Israel Security Service (Shin Bet) claimed on Thursday that they had identified 500 people who tested positive for being carriers of Covid-19 Coronavirus. The 500 patients were identified by the organization’s controversial mass-surveillance-program. According to the statement printed in numerous Israeli media outlets, the tracking program allowed the Shin Bet to identify people who came in contact with a confirmed Covid-19 patient.

The organization said: “Without quickly finding them and putting them into quarantine, they surely would have unknowingly infected many more people.”

Over the past two weeks, the internal security agency has been working with the Health Ministry to retrace the movements of coronavirus patients by using the masses of phone and credit card data at its disposal, which it generally is not permitted to utilize for reasons besides counterterrorism.

“For almost the past two weeks, around the clock, a team of Shin Bet employees has been working to provide the Health Ministry with as accurate a picture as possible on those Israeli residents who were in contact with diagnosed coronavirus patients and who would, by the definitions of the Health Ministry, have been infected with the disease and gone on to infect others — without knowing it,” the Shin Bet said.

The security service did not say how many people in total it had identified as having been in contact with confirmed coronavirus carriers.

The new measures use cyber tracking technology that was previously only permitted for tracking terror suspects.

Rights groups and political activists had panned the Likud-led government for instituting the policy allowing the Shin Bet to use this technology on a mass scale and on Israeli citizens.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)