Israeli army used Google Photos to spy on Palestinians in Gaza - NYT

Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash

Israeli military intelligence used an experimental facial recognition programme in the Gaza Strip that misidentified Palestinian citizens as being affiliated with the Hamas group.

Here's What We Know

According to The New York Times, the programme was originally intended to be used to find Israeli hostages, but was later used to identify all possible Hamas members. It was based on technology from the Israeli company Corsight, which, according to the developers, can accurately recognise people even with poor image quality.

In practice, however, according to an officer in Unit 8200, the system was often wrong, especially when recognising blurred or damaged faces. The inaccuracies led to cases in which Palestinian civilians were mistakenly labelled as Hamas-linked.

According to three Israeli officers, the military additionally used Google Photos to improve recognition accuracy. Intelligence officers uploaded photos of known individuals to the service and used a photo search function to identify them from surveillance footage.

One officer noted that Google's capabilities were superior to Corsight at recognising partially hidden faces, but the latter was used because it was more customisable.

Among those mistakenly detained was poet Mosab Abu Toha, who was held and interrogated for several days by the Israeli military, mistaking him for a Hamas member due to a recognition system error. He was subsequently released after admitting the mistake.

Google confirmed that their service groups only those faces whose photos the user himself added to the library. The service does not identify unknown faces.

Source: The New York Times, Engadget