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Palestine Under Surveillance with Mona Shtaya
113 Plays3 years ago
Mona Shtaya joins host Yara Hawari to discuss the highly invasive mass surveillance of Palestinians by the Israeli regime in light of recent hacking and spying reports. They explore the impact of such tactics on the work of activists and human rights defenders as well as the consequences on Palestinians' daily lives.
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Transcript
Introduction to Mass Surveillance of Palestinians
00:00:00
Speaker
Unfortunately, today we are talking about mass surveillance of Palestinians in the digital spaces and on the ground. And it is clear that we are sinking in a pool of surveillance and I'm not sure if we can get out of it.
Focus on Palestinian Rights and Self-Determination
00:00:20
Speaker
This is Rethinking Palestine, a podcast from Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. We are a virtual think tank that aims to foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination. We draw upon the vast knowledge and experience of the Palestinian people, whether in Palestine or in exile, to put forward strong and diverse Palestinian policy voices. In this podcast, we will be bringing these voices to you so that you can listen to Palestinians sharing their analysis wherever you are in the world.
Cyber Surveillance and Human Rights Violations
00:00:55
Speaker
Over the last few weeks, we've seen some major news stories break about Israel's cyber surveillance of Palestinians, from the hacking of Palestinian NGO staff phones to the mass deployment of facial recognition software to be used against Palestinians across the West Bank. Now mass surveillance of Palestinians by the Israeli regime is nothing new. And whilst this level of technological sophistication is novel, it's important to contextualize it within the pernopticon reality
00:01:24
Speaker
that Palestinians have always experienced since the establishment of the Zionist settler colonial project in historic Palestine. Joining me to discuss this topic is Mona Stahir, a digital communication and advocacy strategist and the advocacy advisor for Hamle, the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement. Mona, thank you for joining me on Rethinking Palestine. Thanks, Yara, for having me here. I really love the podcast.
00:01:51
Speaker
Mona, Palestinians have long argued that they are essentially a laboratory or testing ground for weapons and surveillance technologies. Before we delve into what has been happening over the last few weeks, could you summarize what surveillance looks like for Palestinians on a daily basis, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza?
Testing Ground for Surveillance Technologies
00:02:12
Speaker
Definitely, Yara. So nowadays with the spread of the surveillance technologies and with the technologies generally, I can say the Israeli colonization was also developed to include abusing people's data and privacy. And for the past decade, the Israeli regime has been producing and testing the surveillance
00:02:31
Speaker
technologies on Palestinians as a part of their military industry, and then it produces it massively and sell it to the other governments and regimes around the world to be used to control their people. Fisher recognition techniques, spywares on mobile phones, spreading cameras to control the population.
00:02:49
Speaker
monitoring every telephone call in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and monitoring social media platforms and either arresting people based on what they published on social media or pushing the social media companies to take down a specific content.
Pandemic and Escalation of Surveillance
00:03:04
Speaker
Are all forms on the shrunk spaces that Palestinians are facing because of these systematic efforts to surveil them?
00:03:13
Speaker
Over the past couple of weeks, we saw many reports on the surveillance tools that are used to monitor Palestinians. Some may be surprised by them, but digital rights defenders, we were expecting something like this, especially when the Israeli regime worked systematically during the pandemic to normalize surveillance culture in order to expand its profit from this occupation.
00:03:41
Speaker
Mona, you mentioned that Palestinians were not particularly surprised by the recent events and the recent news of this mass surveillance. And that's because surveillance of Palestinians, even prior to these relatively new and novel technologies, has a historic trek record. The Israeli regime has often used human personnel, spies, various different mechanisms to surveil Palestinians.
Impact of Surveillance on Daily Life and Self-Censorship
00:04:04
Speaker
What does this mean for daily life for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza? How does that surveillance
00:04:10
Speaker
affect their lived realities? Well, let's talk about people feeling toward these surveillance technologies. Last week, we at Hamle have produced and published a new report on the facial recognition cameras that was in East Jerusalem. But also, the same report came out of the Guardian, which was mentioned the Blue Wolf and the White Wolf. It also mentioned the surveillance cameras and the facial recognition in Hebron and many other places around the West Bank.
