Israel has deployed a mass facial recognition program in the Gaza Strip, creating a database of Palestinians without their knowledge or consent, The New York Times reports. The program, which was created after the October 7th attacks, uses technology from Google Photos as well as a custom tool built by the Tel Aviv-based company Corsight to identify people affiliated with Hamas.
Facial Recognition is not ready for this level of use unless you’re just looking to create chaos, lock up innocent people, and generally create more enemies. But then they currently have a torture and release program so they’re familiar with that already.
Photoprism on default settings merged like 5 people into one because it was all trained on a predominant NA population.
Google photos has had similar results even with tuning the algorithm.
So best case they throw innocent people in jail without trial and worst case they just continue to shoot innocent people anyway.
While the US and the USSR scrambled for Nazi scientists post WWII for their Air and Space programs, it seems that Israel was grabbing a different kind of Nazi for consorting work.
Way easier than having them wear an armband.
So, hot take here: preface this with saying I absolutely condone the surveillance by Israel here.
But I think it’s wrong to judge a nation by what they’ve gone through themselves, with an attitude of " they should know better". Just because the Holocaust happened, doesn’t mean that Israel has better morales or values, or that they would never do such things themselves. Humans are humans. With the wrong people in power, horrible things happen.
It’s perfectly reasonable and necessary to argue that Israel is currently violating human right laws. We should keep doing that.
It is not reasonable to keep pointing at the holocaust and nazi germany as a stick of " look, you became the thing you suffered under", unless in a context of learning from history. “You should know better” creates unreasonable expectations where some nations ought to have higher morales somehow.
We are not comparing their governing or how they structure theur legislative system we are comparing the open air camps, tight restrictions and indiscriminate murder. I think it is perfectly fair to compare them to nazis, for one there isnt many comparisons they have left themselves with - this is the company they are in now.
I can’t condone mass surveillance of a population that have been subjugated, harrassed, violently targetted, stolen from and currently going through a genocide and enforced famine. But that is just me.
If Israel can play the “criticizing the Government of Israel is the same as opposing the Jewish ethnicity” card, then we can play the “you especially should know better” card.
So, hot take here: preface this with saying I absolutely condone the surveillance by Israel here.
I think you mean condemn.
It is not reasonable to keep pointing at the holocaust and nazi germany as a stick of " look, you became the thing you suffered under", unless in a context of learning from history.
I mean when a country does Nazi things usually other countries point out that that’s Nazism. It’s not something unique to Israel (see: Trump’s rhetoric being compared to Hitler’s); it’s just that Israel’s philosophy shares a lot with Nazism so the similarity is pointed out a lot.
Fair. I guess I saw something in the original post that wasn’t there. I see and hear a lot of the “they should know better” argument when that’s not an argument at all, and unfair to anyone on the receiving end of that argument. I might have concluded that too soon.
I believe we should be very careful to stick the label nazism to everything we find abhorrent. I’d like to judge situations on their own merit, not compare them to other atrocities in our history. The socio-political situation in Gaza is so different than 1930’s Germany. Even experts are having a hard time really putting the finger on all the mess that has been Israel-Palestine situations for the past 600 years. Calling everything Nazism has a sideeffect of devaluing and maybe even downplaying said words in the long run.
But maybe I’m just rambling on semantics. I think we all agree that what is going on now in Gaza is a mess and a violation of human rights. And something needs to be done about that.
I believe we should be very careful to stick the label nazism to everything we find abhorrent. I’d like to judge situations on their own merit, not compare them to other atrocities in our history. The socio-political situation in Gaza is so different than 1930’s Germany
True enough, but the ideology itself is very similar. The methods and forms of injustice differ, but the idea that the ubermench have the right to kill the untermench/enslave them/drive them from their homes/all of the above (also known as Lebensraum) is a very important point of similarity that actually allows us to better understand Israel’s actions and ground them in reality. Comparisons with Nazis are usually unproductive, but in this case they serve to take away the air of Israeli exceptionalism Israel has spent 70 years creating, in the sense that if you logically evaluate the proposition that Israel = Nazi you find it having a lot more merit than you’d expect at first glance. Way too much merit to coexist with the idea that Israel is acting in self-defense. Gonna go on a bit of a tangent, but you’ll find Israeli ideology similar to Manifest Destiny, aka the Nazis’ inspiration. In the end it’s all settler colonialism.
