WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The occupying regime Israel is increasingly using AI-powered facial recognition technology in the occupied West Bank to track Palestinians and restrict their movement through checkpoints without their knowledge or consent, according to an Amnesty report.
Following research conducted across the West Bank cities of Al-Khalil and East Al-Quds, Amnesty found the military utilizing a camera system called Red Wolf since 2022, deploying it at checkpoints as part of a program that “relies on databases consisting exclusively of Palestinian individuals’ data.”
The report, titled Automated Apartheid, “shows how this surveillance is part of a deliberate attempt by Israeli authorities to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians,” the rights organization says.
The experimental Red Wolf surveillance system is used to track Palestinians and automate restrictions on their movements, the report explains. When a Palestinian goes through a checkpoint at which Red Wolf is installed, their face is scanned without their knowledge or consent and compared with biometric entries in databases which exclusively contain information about Palestinians.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said: “The Israeli authorities are using sophisticated surveillance tools to supercharge segregation and automate apartheid against Palestinians. In the H2 area of Al-Khalil, we documented how a new facial recognition system called Red Wolf is reinforcing draconian restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement, using illegitimately acquired biometric data to monitor and control Palestinians’ movements around the city.”
In a statement to the New York Times, the Zionist regime’s army said it carries out “necessary security and intelligence operations.”
However, Amnesty said it was “not convinced” of the reasons “which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians, including restricting their freedom of movement, justify the severe restrictions that the Israeli authorities have imposed.”
The report calls on the international community to regulate companies so that they are prohibited from providing surveillance technologies to the occupying regime and to impose a global ban on weapon sales and military equipment to the regime. “Israeli authorities are using facial recognition technology to entrench apartheid,” the report stresses.