The human rights organization publishes a new report denouncing the use of facial recognition technologies by Israel to strengthen its control over the Palestinians.
“We are facing a system of mass surveillance and control of the Palestinian population”, denounces Tuesday, May 2 on franceinfo Jean-Claude Samouiller, president of Amnesty international France. which in a new report denounces the use of facial recognition technologies by Israel to strengthen its control over the Palestinians.
Amnesty International reveals in particular that these technologies are used in East Jerusalem and Hebron, where Israeli settlers live among the Palestinian population. For the president of the NGO, the facial recognition system called “Red Wolf”, red wolf, constitutes “a dramatic restriction of freedom of movement and a violation of the right to privacy”.
franceinfo: You have just published a report on the existence of a facial recognition system to monitor and control the Palestinian population. How does this tool work?
Jean-Claude Samouiller: We are faced with a system of mass surveillance, of control of the Palestinian population. We have documented in Hebron and in East Jerusalem, where people, each time they cross the checkpoint, are photographed, are put on file, are carded. All this is linked to a huge database, called “Wolf Pack”. It’s really to control the Palestinian population and it’s part of the apartheid system.
“It puts the Palestinian population under oppression, the Palestinians no longer dare to walk around, sometimes they are even prevented from shopping, from leaving their homes.”
Jean-Claude Samouiller, President of Amnesty International Franceat franceinfo
How is it a threat to the rights of Palestinians to be recorded, photographed by this facial recognition system?
In Hebron, for example, if they go through the checkpoint and they are not checked, they cannot leave their neighborhood, cannot do their shopping, cannot go to work, cannot cure. It is a dramatic restriction of freedom of movement and a violation of the right to privacy. It is a restriction on the right of expression, demonstration and association.
What are the safeguards that may exist on the use of this facial recognition system?
We call for the removal and shutdown of this digital technology. Amnesty International denounces this situation today in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories, but has also denounced it in the United States, India or China, particularly in Xinjiang, with the Uyghur populations. We demand the absolute prohibition of all those facial recognition systems which are mass surveillance systems and which, by their nature, violate human rights.