Even experts are having a hard time really putting the finger on all the mess that has been Israel-Palestine situations for the past 600 years.
Why specifically 600 years? AFAIK the modern conflict started about 100 years ago with the Balfour declaration.
Hmm, I see your point. I remember seeing some terrible comments from Israeli politicians about the nature of Palestinians . But in the past, there have been many attempts by the governments to reconcile Israel and Palestine. They have failed (I believe partly?) because after every agreement, it seemed some terrorist would explode something somewhere to fuel the conflict. So I have a hard time believing it’s always been part of the Israeli plan. I’m not entirely convinced it isn’t partly self-defence, turned into a (terrible) revenge-raid.
But I’ll be the first to admit I’m very much a layperson when it comes to the whole of this conflict. And that is, to me, the most important thing in this whole affair. I believe we as westerners really have no clue of the actual day to day mess that was, and is, Gaza. We jump to conclusions without actually really understanding the full breadth of the situation. Seeing comments on this conflict on average feels like one big Dunning Kruger mess. I guess that’s what sort of sparked my original comment, a mess of “not devalue words” and “let’s not pretend we understand this conflict”. I’m not always great at getting points across I guess.
The 600 years wasn’t a specific amount. I just remember hearing in a podcast that the history of the Isralian conflict comes from way before second world war. Might have misremembered the specifics of that fact, or put the wrong facts into my brain.
Thank you for taking the time to respond in a reasonable manner. It helps me organize my thoughts on this horrible conflict, and gain some new insights.
I left another comment to you elsewhere about this, but no this conflict is not ancient. Israel likes to claim it is as justification of their actions, but Arab Jews and Arab Muslims lived together reasonably peacefully in this area for centuries. The current conflict was created by the European Jews immigrating, buying land, and refusing to hire anyone except Jews for jobs the Muslims typically held. It removed any hope of creating a livelihood from these people and giving them resistance as the only option left available. This is where the violence starts. It’s only about 100 years or so.
That’s because they ought to have better morals than Nazis.
I’m gonna play devils advocate here… it’s easy to say “don’t hate these people in that other country” when these two countries have decades, if not hundreds of years of violence, hatred and conflict between them. You cannot look at what’s happening while ignoring the past 600+ years.
In ww2, there was no actual reason to hate jews. In this situation, the two parties have had actual conflict with actual victims for hundreds of years.
It only takes the wrong people in power at the right time to have this timebomb explodes like it did.
Is it right? Hell No. But the morales at play here are grounded in a vastly different way than with the nazis.
This isn’t it. Arab Jews and Arab Muslims lived in the region together mostly peacefully. Sure, some violence happened, but nothing particularly unusual. The violence really started to happen when the European Jews came over, purchased land and farms that were traditionally worked by Arab Muslims, then created a rule to only hire Jews to work the land. It ripped any possibility of continuing existing together away because one of the groups decided it would stop cooperating with the other.
The idea that Jews and Muslims must fight is bullshit. No matter where you look in the world there’s some conflict, but this region has been home to Jews and Muslims together for centuries and they mostly lived together fine. The current conflict is modern, not historic, as much as they will say otherwise.
You cannot look at what’s happening while ignoring the past 600+ years.
600? I mean there were Jews in Palestine then too, and very occasionally unforgiveable things were done to them, but the people who are now running Israel weren’t there for any of that. These are people who migrated to Israel less than 100 years ago and their descendants.
Thanks, just commented on a different post where I said 600 years too. It was an arbitrary number from me, probably misremembering a fact I heard on a podcast about this conflict. The guest on the podcast said something along the lines of “this conflict comes from way before ww2” but I might have misremebered the context or actual years.
Apologies.
I’ve put together a long list of historical events of the conflict here if you’re interested. The concept of Transfer in Zionism goes back to the late 1800s while the dispossession of Palestinians started around the 1920s.
I absolutely condone the surveillance by Israel here.
This seems… incongruent with the rest of your comment.
Apologies. I meant condemn. Second language and all.
