Surveilling Palestinians
JVL Introduction
We post below an excerpt from a “chilling new book”, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, which has just appeared in openDemocracy.
The Walls Have Eyes shows how states like Israel control borders using inhumane, experimental surveillance technology”.
This excerpt focuses on Israel/Palestine as an exemplar of a global phenomenon.
It starts with the lived experience of surveillance in Hebron, as told by local Palestinian activist Issa Amro and soldiers of Breaking the Silence.
Moving on to the broader picture of Israel as a place where much of the world’s surveillance technology is tested out on Palestinians, it highlights the particular role of Israeli company Elbit Systems in border surveillance and spyware, describing it as “arguably the world’s most successful cybersurveillance firm”.
The obscene profits and waste of resources that are associated with these new weapons of surveillance are justified by saying they are “designed to fight crime and terrorism”.
But as many know already to their cost, they are used widely to spy on journalists, activists, dissidents, and politicians worldwide.
RK
This article was originally published by openDemocracy on Mon 8 Jul 2024. Read the original here.
‘How do we control Palestinians? We make them feel like we are everywhere’
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What a chilling read.. and you know this technology will be used eventually to silence Whistleblowers, Dissidents against Political actions and all of us eventually..