Israel government moves to seize access to private security cameras
Israel’s Defense Ministry last week proposed a draft bill which would allow Israel’s security forces to hack into private security cameras without their owners’ knowledge or consent.
Citing the October 7th massacre in which Gazan Muslims murdered 1,400 Israelis and kidnapped another 240 as hostages, the Defense Ministry expressed concern in the bill that enemies may be able to obtain “visual information” from stationary private security cameras. Therefore, to protect the Israel Defense Forces’ “operational functioning” and “security of the state” the Defense Ministry has proposed “temporarily” allowing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet, the country’s internal security agency, to hack into such cameras at will “even without the knowledge of the owner.” The operatives would be allowed to access, retrieve, and delete information found on the cameras.
“This is because it is not possible to obtain the consent of the owner of the technology to penetrate and operate on the technology within the necessary time period,” says the bill. The permission, which would be effective for six months, would not extend to police.
When the ministry closed the bill to public comment Sunday night, there were already 173 comments on the bill, many of them expressing deep opposition. One user called the bill “a law that characterizes dark, undemocratic regimes” while another called it “a shameful exploitation of the situation.”
A common theme in the comments was the belief that Israeli authorities will abuse the law, and that the bill is only the latest in a string of proposed laws aimed at eroding civil liberties under the pretext of “war.”
Last week, for example, Israel’s Justice Ministry announced it will only suspend the Freedom of Information (FOI) Law for one month instead of three as originally planned.
In a memo published last month, the Justice Ministry said it intended to freeze the law for 90 days from the date of the October 7th massacre to “enable public authorities and the population in Israel to continue functioning properly during this period." Based on allowances made within the original law, this would have given authorities seven months during which they would not have to respond to taxpayers’ FOI requests.
But after a public backlash which included over 4,000 written objections, the Justice Ministry decided to instead freeze the law until Tuesday, November 7th, one month from the massacre. Public authorities will now have four more months to legally defer answering any FOI requests.
The decision to suspend the FOI law over the war came soon after Israel’s Communications Ministry also used the war as a pretext to propose arresting taxpayers who criticize the government.
Israel Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi drafted regulations last month that would allow authorities to arrest taxpaying citizens and seize their property for “harming national morale.”
According to the regulations titled “Limiting Aid to the Enemy through Communication,” members of the public or media who disseminate information that "undermines the morale of Israel's soldiers and residents in the face of the enemy" or "serves as a basis for enemy propaganda, including the spreading of the enemy's propaganda messages" or "aids the enemy in its war against Israel, its residents, or Jews" will be guilty of a criminal offense.
Regardless of the information’s veracity, the communications minister will be authorized to order the arrest of the information source and seize equipment used to spread the information.
The proposed regulations, which were drafted after consultation with Israel National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, come as 80% of Israelis reportedly blame the government for the October 7th attacks.
