An indictment was filed against Major A, who infiltrated his subordinate's smartphone and created access to his wetsup account. • He used the information to track the soldier

• They have no connection to the article // Illustration by Liron Moldovan

An indictment was recently filed in the District Court for the home front against A, a high ranking sergeant who, after breaking into his command's cell, had long followed him, and even used his information to blackmail him.

A., a foreman in the battalion in which he served, lived with S. in a common room. On one of the evenings in November 2018, Q took a shower, and A rushed into his cell phone, creating access to Q's WhatsApp account.

The information he gathered, through an illegal and invasive glimpse, served him on a series of different occasions. For about six months, until April 2019, he used to detective Q and read his private conversations, using them to his advantage.

For example, in the month when he broke into his cellphone, he took advantage of the details he had discovered: Q told the officer with whom he served that he had been carrying a flashlight of a military vehicle in which he was driving. That same week, the senior opposition turned to Q and told him he knew he was the one who hit the vehicle. This is even though the officer did not share A with things, and he had no way of knowing them without the approach he created.

In another case, A took advantage of the fact that he had access to the message applet to bypass Q and prevent him from complaining about his conduct. S. at one point contacted the battalion's deputy commander in which he served regarding A.'s conduct.

The latter recognized the correspondence, which he apparently saw as a threat, and quickly contacted the battalion commander himself as he told him about the conversation between the battalion commander and Q. Also, for a long time A. watched the correspondence between Q and his unit members and private conversations of Q. With his nephew.

The culmination of the story was in January 2019, so Q entered the common room and discovered A. lying in a bed embraced with an officer. Q left the room without the two seeing him, and later corresponded with another officer - telling her about what was going on. A day later, based on what A had seen in Q's app, he contacted him and threatened that he would approach the police if Q continued to tell what was going on between him and the officer.

Finally, A was caught and found to have been following his command for a long time, making a serious intrusion into his privacy. He is charged with misconduct for his rank and position in the IDF, and as of October 2019, he has been suspended from office.

An IDF spokesman said: "On January 16, 2020, the military prosecution indicted the defendant, a permanent defendant, who attributed to him computer infractions to commit another offense, violation of privacy and misconduct.

According to the indictment, the defendant broke into the phone of another counter who was under his command and lived with him in their unit room. Then, during the months of November 2018 to April 2019, the defendant read messages and correspondence from the hacked device through his phone, and in some cases used information he saw in the correspondence during his conversations with various entities in the unit, including the hacked device. "