00:04:40
Speaker
This kind of surveillance usually create a higher self-censorship among Palestinians and create a feeling of living in an unsafe place while we are living under this kind of occupation or settler colonialism regime that we are living under like for the past decades. Now we recognize that this kind of occupation is not only on the ground, it's also applicable on the digital spaces, on the online spaces.
00:05:08
Speaker
So this kind of militarization and securitization affect people's behavior, affect people's feelings toward the society that they are living in. And to be honest with you in our report, we've heard people's experience with these cameras. One of them is a woman who's living in East Jerusalem.
00:05:29
Speaker
And she mentioned that she can't take off her hijab even inside her home because she feels that she has surveilled all the time even inside her home. She swear that she's sleeping with her hijab. And this kind of politics of fear, they are intended to spread and to normalize among Palestinians, but people are much more aware.
00:05:53
Speaker
We've seen also other kinds of surveillance that they also utilize and use with Palestinians. For example, during May escalation, we saw how they sent SMS messages to people, to worshippers who were in Laxamos. They told them that you have participating in violent, quote unquote, violent work in Laxamos. And because of that, we will held you accountable.
00:06:17
Speaker
And by doing so, we recognize that they also are using the GPS to monitor Palestinians and to surveil Palestinians. And this is also a violation of their right to privacy.
00:06:28
Speaker
When we are violating people's right to privacy, people kind of start fearing and start feeling scary about their life. And sometimes with the self-censorship, they stop talking, stop criticizing, and they even stop expressing themselves. And that's scary. That's disastrous in terms of the context that we are living in Palestine.
00:06:51
Speaker
Mona, that's incredibly important to note that this kind of surveillance is not only about gathering information, but it's also part of a scaremongering tactic, an attempt to make Palestinians constantly uncomfortable so that they can't do anything else and that they have to self-censor. So it's also part of this sort of attempt to depoliticise Palestinian society. Now, some weeks ago, the Israeli Ministry of Defense criminalised six Palestinian human rights NGOs
00:07:21
Speaker
And it's not particularly surprising, but questions were asked why now and what purpose does it serve, particularly as the Israeli regime doesn't need any excuse to arrest Palestinians, to raid officers, to confiscate files. But what's becoming clear is that the Israeli regime likely rushed this criminalization because both Citizen Lab and Amnesty International
00:07:45
Speaker
found Israeli spyware, in particular Pegasus, on the devices of staff members.
Surveillance Justifications and NGO Targeting
00:07:51
Speaker
And in other words, you know, one of the reasons for this criminalization was an attempt to whitewash or to excuse this hacking. And indeed, it's a lot easier to justify this level of surveillance on organizations that you claim are terrorist rather than human rights organizations. So could you perhaps tell us a bit more about this?
00:08:11
Speaker
Well, there's ex-Palestinian who were surveilled by Bigesos, which is a malicious spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO, which was recently listed on the U.S. blacklist for manufacturing and supplying foreign authorities with spywares. They were working in human rights organizations.
00:08:29
Speaker
And as I mentioned previously, oppressive regimes such as the Israeli regime usually use surveillance techniques to restrict the human rights work, silencing a human rights activist and preventing them from documenting human rights violations against citizens that occupied Palestinian refugees in a systematic matter. And for years, Palestinian civil society organizations, including the text mentioned organizations, have faced restrictions on civic workspaces
00:08:58
Speaker
some of which had previously faced systematic smearing campaigns with the aim of defaming them and restricting their work. Al-Haq was one of the organizations that were accused by the Israeli regime of being quote unquote terrorist organization, which had previously witnessed a smear campaign with the aim of restricting its work and preventing it from practicing human rights work and documenting human rights violations that we as Palestinians are exposed to on the ground.
00:09:28
Speaker
It is clear that these campaigns were not fruitful as the Israeli authorities desired. And accordingly, the authorities began monitoring a group of workers in these organizations. And as we can see from frontline defenders report, they started surveilling two of these sex human rights defenders since 2020.
00:09:49
Speaker
And earlier this year Amnesty International had published a detailed report about NSO, which was historically used to be a suspicious lane that should be clicked to hack your device. But in the last couple of years, the company developed its technology to create this zero-click malware where they can hack your device whenever they want. And this dangerous malware could have access to all your data, messages, photos, and calls
00:10:17
Speaker
And this is not the first time that the Israeli regime uses the logic of white-washing crimes and human rights violations. This is their method of work. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, the authorities started using mobile applications under the pretext of protecting public health. And we knew that this reason was a justification for legislating the use of surveillance technologies and normalizing people acceptance of them.
