Digital Rights Weekly Update: 28 February - 6 March

From Digital Justice to Connectivity: 7amleh’s Highlights at RightsCon 2025

7amleh

7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media successfully wrapped up its participation at RightsCon 2025 in Taipei, where it engaged in key discussions on digital rights, censorship, and connectivity, with a major focus on rebuilding Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure. At the summit, 7amleh launched #ReconnectGaza, a global campaign demanding the restoration of Gaza’s destroyed network and the protection of communication as a fundamental human right. The hybrid launch event brought together activists, policymakers, and digital rights organizations, urging governments, international bodies, and tech companies to take immediate action.

Revealed: Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like tool using vast collection of Palestinian surveillance data

The Guardian

Israel’s military surveillance agency has used a vast collection of intercepted Palestinian communications to build a powerful artificial intelligence tool similar to ChatGPT that it hopes will transform its spying capabilities, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal. The joint investigation with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call has found Unit 8200 trained the AI model to understand spoken Arabic using large volumes of telephone conversations and text messages, obtained through its extensive surveillance of the occupied territories.

Gaza censored: How Palestinians are silenced online

TRT

Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, LinkedIn… In recent months, major social media platforms have been accused of systematically censoring content about Gaza while failing to moderate genocidal posts shared by Zionist accounts. 7amleh, a non-profit defending Palestinian digital rights, tells TRT World how each social network has used content moderation and filters to suppress stories about Palestine.

Israeli TikTok Trend Mocks Suffering of Palestinian Children

Quds News Network

Israeli children have started a disturbing trend on TikTok, where they mock the suffering of Palestinian children in Gaza. In these videos, young Israelis ask their adult relatives to donate to Gazan children, only to provoke anger and insults. The trend has caused shock and highlighted the deep-rooted racism and dehumanization towards the Palestinian people. The trend emerges as Gaza faces a humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s genocide, where children are among the most affected victims.

Essex police force deploys facial recognition technology linked to oppressive surveillance in Gaza

AOAV

Facial recognition technology used by Essex Police has been developed by Corsight AI, a company whose technology has reportedly been used in controversial Israeli surveillance operations in Gaza and the West Bank, AOAV has learnt. The police surveillance technology, rolled out in partnership with Digital Barriers, has been used by Essex Police to identify individuals in real-time during public events and in retrospective investigations.

As Israel uses U.S.-made AI models in war, concerns arise about tech’s role in who lives and who dies

AP

Internal documents, data, and interviews obtained by The Associated Press revealed that major U.S. tech firms, including Microsoft and OpenAI, have provided commercial AI models and cloud computing services to the Israeli military—technology that has quietly empowered bombing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. In early 2024, reports began emerging in Israeli media about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to help select bombing targets in Gaza. However, little information was available, particularly about whether U.S. companies were involved.