This is an O-TM podcast Extra. I'm Bob Garfield, and that's the sound in Jerusalem last week of auto-descent.

How do citizens voice protest when a pandemic makes it too dangerous and illegal to peaceably assemble?

Last Thursday, this was a convoy of cars, sealed and self-contained, heading to the Knesset,

Israel's legislature.

Hundreds of protesters honked horns and waved black flags in protest of Benjamin Netanyahu

and his government's response to coronavirus.

New measures, they said, are undemocratic,

including surveillance technology

that employs the country's significant security apparatus in new ways.

Plenty of social distancing in this gathering,

but police tried to shut it down anyway.

Steve Hendricks is Jerusalem

bureau chief for the Washington Post, and he joins me now. Steve, welcome to the show.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. Let's begin with the surveillance element. Take me back to last

Wednesday when 400-some Israelis got a text message on their phones.

What did it say?

Basically, that you may already be infected with the coronavirus.

This was a brand new program that Benjamin Netanyahu had asked for and gotten permission to implement

in which the state security service was allowed to use its digital surveillance systems

in the service of viral tracking.

Basically, they were able to go through the phones, presumably, of every Israeli, see where

they had been in the previous few weeks, overlay that onto where they knew

...