The Israeli military<\/u> has reportedly implemented a facial recognition dragnet across the Gaza Strip, scanning ordinary Palestinians as they move throughout the ravaged territory, attempting to flee the ongoing bombardment and seeking sustenance for their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program relies on two different facial recognition tools, according to the New York Times<\/a>: one made by the Israeli contractor Corsight, and the other built into the popular consumer image organization platform offered through Google Photos. An anonymous Israeli official told the Times that Google Photos worked better than any of the alternative facial recognition tech, helping the Israelis make a \u201chit list\u201d of alleged Hamas fighters who participated in the October 7 attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The mass surveillance of Palestinian faces resulting from Israel\u2019s efforts to identify Hamas members has caught up thousands of Gaza residents since the October 7 attack. Many of those arrested or imprisoned, often with little or no evidence, later said they had been brutally interrogated or tortured. In its facial recognition story, the Times pointed to Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose arrest and beating at the hands of the Israeli military began with its use of facial recognition. Abu Toha, later released without being charged with any crime, told the paper that Israeli soldiers told him his facial recognition-enabled arrest had been a \u201cmistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Putting aside questions of accuracy \u2014 facial recognition systems are notorious less accurate on nonwhite faces \u2014 the use of Google Photos\u2019s machine learning-powered analysis features to place civilians under military scrutiny, or worse, is at odds with the company\u2019s clearly stated rules. Under the header \u201cDangerous and Illegal Activities<\/a>,\u201d Google warns that Google Photos cannot be used \u201cto promote activities, goods, services, or information that cause serious and immediate harm to people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked how a prohibition against using Google Photos to harm people was compatible with the Israel military\u2019s use of Google Photos to create a \u201chit list,\u201d company spokesperson Joshua Cruz declined to answer, stating only that \u201cGoogle Photos is a free product which is widely available to the public that helps you organize photos by grouping similar faces, so you can label people to easily find old photos. It does not provide identities for unknown people in photographs.\u201d (Cruz did not respond to repeated subsequent attempts to clarify Google\u2019s position.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s unclear how such prohibitions \u2014 or the company\u2019s long-standing public commitments to human rights \u2014 are being applied to Israel\u2019s military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt depends how Google interprets \u2018serious and immediate harm\u2019 and \u2018illegal activity\u2019, but facial recognition surveillance of this type undermines rights enshrined in international human rights law \u2014 privacy, non-discrimination, expression, assembly rights, and more,\u201d said Anna Bacciarelli, the associate tech director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cGiven the context in which this technology is being used by Israeli forces, amid widespread, ongoing, and systematic denial of the human rights of people in Gaza, I would hope that Google would take appropriate action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to its terms of service ban against using Google Photos to cause harm to people, the company has for many years claimed to embrace various global human rights standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince Google\u2019s founding, we’ve believed in harnessing the power of technology to advance human rights,\u201d wrote Alexandria Walden, the company\u2019s global head of human rights, in a 2022 blog post. \u201cThat\u2019s why our products, business operations, and decision-making around emerging technologies are all informed by our Human Rights Program<\/a> and deep commitment to increase access to information and create new opportunities for people around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This deep commitment includes, according to the company, upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights \u2014 which forbids torture \u2014 and the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which notes that conflicts over territory produce some of the worst rights abuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Israeli military’s use of a free, publicly available Google product like Photos raises questions about these corporate human rights commitments, and the extent to which the company is willing to actually act upon them. Google says that it endorses and subscribes to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a framework that calls on corporations to \u201cto prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cFacial recognition surveillance of this type undermines rights enshrined in international human rights law.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Doing Good or Doing Google?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n