No need to apologise.
Damn! That’s brutal because it’s so fitting. Well played.
Wouldn’t be necessary if Hamas didn’t violate the Geneva convention every chance they got.
Displacing a population and replacing it with a different one is a violation of that convention.
Israel has a right to defend its self i think the missile atacks have to end its been going on for decades so palistine has been asking to be invaded especially after they invaded and started killing civilians kidnapped
Israel has had a permanent occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1967, maintaining an apartheid state through direct and indirect violence.
Hamas began twenty years into an Occupation enforced with direct and systemic violence, with the goal of ending the occupation.
What Is Hamas? - Council on Foreign Relations
What Does Hamas Actually Want? - NY Mag
Collective punishment has been a deliberate Israeli tactic for decades with the Dahiya doctrine. Violence such as suicide bombings and rockets escalated in response to Israeli enforcement of the occupation and apartheid.
Hamas Election - Snopes
The west is supporting Israel commit genocide in Gaza so that they will acquire better battleground tested surveillance technology.
Does it also measure the diameter of their heads for statistical purposes?
Well it makes sense. Hamas often pose as civilians to get the enemy off guard and then pull out an RPG.
Israel needs some way to be able to pull them out of a crowd. Especially if civilians are to be protected.
Anyway it’s not like most western countries aren’t already doing this, they just haven’t told us yet. But there’s an awful lot of cameras around Europe now and I’m sure they must have facial recognition tech.
And of course there’s China who doesn’t hide it it all.
Eventually it will be worldwide if it isn’t already.
I don’t think anyone would risk that with GDPR.
You’d be surprised. I think the governments of the world do as they wish, secretly. As long as no one finds out… But who knows really?
This is all sorts of fucked up and wrong but lets face it… it’s far from the worst thing happening in Gaza right now.
No, this enables that.
what’s wrong with hunting down terrorists?
What if they decide you’re a terrorist? Governments should not have this power period. Anybody can become an “enemy of the state” at any time.
i don’t think it’s for that purpose , it’s to identify where terrorists are hiding and not label anyone of terrorism
It labeled many people falsely as terrorists and was a waste of time. That’s why it got leaked to begin with.
How cute. Is this the first time you’ve seen a government use terrorism to excuse atrocities?
Sure, I guess you could trust them, but I see no reason to. Do you think this will just stop being used after the conflict? Do you think they aren’t using it to target families/friends of people who resist them? Do you think any form of resistance is terrorism? Is Israel using force to induce fear and submission not terrorism?
i am not telling you to not doubt them
What if I tell you the instant you make a successful protest. Leak information of crimes commited by the government, or threaten some industry interests they’ll do that anyways.
They are still hunting down a couple of guy’s whose only crimes was to denounce crimes the government did. They call those “whissle blowers”.
Nothing, as long as that’s actually what you’re doing and you are good at doing only that without creating collateral damage.
I don’t think the people upset with the treatment of Gaza got that way by being concerned for the welfare of actual murderous terrorists.
True, but:
1-It helps them find “terrorists” to blow up, and
2-This isn’t going away. Even after this “war” ends what remains of Gaza will be perpetually under surveillance (more than they already are). Even if the war ends today, Gaza just became even more of an open-air concentration camp.
I would be amazed if Gaza still exists when this war is over.
Don’t be silly. Of course it will. Some cleaning up, ethnic cleansing and rebuilding and there’ll be Gaza Beach, Gaza Hills and many more high value neighborhoods for non-muslims to live in.
Christians currently living in Gaza
It doesn’t work, for point 1 very well though. The tech is fine, but the way it’s presented to users is that it’s way more accurate than it actually is. That’s marketing rather than a technical problem. Second, the tech is not as good at recognizing non-white people. It’s just a fact that there are more pictures of white people to train the tech on since white people have historically had more access to photography among other reasons. And the models used to create most of the tech was built to favor facial traits that are more likely to differ in white people.
So, the likelihood of high probability matches is much lower so the likelihood that the highest probability match that is made is actually much lower probability of it being an actual match means the bad matches bubble to the top and get accepted as real. And these kinds of uses are more interested in a “better safe than sorry” stance and they aren’t sorry about killing the wrong person, only about not killing the right one. So they’re perfectly as happy killing many people that are possible matches as they are one person that’s the correct match.
