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.
Way easier than having them wear an armband.
That’s brutal because it’s so fitting. Well played.
So, hot take here: preface this with saying I absolutely condemn 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.
Edit: I ment condemn, not condone. Apologies
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Israel is the type of control-heavy far-right state other dictators wish they could govern, and it’s made possible by Western money and technology (I was going to name just the US but my country of Canada, among others, is not blameless either). This news also sucks because there’s no way that tech is staying in Israel only. Citizens of the world better brace for convictions via AI facial recognition.
“Our computer model was able to reconstruct this image of the defendant nearly perfectly. It got the hands wrong and one eye is off-center, but otherwise that’s clearly them committing the crime.”
It’s true… far right dictators love this shit:
From what I remember, AI facial recognition tech was already being used by police and agencies worldwide, like the FBI, PRC police etc, or am I misinformed? I remember something about Chinese and American facial recognition software.
I had not read anything like that but a quick search pulled up this story from last September by Wired that supports your post: FBI Agents Are Using Face Recognition Without Proper Training. “Yet only 5 percent of the 200 agents with access to the technology have taken the bureau’s three-day training course on how to use it, a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) this month reveals.” So it sounds like you’re right, and also that they are probably inadequately trained even if they complete all 3 days on how to identify people with legal ramifications.
And I wonder how many of those 95% have already used misapplied AI facial recognition to justify FISA court warrants for
stalkinginvestigatingrandom peoplesuspected terrorists?
Facial tattoos of drop table commands. Embed computer worms into your iris. We can get insane to fuck all this shit up too. I bet theres a way to embed a computer virus on your own face.
I guess I’ll adjust my life goals to “hot cyberpunk partner in technological dystopia”, because that sounds like some Bladerunner/Cyberpunk 2077 stuff.
Its not that far off. We’ll see exactly what I said soon enough. You can put a virus or worm inside an image in an email. You can do the same thing with a tattoo. Its unfortunate it will be here so far before the superhuman cybernetics.
You can put a virus or worm inside an image in an email.
I’d much prefer that people who haven’t done this wouldn’t talk.
Are you implying you can’t use steganography techniques on real objects and images? You act like I stated it would be easy.
OK, so who’ll decode your “virus” from those real objects? Or it’s a case of “I’m a poor Nigerian virus, please kindly run me with root privileges on a system with such and such”?
Just because you said this wouldn’t work like SQL Injection, does not mean it won’t. You don’t know either. Have you worked on facial recognition databases? How do they store their data? Its most likely just a database. Then I would start by looking at steganography techniques to see how those can be applied. Obviously I’m not hiding an executable in there, but I don’t see why you couldn’t try for unsanitized input, you never know. Now if you want to continue into realism, you would just wear a full face mask outside. You also never answered my question about steganography.
Sounds like a great time to start a costume & mask making company named “The ministry of silly walks”.
This is probably what people would actually do. Just wear a full mask.
Honestly with enshittification “technological dystopia” sounds like exactly where we already are. Now, if only implants weren’t being R&D’d by Muskrat and there were some open source non-invasive version…
Attempts at adversial ai tatoo, face masks and clothing have been done before. Basically exploiting the model not having a deeper understanding of the world so you can trick it with specific visual artifacts.
Which may even work with 0.001% probability of that recognized string not being screened.
There’s a difference between SQL injections on thematic web forums and the same in such a system.
That “we can … too” is lazy complacency. “They” will get even stronger while “we” talk like this.
Nothing is casual about this. Be pessimistic if you want. But we will not stop jabbing the eye that watches. This is an arms race.
What I’m saying is that you personally haven’t done any of this and look stupid.
Yep, people do use vulnerabilities in software and hardware to do things. Just not you, so that “we” seems weird.
Neither did I, I just played with crackmes and shellcodes a bit, but I’m not the person writing pretentious posts with that “we”.
The original commentor I replied to was speculating about this being commonplace. You came in with your statements about people having to do things to talk about them in a post about speculation.
You are doing absolutely nothing, are you.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
I see that the deadline for skynet in 2029 is more realistic every day
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.
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.
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.
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”.
i don’t think it’s for that purpose , it’s to identify where terrorists are hiding and not label anyone of terrorism
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
It labeled many people falsely as terrorists and was a waste of time. That’s why it got leaked to begin with.
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.
The west is supporting Israel commit genocide in Gaza so that they will acquire better battleground tested surveillance technology.
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.
Cunts.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
Corsight, which has boasted that its technology can accurately identify people even if less than 50 percent of their face is visible, used these photos to build a facial recognition tool Israeli officers could use in Gaza.
To further build out its database — and identify potential targets — the Israeli military set up checkpoints equipped with facial recognition cameras along major roads Palestinian used to flee south.
One officer told the Times that Google Photos could identify people even when only a small portion of their face was visible, making it better than other tools, including Corsight.
According to the Forbes report, Corsight’s technology was able to take images of people “whose features had been impacted by physical trauma, and find a match amongst photos sent in by concerned family members.”
The original article contains 623 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Does it also measure the diameter of their heads for statistical purposes?
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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.
Without their consent? How could they. Of course everywhere else police use face recognition with consent, right? Right??
Imagine if it was Apartheid South Africa, or Nazi Germany doing this. Do you see the problem now?
I don’t think you understood their point: this shit is done by police everywhere, and nobody’s asking for consent there either. A lot of this tech gets developed by Israel and then bought by police forces across the world. Palestinians are guinea pigs for all the latest policing and surveillance tech.
I understood it, and what I’m trying to say is: Unlike in most places, this technology isn’t going to be used even ostensibly to maintain law and order; it’s gonna be used for genocide. Again, think of the FBI and the Wehrmacht using the same technology. Both are bad, but one is clearly a lot worse. That’s why this is cause for concern.
If they want genocide, what do they need the face recognition for?
Genocide doesn’t mean wiping them all out, but that aside it’s so they can enforce their reign of terror in the meantime. And because they later sell these technologies as “battle-tested”.
Ehhm actually Genocide exactly means wiping them all out.
Then the Holocaust, Armenian genocide, Holodomor and Cambodian genocide weren’t genocides. Good to know. Neither was the American and Canadian genocide of Native Americans.
You should read the UN’s definition of genocide first.
That’s like asking why the US military would lean heavily on its intelligence apparatus while operating in some developing country with 0.01% of the military power.
Knowledge is power, and it gives you options. Maybe the surveillance helps them find high priority targets faster. Maybe it saves an Israeli life or two. Maybe all they care about is killing Palestinians, and their surveillance lets them see population movements in real time.
To commit the genocide efficienctly
Or Great Britain?
