Digital Rights Weekly Update: 2 - 8 May

Meta suit against Israel's NSO offered rare insight into world of cyberespionage

Reuters

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Israel's NSO Group was handed a $168 million penalty by a federal jury in California on Tuesday for hijacking the servers of WhatsApp in order to hack users of the Meta(META.O), opens new tab-owned chat platform on behalf of foreign spy agencies. The case caps a six-year battle between the American social media giant and the surveillance firm. It has also cast a unusual amount of light on the inner workings of the spyware industry. Between 2018 and 2020 NSO charged its European government customers a "standard price" of $7 million for use of its platform to hack 15 different devices at a time, according to Sarit Bizinsky Gil, NSO's vice president of global business operations. The executive said the ability to hack a phone outside the customer's country was a separate add-on worth approximately $1 million or $2 million. "It is a highly sophisticated product," Meta lawyer Antonio Perez told the court in his opening statement, opens new tab, "And it carries a hefty price tag."

Digital Occupation: Pixelated Propaganda, Censored Platforms and the Battle for Narrative in Gaza

ALJAZEERA

Israel has fought a digital war for worldwide support and legitimacy from the early hours of its most recent full-scale conflict in the Gaza Strip. In addition to military actions and a tightening siege, Israel began a vigorous media campaign to sway international perceptions in its favour. This campaign has mostly relied on social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X. Support from pro-Israel lobby groups and online activists, as well as organised messaging from official Israeli state entities like the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and the Foreign Ministry, were all part of these efforts, which went beyond impromptu public speech. Israel’s long- standing dominance over traditional media narratives is reflected in this digital propaganda apparatus, which guarantees that the Israeli viewpoint dominates both online and offline. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza have encountered significant obstacles to digital engagement.

Racist Technology in Action: Mass Israeli censorship of pro-Palestine posts on Meta’s social media

Racism & Technology Center

Whistleblowers at Meta have shown how the Israeli government is requesting pro-Palestine posts to be censored, with Meta complying in most cases. Drop Site highlights how Israel is globally the biggest originator of takedown requests “by far” and that it is unique as a country in mostly requesting content that originates outside of its borders to be censored. Meta then uses these Israeli censorship requests to further train their automated content removal tools, meaning that this spike in Israel’s attempts to shut up the world about their genocide will have effects on people posting about this atrocity for years to come.

How GIS Technology Is Mapping The Gaza Conflict — And Preserving Collective Memory

World Crunch

The map shows how since 1967, Israel has built separation walls and checkpoints between Palestinian cities, established illegal settlements on Palestinian land and placed security barriers in the West Bank and on the borders of Gaza in an attempt to control every detail of Palestinians’ daily lives, as if they were living in an open-air prison. The interactive map puts users at the heart of the scene, allowing them to explore a documented visual record of Israel's violations and the theft of Palestinian lands. Many of these events — massacres and wars — lack documentation, and rely solely on human memory. Today, there is an urgent need to record everything, to use modern technology to preserve collective memory, so it does not fall prey to forgetting or distortion. And although most of the tools used in GIS and AI are owned by companies that directly or indirectly support Israel, there are institutions working diligently to preserve the truth, so that the record of Palestinian suffering is not buried in oblivion.

“Israel’s” AI war lab: Gaza becomes testing ground for unchecked military technology

Almayadeen

For over a year, Gaza has been turned into a live testing ground for unregulated AI warfare, where technologies from Google, Microsoft, and Meta are fused with military operations under the guise of innovation. Faulty algorithms and rushed deployment have led to wrongful arrests, and even deaths, of Palestinians, all while “Israel” markets this as cutting-edge warfare.