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The New York Times<\/em> reports<\/a> that Israel\u2019s military intelligence has been using an experimental facial recognition program in Gaza that\u2019s misidentified Palestinian civilians as having ties to Hamas. Google Photos<\/a> allegedly plays a part in the chilling program\u2019s implementation, although it appears not to be through any direct collaboration with the company.<\/p>\n The surveillance program reportedly started as a way to search for Israeli hostages in Gaza. However, as often happens with new wartime technology, the initiative was quickly expanded to \u201croot out anyone with ties to Hamas or other militant groups,\u201d according to The NYT<\/em>. The technology is flawed, but Israeli soldiers reportedly haven\u2019t treated it as such when detaining civilians flagged by the system.<\/p>\n According to intelligence officers who spoke to The NYT<\/em>, the program uses tech from the private Israeli company Corsight. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, it promises its surveillance systems can accurately recognize people with less than half of their faces exposed. It can supposedly be effective even with \u201cextreme angles, (even from drones) darkness, and poor quality.\u201d<\/p>\n But an officer in Israel\u2019s Unit 8200 learned that, in reality, it often struggled with grainy, obscured or injured faces. According to the official, Corsight\u2019s tech included false positives and cases where an accurately identified Palestinian was incorrectly flagged as having Hamas ties.<\/p>\n Three Israeli officers told The NYT<\/em> that its military used Google Photos to supplement Corsight\u2019s tech. Intelligence officials allegedly uploaded data containing known persons of interest to Google\u2019s service, allowing them to use the app\u2019s photo search feature to flag them among its surveillance materials. One officer said Google\u2019s ability to match partially obscured faces was superior to Corsight\u2019s, but they continued using the latter because it was \u201ccustomizable.\u201d<\/p>\n Engadget emailed Google for a statement, but we haven\u2019t heard back from them at the time of publication. We\u2019ll update this story if we get a response.<\/p>\n One man erroneously detained through the surveillance program was poet Mosab Abu Toha, who told The NYT<\/em> he was pulled aside at a military checkpoint in northern Gaza as his family tried to flee to Egypt. He was then allegedly handcuffed and blindfolded, and then beaten and interrogated for two days before finally being returned. He said soldiers told him before his release that his questioning (and then some) had been a \u201cmistake.\u201d<\/p>\n The Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems From Gaza<\/em> scribe said he has no connection to Hamas and wasn\u2019t aware of an Israeli facial recognition program in Gaza. However, during his detention, he said he overheard someone saying the Israeli army had used a \u201cnew technology\u201d on the group with whom he was incarcerated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n