Israeli High Court Strikes Down Coronavirus Phone Surveillance Program
By: Jonathan Stormer Pezzi
An Israeli flag flies in Tel Aviv.
Lexington — Israel’s High Court of Justice recently ruled that a previous government policy of surveilling the phones of coronavirus patients must cease until the policy receives approval from parliament.
The program permitted domestic security services to tap into cellular data and retrace the movements of those infected by the coronavirus. This allowed authorities to track who the patients likely came in contact with before their quarantine, empowering the state to contact and test those individuals as well.
The court accepted the case in response to urgings from rights groups and advocates petitioning against the tracking.
Advocacy organizations like the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the human rights NGO Adalah celebrated the court’s decision.
The cyber monitoring normally requires parliamentary approval and judicial oversight. However, Prime Minister Netanyahu circumvented the process by invoking emergency orders, allowing the phone-surveillance to be carried out by the Shin Bet security service.
The technology has been in existence for some time, normally used for anti-terrorism activities against Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. However, this was the first known time that the technology was used against Israeli citizens.
Per the Jerusalem Post, Israel has allocated millions to developing more tracking programs, including facial recognition technology. According to another news report, the current policy has been successful in reducing the case count and maintaining quarantines of those already affected.
Israel’s other policies have been notoriously strict as well. In addition to the surveillance, the government mandated that anyone returning to the country from abroad must quarantine for two weeks. Israeli police have also clashed with the country’s ultra-orthodox community due to their resistance to shutdown measures.
In the ruling, Court President Esther Hayut said, “There is a need to codify its authority to do this [tracking] as part of appropriate primary legislation, such as a temporary order. This is in light of the fact that the method chosen by the government as part of its authorization decision is a means that deals a serious blow to the constitutional right to privacy, and this shouldn’t be taken lightly.”
The court also ruled that if the law were passed by parliament, it should include a partial exemption for journalists to protect their sources, or else their phone data and in turn, sources would be handed over to the Shin Bet. The journalists would need to request these exemptions and would be approved on a case-by-case basis.