Opinion | Face of the State Israel today

If you are an Israeli citizen, the phrase "just because you are paranoid does not mean you are not being followed" will soon have special validity.

In fact, even if you are not paranoid, it is not impossible that a hidden eye is going to follow you, document you, and keep the information about places you have been.

All this, thanks to a bill passed this week in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, which is expected to reach the Knesset plenum soon.

The proposal will allow the police, for the first time, to place biometric cameras with face recognition capability and additional capabilities, and make use of information.

The other enforcement and security bodies will also be able to be exposed to the details and use them.

Placing sophisticated means of surveillance in the public sphere by the police and surveillance of citizens in a democracy, is a sensitive issue which requires deep preparation and requires clear legislation with clear boundaries;

There must also be a broad public debate.

None of this has happened so far, and it is doubtful how many citizens of the country at all know that they should start smiling at the camera that is watching them.

To understand how problematic the process of placing the cameras is, and how much the authorities treat the use of sensitive measures against civilians with contempt, one needs to be familiar with the rollout of the bill so far:

The police did not bother to ask anyone, and put the system into action against civilians without legislation or any approval.

Following a petition to the High Court, the judges ordered that the use of the system be regulated, and the Ministry of Justice took the opportunity to include in the bill, "On the Road," the installation and use of facial recognition cameras.

The gap between identifying license plates and documenting a person's movements, and sometimes also identifying their mood, is huge, but the legislation in question allows for gray space and loopholes that may justify misuse: among other things, the law does not properly address the possibility of misidentification. And a preliminary study known for the use of cameras;

The law allows the data to be stored and used retrospectively even for low-level offenses, and gives the police the option to use facial recognition against civilians even in political circumstances, such as demonstrations.

Even the option to use surveillance of civilians in the public space for "research" purposes and to identify patterns of behavior without criminal justification, the law allows.

In some cases, there is also no need for a judge's order.

Aside from the constitutional and legal loopholes, the problem is that authorities in a democracy need to gain the trust to make use of sensitive means in front of the citizen, and in Israel, to put it mildly, trust and the law enforcement system are things that do not go together.

In recent years police officers have planted spyware without a permit;

The administration of the courts has set up a secret and illegal database against citizens who dared to criticize the system;

And cases of abuse of power and private information are not uncommon, to say the least.

These of course were mistakes and glitches.

There is no fear at all that the information regarding the demonstration you were in, the park you walked in, the person you ate lunch with, will leak or be used against you without supervision.

You can be calm, everything's fine, Big Brother's eye is not monitored.

But soon, she will be very open.

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