The Bigel

The Big Facial Recognition Experiment in the War in Gaza.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carino. It's been six months of war in Gaza after the October 7th Hamas attacks.

The destruction and death have been profound and nearly every aspect of life in the roughly

140 square mile territory has been upended.

Recently the New York Times reported the Israeli military is using facial

recognition artificial intelligence to monitor Palestinians in Gaza. The government hasn't publicly

acknowledged it, but reporter Shira Frankel spoke to Israeli intelligence officers,

military officials, and soldiers who confirmed the technology

was being used for mass surveillance.

She told us the story of a Palestinian poet, Mossab Abu Toha, who got caught up in that net.

Mossab's experience seemed, unfortunately, quite standard

for how Palestinians are suddenly finding themselves under the lens really of this

facial recognition program. He was trying to flee with his family. His home is

originally in the northernmost part of the Gaza Strip and he was trying to leave Gaza through the southernmost part,

Raffa, where if you have permission, you can escape to Egypt.

He was forced to pass through,

it was essentially a checkpoint created by Israel. They had closed off other

road systems and said this particular road is safe and they had positioned

their military vehicles in such a way that you had to walk almost single file and

when they did that they asked them to turn and

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