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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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Video: Israel targeted SIX international aid groups that had shared their coordinates
Groups hit repeatedly when IDF knew where they were, killing aid workers and their families
A still from the NYT video shows a traumatised aid worker
A New York Times investigation has revealed that at least six international aid groups working to help starving Palestinians in Gaza were targeted by Israeli forces – hit despite having repeatedly shared their locations with the Israeli military. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from France, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) based in the UK, the US International Rescue Committee, Anera from the US and the Red Cross/Red Crescent from Switzerland were all hit, along with the well-known repeat attack on three World Central Kitchen (WCK) vehicles spread across a 2.4km distance.
The analysis of photographic evidence and communications between the groups and the IDF has been published today. The IDF claimed that the WCK attack was a ‘mistake’ and admitted that the WCK workers had reported their locations and movements as requested to – but the attacks on five other groups also known to have communicated their positions establishes what was already clear: the attacks were intentional.
Some of the attacks targeted the aid workers’ homes, killing them and multiple family members including children. Watch below:
The UK continues to arm and assist Israel, despite several British citizens being among those murdered. Israel has slaughtered well over forty thousand civilians since 7 October, mostly women and children, and is starving two million more. The country is on trial for genocide before the ICJ, which has repeatedly ordered Israel to stop killing and starving Palestinians.
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Video: thousands gather for Gaza at Columbia as professor condemns uni’s ‘day of shame’
History professor Christopher Brown describes scandal of university president setting riot police on peaceful anti-genocide demo and condemns craven congressional testimony
Thousands have again gathered on the lawns of Columbia University in New York, despite the attempted repression of the university’s management and the New York police – where they heard speeches from faculty members as well as students against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the authorities’ attempts to silence them:
Despite the state’s aggression, which has included the use of riot police and state troops in various locations – and the shameful demonisation of peace protesters by politicians and pro-Israel lobby groups willing to collude in Israel’s war crimes, mirroring the tactics used in the UK – the protest movement is growing and the US public is increasingly aware and condemning of Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.
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Facebook designates Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg a ‘dangerous individual’
The notoriously intelligence-friendly social media network appears to have imposed a ban on posting a recent report by Kit Klarenberg, and is automatically restricting users who re-publish his work. Multiple Facebook users have reported being banned, or having their posts censored, after sharing an investigation by The Grayzone’s Kit Klarenberg into CIA and MI6 involvement in the creation of ISIS. Readers who post links to the piece on the social network find themselves frozen out of their accounts, on the […]
The post Facebook designates Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg a ‘dangerous individual’ first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Facebook designates Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg a ‘dangerous individual’ appeared first on The Grayzone.
We do not need Fiscal Rules to rool ok?
I agree with Wayne Godley – almost 19 years ago. And in 2024 so does NEF about the European ones: When we know that money is a man made commodity that governments create in order to get stuff done, it is desperately sad that we have allowed finance and their bankers – both commercial and... Read more
The West must no longer tolerate Israel's human rights breaches
My latest post at Substack examines the state of play in Gaza after six months of war. Fair to say, it is truly horrible. But more importantly, there is now overwhelming evidence that Israel has deliberately and systematically violated international humanitarian law. These violations could amount to genocide.
On 28th March, the International Court of Justice decided that the situation in Gaza had significantly worsened since its original order in January imposing six "provisional measures" that Israel must take to prevent the situation worsening. The Court imposed, in additional to the original six, a further two measures, specifically requiring Israel to admit sufficient humanitarian aid to ward off famine and prevent its army interfering with the distribution of that aid.
These measures are binding not only on Israel, but on all signatories to the Geneva Convention on Genocide. All Western countries are signatories. So what should they do to force Israel to comply?
Read the whole post here. Or listen to it, as I've now added a voiceover.
Yemen ‘promises Iran 400,000 troops’ in event of regional war
Fighters “ready to completely blockade the Red Sea and target US bases in Africa and the Middle East”, says Iran Observer
Image: Iran Observer
Yemen has promised Iran the support of 400,000 troops if regional war breaks out after Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria to murder a top Iranian military officer, Iran Observer Twitter/X account has said this afternoon. The account, which has 233,000 followers and appears to have access to a stream of information from within the region, notes that Yemen has recruited 200,000 additional fighters since Israel began its genocidal assault on the Palestinians in Gaza and says that the fighters are:
ready to completely blockade the Red Sea and target US bases in Africa and the Middle East.
The news came as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon appeared to warn that the group’s relative restraint so far in the face of Israel’s attacks on homes and bases in Lebanon had run out and that ‘all scenarios’ are possible. Yemen’s Houthis have been attacking – in response to the International Court of Justice’s findings against Israel – Israel-bound and -owned shipping off its coast, undeterred by attacks by the UK and US, whose governments continue to collude in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed and maimed well over 100,000 people so far, mostly women and children, and has put more than two million into famine.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
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Video: Miriam Margolyes’s powerful statement on ‘vicious, genocidal’ Israel
Jewish actress posts no-holds-barred video supporting Jewish Council of Australia, attacked by Zionists for ceasefire call
Jewish actress and national treasure Miriam Margolyes, a joint UK and Australian citizen, has posted a video supporting the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) call for an immediate and permanent halt to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza – along with the imposition of sanctions and an immediate end to Australia’s military ties with Israel.
The JCA has been heavily attacked by pro-Israel groups for the call, with the attacks following similar lines to the dismissal in the UK of left-wing Jewish groups by right-wing nationalist organisations and politicians.
In her video, Margolyes says she has never been more ashamed of Israel – which she described as a ‘vicious, genocidal, nationalist nation’:
Despite the antisemitic representation by western governments and media as if all Jews support Israel, very many do not – and even many who have supported it are disgusted by Israel’s mass murder of, so far, more than forty thousand Palestinian civilians, overwhelmingly women and children, and the blockade and assaults it is using to starve two million more. The UK and Australian establishments continue their complicity in Israel’s war crimes.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Video: Israel’s ‘error’ killing of WCK food aid workers was 3 attacks over 1.5 miles
‘Error’? The facts say different but western governments still complicit
Israel has claimed that its slaughter of seven World Central Kitchen food aid workers was an ‘error’ and says it is investigating. The attack consisted of three separate bombings – across a distance of 2.4km.
And as a White House correspondent pointed out in questions to government spokesperson John Kirby this evening, the attacks were spread across time, too – with the first strike hitting one vehicle then two more as survivors tried to escape with their wounded in the remaining two: an attack designed to make sure no one got out of it alive:
The ‘error’ also happens to have achieved Israel’s objective of cutting off the only remaining significant supply of food to the two million civilians of Gaza – WCK fed some half million Palestinians – after Netanyahu ordered his forces to prevent any shipping of food by UN agency UNRWA.
Yet the US and UK political establishments remain more than happy to collude in Israel’s fictions – and to allow the war criminals to investigate themselves. The UK has not even ordered Israel’s far-right ambassador to appear to explain Israel’s actions, despite at least one UK citizen being among the murder victims.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
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Today’s capitalism means that psychopaths rule
I’m increasingly of the view that this is correct – and that is why I really thought that this was no more than the truth: All of this quote is, it seems to me, spot on from this American game programmer… A major problem is that the Lionel Robbins idea of economics which is seen... Read more