Israel is using Facebook to spy on civilians

The Israeli military has coopted a commercial social media monitoring service to keep tabs on both Israelis and Palestinians on Facebook and other social media sites.

A report by the critical Israeli publication +972 outlined how the military pressed this private company, which usually helped other companies to understand how their customers behave online, into using search terms to flag users as potential terrorists.

Where private companies might be interested in monitoring conversations about themselves and their products and services, the Israeli army intelligence officers who approached this company, whose name has been withheld, were looking for posts and conversations using terms like “boycott,” “demonstration,” “protest,” and “shaheed” (Arabic for “martyr”).

“The data they requested included the identities of the authors on social media, his/her profile, the content of what they wrote, as well as their physical location,” said a former employee of the company. “They requested the raw data without any analysis.”

At least five other tech companies had similar conversations with representatives of the army. Two companies, Bazila and IntuView, confirmed that they did work with the armed services.