Hundreds dead, thousands wounded—Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel shows the limits of even the most advanced and invasive surveillance dragnets as full-scale war erupts.
“Palestinians are subjected to multi-layered surveillance,” says Mona Shtaya, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “Various surveillance technologies are employed against Palestinians, including drones, mobile bugs (spyware) that have previously been uncovered as being injected into electronic devices prior to entry into the Gaza Strip.”
Shtaya adds that CCTV cameras are placed at entrances to the Gaza Strip, and that there is “continuous” online surveillance of people in the occupied areas. “It would not be an exaggeration to say that Palestinians are under surveillance in nearly every facet of their lives,” she says.
Also, consider the amount of time groups like Hamas and PIJ have had to build an underground tunnel network to move people and armament near the border, for sudden large attacks just like two weekends ago.
Hamas has been in power since 2006, with any and all local government resources at their disposal, they can move a lot of stuff without any prying eyes seeing anything.
This sounds like an extreme example of a policy only targeting the innocent. The average Palestinian trying to cross the border into Israel is going to be surveilled far more than a Hamas agent in an underground tunnel, are they not? (In the same way, after Israel called various atheistic humanitarian groups in Palestine “terrorist” groups and forced them to disband, only the actual terrorist groups dared remain…)
It turns out that, in extreme circumstances, if you have nothing to hide, you truly do have everything to fear.
Fat lot of good that did.
Probably made a lot of shareholders in the military industrial complex pretty rich though.
Also, consider the amount of time groups like Hamas and PIJ have had to build an underground tunnel network to move people and armament near the border, for sudden large attacks just like two weekends ago.
Hamas has been in power since 2006, with any and all local government resources at their disposal, they can move a lot of stuff without any prying eyes seeing anything.
This sounds like an extreme example of a policy only targeting the innocent. The average Palestinian trying to cross the border into Israel is going to be surveilled far more than a Hamas agent in an underground tunnel, are they not? (In the same way, after Israel called various atheistic humanitarian groups in Palestine “terrorist” groups and forced them to disband, only the actual terrorist groups dared remain…)
It turns out that, in extreme circumstances, if you have nothing to hide, you truly do have everything to fear.