Rights groups petitioned Israel's top court on Monday to repeal new COVID-19 measures that authorize the country's domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, to use counter-terrorism phone tracking technology to contain the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant.
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Announcing the emergency measures on Saturday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the phone tracking would be used to locate carriers of the new and potentially more contagious variant in order to curb its transmission to others.
Israeli rights groups say the emergency measures violate previous Supreme Court rulings over such surveillance, used on-and-off by the Shin Bet since March 2020.
"Operation of the Secret Service to trace citizens violates the basic trust between the citizen and the government," the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of four groups who petitioned the court, said in a statement.
The Supreme Court gave the government until Tuesday to respond to the petition, ACRI said.
Briefing a parliamentary committee, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the head of public health at the Health Ministry, said on Sunday that the use of phone tracking would be "surgical" in nature, only to be utilized on confirmed or suspected carriers of the variant.
The surveillance technology matches virus carriers' locations against other mobile phones nearby to determine with whom they have come into contact. The Supreme Court this year limited the scope of its use after civil rights groups mounted challenges over privacy concerns.
Israel, which has banned almost all foreigners from entering the country over Omicron fears, has confirmed two cases of the new variant. Ten others are suspected of having contracted it.
Meanwhile, a public opinion poll conducted by the Public Security Ministry found that Israelis in the 45-65 age group were more willing than those in younger age groups to share their whereabouts and that ultra-Orthodox Israelis were less willing than Arabs, secular traditional Israelis.
The survey revealed that more than half of individuals required to self-isolate want to be tracked and are concerned about privacy violations. The poll consisted of 501 respondents currently in self-isolation.
According to the survey, 43% of those questioned those 24 years old and younger agreed to share their whereabouts; 46% of 25-34-year-olds agreed; 51% of 35-54-year-olds agreed; 60% of 55-64-year-olds agreed; 66% of those aged 65 and above agreed. The average percentage of consent was 52%.
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