The Israeli army is building an AI language model using millions of intercepted conversations between Palestinians, which could accelerate the process of incrimination and arrest, a joint investigation reveals.

“AI amplifies power,” an intelligence source who has closely followed the Israeli army’s development of language models in recent years explained. “It allows operations [utilizing] the data of far more people, enabling population control. This is not just about preventing shooting attacks. I can track human rights activists. I can monitor Palestinian construction in Area C [of the West Bank]. I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing. When you hold so much data, you can direct it toward any purpose you choose.”

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One source described a language model currently in use that scans data and identifies Palestinians using words that indicate “troublemaking.” The source added that the army has used language models to predict who might throw stones at soldiers during operations to “demonstrate presence” — when soldiers raid a town or village in the West Bank and go door to door, storming into every house on a particular street to conduct arrests and intimidate residents. 

Intelligence sources stated that the use of these language models alongside large-scale surveillance in the occupied territories has deepened Israel’s control over the Palestinian population and significantly increased the frequency of arrests. Commanders can access raw intelligence translated into Hebrew — without needing to rely on Unit 8200’s language centers to provide the material, or knowing Arabic themselves — and select “suspects” for arrest from an ever-growing list in every Palestinian locality. “Sometimes it’s just a division commander who wants 100 arrests per month in his area,” one source said.

Read more at 972mag.com

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