Using Israel Security Agency surveillance technology as part of contact tracing in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic met with public reservations from day one.
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Violation of civil rights, trampling on democracy, and invasion of privacy were only some of the arguments that characterized the discourse against the move, the sole purpose of which was to curb the infection rate and thus save lives.
In Israel, it seems, some circles hold the imaginary notion of individual freedom above the tangible notion of life itself.
Over the years, the Shin Bet has become hesitant with respect to operating inside Israel. The agency prefers to focus on countering Palestinian and Arab terrorism, as it has been doing since 1967, and its captains have come to perceive operating in the civilian Israeli sphere as a kind of anomaly.
This is certainly understandable, as the ISA seeks to operate in a familiar sphere, which in this case is counterterrorism. In this aspect, there is something of an unwritten agreement between Shin Bet officials and the liberals in Israeli society, Still, it is doubtful either had understood that the global pandemic is an extraordinary set of circumstances that requires bending principles and redefining the rules of the game for the goal of maintaining national resilience.
Said resilience is measured not only in clear parameters of defense and security but also in broader terms of dealing with phenomena that could threaten the Israeli collective.
Initial reports of reservations by various elements from the Shin Bet being involved in COVID-19 contact tracing show how reluctant the agency is to break the rules regarding the classic parameters of its operations.
Since the initial controversy, however, things have changed. There is a new Shin Bet director at the helm and the Omicron variant is upon us, raising the possibility of again using ISA technology in the service of contact tracing and quarantine enforcement and again, hypocrisy has reared its head.
It is difficult to understand the unnecessary commotion and indignation by those who let the streetlight effect blind them to phenomena that embody a much graver violation of individual rights.
Take tech giants such as Facebook and Google, for example, which obtain personal information on users' preferences, habits, and opinions through their mobile devices. They are able to decipher our individual algorithms far more effectively than any Shin Bet analyst.
Why do we allow these multinational companies to intrude on our privacy without giving a second thought to the fact that they drive us into the abyss of consumer culture and hedonism, but are we so concerned about our privacy when it comes to the state using tools that are supposed to ensure our very existence?
Could it be that these self-professed liberals have their own hedonistic interests to promote, or perhaps this is a group stuck in the 20th century and fails to understand that today, some threats to liberties are now posed not only by the state apparatus that, in the case of the coronavirus pandemic, is on our side?
George Orwell's 1984 is not really here; but it seems that the power of criticism that has grown from liberalism has become, like the coronavirus, into a kind of free radical that works against the body and common sense.
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