A government-backed bill granting the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet continued authority to secretly access civilian security camera systems cleared its final Knesset reading Wednesday night, passing unanimously by a 10-0 vote.
The legislation extends for another year an emergency measure first approved after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, allowing security agencies to covertly penetrate camera systems under certain conditions.
When the measure was initially enacted, it limited such intrusions to situations in which visual data posed a direct threat to national security or to IDF operations tied to the war in Gaza, and only during a period defined as “significant military operations.” The new extension removes that linkage, enabling the authority to continue even without an active wartime designation.
The explanatory notes accompanying the bill argue that ongoing dangers justify the expansion, stating that “the severity of the latest cyber threats and the risks posed by them…the need for additional tools to properly deal with enemy elements’ access to visual information produced by stationary cameras remains.” The rationale has gained renewed attention following the recent hacking of former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s Telegram account by Iranian actors.
Despite this justification, the law has triggered strong opposition from legal scholars and civil rights organizations, particularly given the ceasefire in Gaza. Critics argue that the measure undermines basic legal safeguards and intrudes deeply into personal privacy.
“This is very troubling legislation that, for the first time, grants the IDF authority to operate within civilian property and civilian space,” said Adv. Haim Ravia, a leading authority on privacy and cyber law, in comments to The Times of Israel.
“It is hard to understand why…this cannot be done by means of a judicial warrant. It is also difficult to understand how the Knesset extended such a draconian provision without taking into account that the explanatory notes justify extending it indefinitely,” he added, describing the law as a “severe infringement” of privacy rights.
Ravia further warned that the law’s scope is extraordinarily broad. “Under the law, the cameras can observe any area, including private ones. It would have been possible to give citizens retroactive notice of the intrusion into their computers, but even that was not done. Together with a number of experts, we submitted reservations to the law, but they were not addressed.”
Adv. Amit Ashkenazi, a cyber law and policy specialist and former legal adviser to the Israel National Cyber Directorate, also criticized the legislation in a phone interview with The Times of Israel, calling it flawed on multiple levels.
He noted that Israeli law, like that of other Western democracies, generally prohibits unauthorized computer access and requires judicial approval. Existing procedures are “meant to protect you and the computer,” he said, but the current law bypasses those safeguards.
Ashkenazi outlined three core problems: the transfer of authority over civilian systems to the military, the fact that it “doesn’t require the authorities to go to a judge” to confirm justification and prevent “abuse of power,” and that affected individuals “do not receive any notification from the state at any point.”
“Today the army has no authority vis-à-vis civilians, and this law breaks that principle,” he said. “This isn’t dependent on a judicial warrant.”
To illustrate the concern, Ashkenazi offered a concrete scenario. “Imagine this happening to you. You put a camera outside your yard to protect yourself from thieves and you didn’t do the job properly. As a result, Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran hacks into the camera and uses it to see what’s happening along the border. Now this law allows the army—or the Shin Bet to hack into your camera themselves and disconnect it from the network. When the risk ends, they’re supposed to restore things to how they were, but at no point does it say they must notify you.”
Even if the security need is accepted, Ashkenazi said the way the law is implemented reflects a deeper problem. Its approach is “paternalistic,” he argued. “I’m talking about the method, because in a democratic state what matters, among other things, is the method by which we ensure that the authority we agree to grant to address a problem we’ve agreed exists is exercised in a way that also protects rights.”
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel echoed those concerns, stating that while “at the outset of the war there was a proper purpose or a security justification that led to authorizing the IDF and the Shin Bet to penetrate computer material without the need for a judicial warrant,” that justification no longer holds.
Following the war, the group said, it was “no longer possible to justify extending the temporary provision.”
“The provision allows intrusion into private cameras that document intimate and sensitive situations and into personal information stored on the computers of citizens and residents, on the basis of broad and vague grounds, and raises serious concern about misuse of the information,” a spokesperson said.
“Extending the provision, while severing the connection between these intrusive powers and the state of hostilities, disproportionately violates human rights, first and foremost the right to privacy.”
{Matzav.com}
