JERUSALEM (AP) — Majd Ramlawi was serving coffee in Jerusalem’s Old City when a chilling text message appeared on his cell phone.
“You have been found involved in the violence at Al-Aqsa his mosque,” written in Arabic.
Ramlawi, who was 19 at the time, said civil rights lawyers received a text last year during one of the Holy Land’s most tumultuous recent times. He was one of hundreds of people to estimate.
Many people, including Ramlawi, say they live or work in the neighbourhood and have nothing to do with the riots.
Many, including Ramlawi, say they only lived or worked in the neighbourhood, and had nothing to do with the unrest. What he didn’t know was that the feared internal security agency, the Shin Bet, was using mass surveillance technology mobilised for coronavirus contact tracing, against Israeli residents and citizens for purposes entirely unrelated to COVID-19.
Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India to Perth, Australia, this technology and data are being used by authorities to discourage travel by activists and ordinary people, and to access marginalized communities and public health information. The Associated Press discovered that he was harassing. to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.
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