00:10:47
Speaker
Unfortunately, many governments succeeded in this. The Israeli authorities also asked Palestinian citizens to download the coordinator or monastic application on their phones.
00:10:59
Speaker
to obtain permits to go to their work. This was all questionable and unfortunately today we are talking about mass surveillance of Palestinians in the digital spaces and on the ground. And it is clear that we are sinking in a pool of surveillance and I'm not sure if we can get out of it.
00:11:18
Speaker
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Facial Recognition and Everyday Monitoring
00:11:33
Speaker
And Munna, as if this spyware wasn't
00:11:37
Speaker
scary enough around the same time as the news broke about Pegasus, the Washington Post published an expose on how the Israeli regime is incorporating facial recognition software known as Blue Wolf into its mass surveillance of Palestinians across the West Bank. What will this look like and what will it mean for Palestinians?
00:11:59
Speaker
The Washington Post report pointed to another type of surveillance that you've mentioned, Gaya, where Israeli authorities are monitoring Palestinians by integrating facial recognition with a growing network of cameras and smartphones.
00:12:14
Speaker
As the report mentioned, over the past two years, when the world was struggling with the pandemic, the Israelis were developing a new surveillance initiative called the Blue Wolf that captures photos of Palestinians faces and matches them to database of images.
00:12:31
Speaker
Later on, the phone app flashes in different colors to alert soldiers if a person is to be detained, arrested, or left alone. The report also mentioned another smartphone application called the White Wolf that has been developed for use by the settlers in the West Bank, so they can use the White Wolf app to scan Palestinians' identification card before the person enters the settlement.
00:12:57
Speaker
The military in 2019 acknowledged the existence of the White Wolf in the right-wing Israeli publications. Adding to that, the report was also talking about surveillance cameras that the Israeli authorities are using in Hebron, as I mentioned from before, and as Hamle also report mentioned about Jerusalem.
00:13:17
Speaker
And all of these are systematic efforts to surveil Palestinians, to prevent them from living their normal life, let's say, and also from practicing their normal life, especially people who are working in human rights documentation.
00:13:33
Speaker
But to be honest with you, if you are Palestinian, you could not only be surveilled just because you are working in a human rights sector. As we have seen over the past couple of weeks, we saw a systematic effort to surveil Palestinians, the normal people in the streets, with the cameras, with these mobile applications, if you are going to work in the settlements or if you are staying in the West Bank. Yesterday, we saw also another or a new report on the Middle East Eye,
00:14:01
Speaker
where they were telling us that the Israeli authorities or the Israeli regime is also monitoring all the phone calls in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And that disaster, because people even they can call their loved ones or to talk to their loved ones as they want.
00:14:19
Speaker
And as a human rights defender, but also as a normal person who's living in Palestine, I feel that this could restrict not only the freedom of expression and not violating my privacy, it's also affecting my behavior, it's also affecting how I communicate with my close family, with my first circle people.
00:14:39
Speaker
So that also could, on the long term, could change people's behavior, could also change people's mindset on how they use these technologies and on how they are also perceiving this kind of surveillance and dealing with that in their daily life.
Trust and Behavior Changes Among Palestinians
00:14:59
Speaker
And also, it could affect people's trust with each other and also with their societies. And that's disaster.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's really important to highlight how the Israeli regime manages to infiltrate even the most intimate areas of life, even the communication with your closest family members and friends. If we go back for a moment to the notion that Palestine is this laboratory or testing ground for these kinds of surveillance technologies, what implications does this have for the rest of the world?
00:15:37
Speaker
Let's have a starting point. Colonial and oppressive regimes usually agree on one point, which is the oppression of people. For this, the Israeli regime usually sells these technologies to other repressive regimes in general and to the regimes in the global south in particular. And this has an impact on the safety of the people first.
00:16:00
Speaker
And contrary to the image that security companies and governments usually export, that these technologies are important to maintain safety of people, I see that the first place it violates people's safety, people's privacy, and it works to normalize militarization and securitization in people's subconscious.
00:16:20
Speaker
thus violating their right to privacy. And because oppressive regimes and colonial regimes usually do not allow anyone to criticize them, so they use these techniques to prevent people from expressing their right to freedom of opinion and expression, and thus preventing them from their right to self-determination.