The US uses facial recognition when I enter into the country. Wonder if it’s the same tech.
Israel is using it to track terrorists and blow them up. Hopefully they make quick work of it. That’s probably how they spotted some of the 10/7 crew they’ve rounded up.
Israel considers all Palestinians terrorists, that’s part of their justification for genocide.
Year before Oct 7 - Jewish Voice for Peace
Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel) and Summery by the International Court of Justice
And they deliberately target civilians.
‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war — which Israel has named “Operation Iron Swords,” and which began in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7 — has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).
Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.
Latest humanitarian food insecurity assessments – the IPC classification index which is used as a reference by aid agencies – indicate that the entire population of Gaza – 2.2 million people – face “crisis” levels of food insecurity, the OCHA spokesperson said. Of that number, around 1.17 million face “emergency” levels of food insecurity, and the plight for another 500,000 is “catastrophic”
So you’re also in favor of using The technology. Really helps sort out terrorists vs civilians.
Also quoting Jewish voices for peace is kinda evidence you’re not paying attention. They’re more biased against Israel than Al Jazeera, and they certainly don’t represent Jewish people.
All of your sources actually turn up to be wildly biased. Makes sense, most bigots feel safer in their echo chambers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This technology has and will continue to be used to justify attacks on civilians by calling them terrorists.
I’m sure you also have an issue with B’TSelem and Breaking the Silence. JVP does very credible work and has consistently advocated for peace and coexistence. But here, take those facts from these other sources instead if you don’t like JVP.
UN report: 80% of Gaza inhabitants relied on international aid before war - The Guardian
2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank - Save The Children - Sept 18, 23
2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups - New Arab - Oct 6, 23
The technology should be used to identify people who are hiding among civilians and eliminate them yes. Perfect case use for it.
JVP platforms convicted terrorists. Their founding moderator is a Lebanese based Anti semite who’s been outed for years. You don’t even need to be Jewish to open a chapter, using them as the voice of Jewish people is outwardly bigoted and frankly disgusting but tells me all I need to know about your ability to discern information on this topic.
You mean Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted in an Israeli Military Court, where palestinians are presumed guilty with no rights or representation, after being tortured into a confession?
Palestinians denied civil rights including Military Court
One of the most problematic practices of military courts is the use of remand in custody until the end of proceedings. This means that a person whose interrogation has been completed and who has already been formally charged is kept in detention until the legal proceedings are over. These individuals are not serving a prison sentence, have not even been sentenced, and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty… A direct outcome of this policy is that the vast majority of military court cases end in plea bargains in which the defendants plead guilty (usually in return for the prosecution dropping some of the charges). Defendants prefer to avoid a lengthy evidentiary trial, knowing that in most probability, they would be held in remand for the duration of the trial, such that even if they are ultimately acquitted, their time in detention would exceed the sentence they would receive in the plea bargain. As a consequence, the prosecution is seldom required to go through a full evidentiary trial, in which it must present evidence to prove a person guilty. Instead, the outcome of the case is decided at the time remand is granted, rather than on the basis of evidence against the defendant. And so, a pretrial decision to remand a defendant in custody before conviction renders the judicial proceeding meaningless.
Palestinian Prisoners in Israel including Child abuse
Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity
Particularly harsh are methods used by the Israel Security Agency to obtain information and “confessions”, practices well documented by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. Methods reported by Palestinian detainees include painful shackling and binding; immobilization in stress positions; sleep deprivation; the use of threats, including against family members; sexual harassment; the extensive use of prolonged solitary confinement; and verbal abuse. All these methods amount to torture or other ill-treatment. Interrogations under torture can last for weeks, with the detainee routinely denied access to a lawyer. Torture and other ill-treatment are frequently inflicted with the complicity of medical professionals, especially on detainees staging prolonged hunger strikes.
None of the members of JVL are antisemitic. Anti-zionism and criticisms of the (apartheid) State of Israel are not remotely the same thing of antisemitism. Israel never has and never will represent all Jewish people. Your conflation of the two is genuine antisemitism, the actions of Israel in no way reflect on all Jewish people.
