Israel grants security agencies unprecedented access to biometric data
Israel’s Knesset (Parliament) this month expedited the approval of a new law that allows security agencies and law enforcement unprecedented access to taxpayers’ private biometric data.
Until this month, biometric data belonging to citizens — such as facial images and fingerprints — were stored in a database operated solely by the Interior Ministry’s Biometric Database Management Authority, reports Calcalist. If the Israel Police, Israel Defense Forces, or the internal security agency Shin Bet wanted to confirm the identity of a private citizen, the law only allowed the agencies to submit biometric data to the Biometric Database Management Authority for identity verification. The agencies had no direct access to the database.
For example, police could submit a photo of a person of interest to the Biometric Database Management Authority, which would use facial recognition software to run it against the database’s photos. If a match was found, the agency would be provided with the individual’s identity details. The Authority would not, however, be permitted to provide police with the actual biometric data.
Although the Interior Ministry was found to have operated outside the law for seven years by illegally sharing the biometric data of private citizens with an unknown agency, there was some measure of comfort that at least such a law existed.
But that law changed on November 8th. Citing the October 7th attack, Israeli politicians voted to allow security agencies to obtain taxpayers’ private biometric data without any apparent oversight or monitoring.
"In view of the lack of a full response to the needs of identification in the police and IDF databases, an essential and urgent need has arisen for the possibility of transferring information from the biometric database in the Ministry of the Interior to the police, and the General Security Service, the Intelligence and Special Task Force, and the IDF, for the purpose of identifying the murdered, the missing, the unknown, and the captives, as well as allowing the police to receive information from other sources," said the bill.
Furthermore, the law requires that fingerprint data — which reportedly stopped being collected a year ago — are to remain in the database until the law’s expiration in one year.
The law has raised concerns about the possibility of a new national biometric database being independently formed by law enforcement and security bodies who will operate it without oversight.
While the law stipulates it is only valid for one year, Zvi Dvir from the Movement for Digital Rights believes it may become permanent.
"During the discussion, it was made clear that the security authorities are interested in making the law a permanent law in the future,” Dvir told Calcalist. “The decision that during the period of the temporary order, fingerprints of citizens renewing biometric documentation will not be deleted proves the true purpose of the law. The data is not used for the biometrics of citizens who come to the population office for the stated purposes of the law. Therefore, the hidden purpose of the law, which is no longer so hidden, is to reverse past decisions, according to which the biometric database will be based on facial images only, and that the fingerprint data will be deleted from it.”
The law was passed as Israel’s Defense Ministry is proposing a draft bill which would allow Israel’s security forces to hack into private security cameras without their owners’ knowledge or consent.
Also citing the October 7th massacre, 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 IDF and Shin Bet 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.”
The week prior, 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.