00:16:41
Speaker
So we feel we all oppress people who usually suffer with their governments, with their regime, because of the use of surveillance technologies, especially those imported from the Israeli regime.
Global Impact of Israeli Surveillance Technologies
00:16:54
Speaker
If we have, like, a lock back into other regimes' history, like the UAE regime, for example, we can see how they also use the same technology, which is NSO or BEGASOS, against their political opponents.
00:17:09
Speaker
For example, there is a human rights defendant who passed away like a couple of months ago, called Ella, and she was living in the United Kingdom because she can't go back to the UAE. And after her death, we remember that they discovered that there was an SO in her mobile phone.
00:17:27
Speaker
also Jamal Khashoggi was having such fire in his mobile phone and in Morocco the government was using surveillance technologies specifically the NSO against their political opponents and against the human rights defenders and lawyers in the previous years they have the long history how they are using that and in a systematic matter that these regimes are using these against journalists who could criticize them against political opponent and activists and the human rights defenders
00:17:57
Speaker
And it's clear that these colonial and oppressive regimes, they have like one mission, which is surveil people and prevent people from living in a safe world without having this kind of feeling of being surveilled and murdered all the time.
00:18:14
Speaker
So Mona, with all of that in mind and considering everything we've discussed, how can Palestinians protect themselves from this kind of pervasive surveillance? And what about non-Palestinian? What can they do to disrupt Israeli surveillance in Palestine, but also Israeli surveillance exports?
00:18:34
Speaker
So for Palestinians, I have this kind of fear that we can't trust our devices. We can't trust the technology. The technology usually is being utilized by oppressive regimes and also by colonial regimes to suppress people.
Need for Vigilance and Digital Security
00:18:50
Speaker
And that's unfortunate that it's being used against us, against Palestinians.
00:18:56
Speaker
And because of that, Palestinians should be aware that we can't trust technology and we can't trust anything that is being shared online. Communicating with our people is very important and using technology, utilizing technology to spread our narrative to the world is also important. But we should keep in mind that someone is watching us all the time while we are chatting with our even closest family members or beloved ones.
00:19:23
Speaker
And because of that, people should be aware and should educate themselves more and more about the digital safety and the digital security tactics where they can protect themselves and protect their family members and their colleagues and friends. So the first thing is raising awareness in the digital security practices that is really needed for the young people, for everyone in our society.
00:19:47
Speaker
And we should keep in mind that the Israelis, as the Guardian report mentioned, that they use specific information about people who they surveil, like with the LGBT community, with the females and so on, to intimidate them and to prevent them from practicing or living their normal life, and sometimes to get more information from them about their society. Being aware of what could happen is very important.
00:20:15
Speaker
Change your settings, your mobile settings should be the safest. We know even if we change that, even if we like prevented the location and so on, some applications could access your location, but we should keep in mind, we should make our maximum effort to prevent any kind of surveillance. We should not like a click on any suspicious link. And I'm afraid of mentioning that because now NSO is being developed to be zero-track malicious spyware.
00:20:44
Speaker
But for others, others can also do for Palestinians, they can support Palestinians and support themselves. They can escalate the pressure on their governments, on their MPs, on their congress representatives to prevent buying these technologies from the Israeli regime and to have a better legislation that prevents
00:21:06
Speaker
their security forces, their governments of using such surveillance spywares, let's say, and surveillance technologies, they can also, through their governments, through their representatives, escalate the pressure to prevent Israelis from using these technologies against Palestinians.
Role of International Pressure and Awareness
00:21:26
Speaker
Because we believe that the international pressure could do something for Palestinians. We've seen in May how with the international pressure
00:21:35
Speaker
how amplifying Palestinian voices, how the international pressure was really re-centralizing the Palestinian cause and putting that in the center. And by doing that, let's say it was fruitful to some extent. And because of that, we should escalate the pressure more and more and prevent their governments to buy such surveillance technologies.
00:21:58
Speaker
Mona, thank you for ending on those really important points about international pressure and for the more practical security tips. This is such an important topic and it is incredibly worrying and I think that's why it's so important that we highlight it. So really, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine. Thank you, Iyara. Thanks for having me.
00:22:26
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Rethinking Palestine. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. For more policy analysis and to donate to support our work, please visit our website www.al-shabaka.org. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.