Corona-fight in Israel – The secret service wants to allow its citizens more überwachenMit the Collect of mobile phone and credit card data, the Israeli government has the Corona pandemic fight. Now the head of the country expressed the secret service, the Shin Bet against the practice. Alexandra Föderl-Schmid Tel Aviv0 comment don’t want to be in civil Affairs involved: Shin-Bet-chief of Nadav Argaman.Photo: Getty
As the Coronavirus began to spread, responded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly: By emergency regulation he put the Bet in mid-March, the Surveillance of citizens in the hands of the domestic secret service, Shin. The Supreme court step in, because not even the Parliament was involved. A law was therefore passed.
now, As the extension of the controversial practice of decency on this month, for at least thirty more days, reported the Shin-Bet-chief of Nadav Argaman. He asked the government to this task, given birth. His rationale: The Shin Bet should not be in a civil matter is pulled in. The Coronavirus is largely under control, the use of the technology was no longer necessary.
methods from the Anti-Terror fight
The Israeli government allowed the Shin Bet to combat the Coronavirus, the use of technologies that were typically only in the Anti-Terror fight in the use. Your justification was that you could save a life. Every positive Corona Test solves the Shin from Bet a chain of data queries: With whom the Patient is in the last two weeks in contact and how long was that? Where was the Person on the go? People who were Infected to close, got automatically a SMS with the invitation to go in quarantine.
in addition to the GPS-data were analyzed, four of ten Sensors of the Smartphones, which measure movement, acceleration or the light conditions. There is also information were obtained, which Wi-Fi network or device found with Bluetooth in the vicinity. This enabled the secret service with in-depth insights into the privacy of anyone staying in Israel – far beyond location, in addition to queries in the case of Smartphones.
Also, the credit card usage is monitored
data guards were alerted from the start about mass surveillance and the balance of the data: “You can be right in the content, in the social networks of the person and in his E-Mails”, warned Cybersecurity specialist Isaac Ben-Israel in Israel’s army radio. In addition, the credit card was monitored usage to determine whether such quarantine regulations have been violated.
Even if there were hardly any public protests, as was discussed whether the secret service clears the data after it has been used at the Corona-combat well-being or if used in the past few months, with official connivance findings further. For the intelligence expert Ronen Bergman, who works as a Journalist for the daily newspaper “Yedioth Ahronot”, is not a Bet of the reason for the withdrawal of the Shin the now low number of Infected: “It is a PR Disaster,” he says.
“democracy under
this is Because the methods of the secret service now has become all the Israelis clearly undermines”: “It is the same mechanism that has been revealed by Edward Snowden at the NSA.” Snowden’s revelations showed how the American National Security Agency (NSA) can monitor every Form of electronic communication. According to Bergman, the integration of the domestic has undermined the intelligence service in the Corona fighting for “democracy”. Why have there been no major Outcry in Israel against this mass-surveillance? “As a Journalist and as a citizen I have to say, it is a shame that it has not been a broad public debate.”
the Former Shin Bet employees, such as Arik Barbing defended the program, however. Barbing pointed out that around a third of the 16’000 people Infected were tracked down by the secret service.
The head of the secret service proposed to use as an Alternative, the Ministry of health developed a mobile App. For the use of the App called “The shield” is the consent of the citizens is necessary. Volunteering around 1.6 6.5 million Smartphone users have downloaded the App.
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