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Automating occupation: International humanitarian and human rights law implications of the deployment of facial recognition technologies in the occupied Palestinian territory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2021

Rohan Talbot
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Abstract

In 2019, media investigations revealed that Israel had added facial recognition technologies (FRTs) to the panoply of security and surveillance technologies deployed in its administration and control of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Despite growing academic and judicial scrutiny of the legal implications of these technologies for privacy and freedom of assembly in domestic contexts, scant attention has been paid to their uses by militaries in contexts where international humanitarian law (IHL) applies. This article seeks to establish the international legal framework governing an Occupying Power's deployment of FRTs, particularly in surveillance, and apply it to Israel's uses in the oPt. It is demonstrated that IHL provides flexible, but incomplete, provisions for balancing an Occupying Power's right to employ surveillance technologies within its measures of control and security against the imprecisely defined humanitarian interests of the population under occupation. The relevant legal framework is completed through the concurrent application of an Occupying Power's international human rights law (IHRL) obligations. What is known of Israel's use of FRTs in surveillance appears prima facie not to satisfy the cumulative IHRL criteria for limitations on the right to privacy – legality, legitimate aims, necessity and proportionality – even where these are broadened by reference to IHL. Consideration is also paid to corollary human rights impacts of these technologies, and the potential that they may entrench an Occupying Power's control while simultaneously rendering this control more invisible, remote and less reliant on the physical presence of troops.

Keywords

international humanitarian lawsurveillance technologiesfacial recognition technologieslaw of occupationinternational human rights lawright to privacy
Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 102 , Issue 914: Emerging Voices , August 2020 , pp. 823 - 849
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the ICRC.

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57 See, for example, UNSC Res. 73/97, 18 December 2018.

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59 A. Roberts, above note 55, p. 51.

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61 Hague Regulations, above note 50, Art. 43.

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81 Ibid.

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102 Ibid., p. 56.

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119 Hague Regulations, above note 50, Art. 43; GC IV, above note 65, Art. 64.

120 HRW, above note 47, p. 2.

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122 OHCHR, above note 113, para. 29.

123 HRC, General Comment 27: Article 12 (Freedom of Movement), UN Doc. CCPR/C/21/Rev1/Add9, 1 November 1999, para. 11. This reflects similar limitations clauses of, for example, Art. 19 (freedom of expression) and Art. 21 (peaceful assembly).

124 OHCHR, above note 113, para. 24.

125 F. La Rue, above note 117, para. 60.

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127 The Guardian, above note 121.

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134 OHCHR, above note 113, para. 25.

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136 ICJ, above note 58, paras. 136–7.

137 HRC, above note 110, paras. 6–8.

138 ECtHR, S. and Marper v. The United Kingdom, App. Nos. 30562/04 and 30566/04, Judgment, 2008, para. 125.

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140 K. A. Gates, above note 4, p. 46.

141 Amnesty International, The Right to Peaceful Assembly: Submission to the UN Human Rights Council, London, March 2019, p. 25.

142 Big Brother Watch, above note 12, p. 15.

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144 B. Emmerson, above note 132, para. 52.

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146 J. Pictet, above note 68, p. 202.

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149 E. Benvenisti, above note 49, p. 75.

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152 D. Kaye, above note 28, para. 21.

153 HRC, above note 151, para. 61.

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156 HRW, above note 47, p. 7.

157 Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, Verso, London, 2007, p. 146.

158 E. Zureik, above note 72, p. 14.

159 ICJ, above note 58, para. 85.

160 Ibid., para. 134.

161 Ibid., para. 121.

162 E. Weizman, above note 157, p. 153.

163 Ibid., p. 150.

164 Ibid., pp. 156–9.

165 Julia Grignon, “The Geneva Conventions and the End of Occupation”, in A. Clapham, P. Gaeta and M. Sassòli (eds), above note 84, p. 1592.

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170 Ibid., para. 121.

171 Ibid., paras. 134 and 122.

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173 Michael Lynk, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, UN Doc. A/HRC/37/75, 15 March 2018, para. 64.

174 ICJ, above note 58, para. 122.

175 N. Lubell, above note 87, p. 329. See also E. Benvenisti, above note 49, p. 349.