Why would foreigners get civil rights in the country they’re attacking? America locks people in cages and separates them from their kids, they also ship them to an island off the mainland…are you trying to claim non israelis should get the same rights as Israelis?
If so, they really should have agreed to join Israel like their cousins did in 48, those 2 million Arabs have rights. Plenty of decisions up until they’re being held for trial could avoid this. Maybe the Palestinian could start making some better ones at this point, they’ve proven to be their own worst enemy FFS.
Before 1948, Palestinian Leadership repeatedly advocated for a Unitary Binational State for decades.
Palestinian Arab Congress advocating for Unified State 1928, Arab Higher Committee advocating for Unified State 1937, Arab League advocating for Unified State 1948.
The concept of Transfer in Zionist thought and the displacement of Palestinians since the 1920s culminated into a full fledged ethnic cleansing campaign in 1948. Partition and later the Two-State Solution have been wielded by Israel to covet and annex as much Palestinian land as possible with the least amount of Palestinians.
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
Plan Dalet and Details of Plan C (May 1946) and Plan D (March 1948)
After the 1948 ethnic cleansing, the remaining Palestinian population within now Israel were subject to Israel Martial Law and Defence (Emergency) Regulations, later practiced in the occupied territories after the 1967 war: Haaretz, Forward
Even today Arab Israelis are discriminated against as second class citizens including Education (2001 report). Not nearly as brutal as Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Gaza, but they all live under Israeli Military Control. This is Apartheid, by international definitions.
Amnesty Report, HRW Report, AIDA Report, OCHA Report on the details of the daily violence Israel uses to enforce the apartheid. Gaza Blockade is still Occupation
After the founding of Israel, the Two-State Solutions were utilized to further annex the Palestinian Occupied Territories and enact military control over Palestinians while denying them human and civil rights. Despite this, both Fatah and later Hamas have accepted a Two-State Solution on the 1967 borders, with the two most important factors being the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and an end to the permanent occupation.
Genocide apologist.
We prefer the term terrorist removal specialist.
Either way, this is a great use of technology.
Cunts.
I see that the deadline for skynet in 2029 is more realistic every day
This wouldn’t be necessary if Hamas wore uniforms.
Hamas wouldn’t be necessary if they stopped treating Palestinians like animals.
A blockade exists to prevent Hamas from getting weapons. A fence exists to prevent Hamas from crossing the border and attacking Israelis. Unfortunately a fence and blockade wasn’t enough to prevent this.
Israel isn’t treating the Palestinians as animals. They are treating their psychopath leaders like psychopaths. These psychopaths will perpetuate this situation to make people like you think they are necessary. But what’s actually necessary is removing these psychopaths from the equation so the weak minded can understand these “strongmen” that hide underground while the civilian population is at the mercy of an army they claim to be committing genocide aren’t actually strongmen at all.
You’ve been lied to.
It will be in Israel soon too. Netanyahu is using this genocide to cement a dictatorship by claiming it’s all necessary to fight the war, but it’s not really believed that he’ll take his special war powers away from himself once it’s over. He’s already tried to destroy the judiciary. Make no mistake, genocide is not the only way he’s taking pages out of Hitler’s playbook.
And thanks to the us in the states he is being well to do so. We need make it clear that we want all aid to Israel to stop. No more weapons or money.
Biden is in a real bind, because he needs the pro-Israel vote too. It’s a tightrope walk. I don’t think he’s handled it well at all, but I can see why they haven’t totally cut off Israel.
Can confirm. I don’t want to vote for the Orange Man but I will if Biden stops supporting Israel.
You do realize that the orange man is an even bigger supporter of Israel than Biden, right? Trump would not just support Netanyahu, he would back Israel annexing Gaza and making it a permanent part of Israel.
Read the other comment again
(That’s what he wants)
How does it feel to be a literal Nazi? I know Nazi doesn’t mean anything anymore generally, its value as an insult has diminished to uselessness from over and aimless use, but you. You are literally in favor of genocide and unembarrassed about it, and pushing a “Reichstag fire” narrative. There’s a very large number of dead jews spinning in their ash piles over this.
