PerspectiveWhy Did Microsoft Fund an Israeli Firm that Surveils West Bank Palestinians?
Microsoft has invested in AnyVision, an Israeli startup which has developed a facial recognition technology used by Israel’s military and intelligence services to surveil Palestinians throughout the West Bank, in spite of the tech giant’s public pledge to avoid using the technology if it encroaches on democratic freedoms. The surveillance technology lets customers identify individuals and objects in any live camera feed, such as a security camera or a smartphone, and then track targets as they move between different feeds. The Israeli surveillance project is similar to China’s surveillance of its Uighur minority population. China is using artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology for a pervasive, intrusive monitoring of the Uighurs, a Muslim group living in western China.
Microsoft has invested in a startup which uses facial recognition to surveil Palestinians throughout the West Bank, in spite of the tech giant’s public pledge to avoid using the technology if it encroaches on democratic freedoms.
Olivia Solon writes for NBC News that AnyVision, which is headquartered in Israel but has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore, sells an “advanced tactical surveillance” software system, Better Tomorrow. It lets customers identify individuals and objects in any live camera feed, such as a security camera or a smartphone, and then track targets as they move between different feeds.
Solon writes:
According to five sources familiar with the matter, AnyVision’s technology powers a secret military surveillance project throughout the West Bank. One source said the project is nicknamed “Google Ayosh,” where “Ayosh” refers to the occupied Palestinian territories and “Google” denotes the technology’s ability to search for people.
The American technology company Google is not involved in the project, a spokesman said.
The surveillance project was so successful that AnyVision won the country’s top defense prize in 2018. During the presentation, Israel’s defense minister lauded the company — without using its name — for preventing “hundreds of terror attacks” using “large amounts of data.”
Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have Israeli citizenship or voting rights but are subject to movement restrictions and surveillance by the Israeli government.
Solon notes that the Israeli army has installed thousands of cameras and other monitoring devices across the West Bank to monitor the movements of Palestinians and deter terror attacks. Security forces and intelligence agencies also scan social media posts and use algorithms in an effort to predict the likelihood that someone will carry out a lone-wolf attack and arrest them before they do.
Solon writes:
The addition of facial recognition technology transforms passive camera surveillance combined with the list of suspects into a much more powerful tool.
“The basic premise of a free society is that you shouldn’t be subject to tracking by the government without suspicion of wrongdoing. You are presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Shankar Narayan, technology and liberty project director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “The widespread use of face surveillance flips the premise of freedom on its head and you start becoming a society where everyone is tracked no matter what they do all the time.”
“Face recognition is possibly the most perfect tool for complete government control in public spaces, so we need to treat it with extreme caution. It’s hard to see how using it on a captive population [like Palestinians in the West Bank] could comply with Microsoft’s ethical principles,” he added.
China has ramped up its surveillance of its Uighur minority population using artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology.
