- Block your phone from being used on a network. If you report your phone as stolen, your phone carrier can block your IMEI number from being used on their network. This will prevent the phone from being used to make calls, send text messages, or use the internet.
- Use your phone to commit fraud. Some criminals use stolen phones to commit fraud, such as making unauthorized calls or sending spam messages. They can also use your phone to access your personal information, such as your bank account details.
- Clone your phone. It is possible to clone a phone’s IMEI number. This means that the criminal can create a duplicate of your phone that has the same IMEI number. This can be used to commit fraud or to track your movements.
Of perhaps even greater concern is the ban on posts about Gaza and Palestine. As one of the UK’s most outspoken Jewish advocates of Palestinian rights and Israel advocates’ war on freedom of speech in the UK and elsewhere – and a fearless critic of Israel’s fake news and invented evidence used to justify its genocide in Gaza – Greenstein’s importance to the political debate is considerable – which may well be a contributing factor to his targeting by police, presumably acting on complaints from pro-Israel right-wingers.
Greenstein was given a suspended sentence in September after a farcical trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court in which he and fellow Palestine Action activists were convicted of criminal damage against Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit despite no damage being done, and so faces the imposition of that sentence if convicted of the latest accusation. The pro-Israel lobby, however, has no qualms about seeing troublesome opponents jailed for speaking out against mass murder and apartheid.
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