Digital Rights Weekly Update: 11 - 17 July

Canary Mission: How US uses a ‘hate group’ to target Palestine advocates

Al Jazeera

Peter Hatch, an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said the department had assembled a specialised group — dubbed a “tiger team” — to work on removing pro-Palestine college students from the country. He indicated to the court that some tips about students were communicated verbally, before explaining that the team had also combed through the nearly 5,000 profiles Canary Mission had compiled of Israel’s critics. “You mean someone said, ‘Here is a list that the Canary Mission has put together?'” Judge William Young asked Hatch, according to court transcripts. The official answered with a simple “yes”. Heba Gowayed, a sociology professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), said the government’s reliance on an online blacklist that posts personal information to harm and intimidate activists is “absurd and fascist”. “Canary Mission is a doxxing website that specifically targets people for language that they deem to be pro-Palestinian and therefore, they’ve decided, is anti-Semitic. Its sole purpose is to target and harass people,” Gowayed told Al Jazeera.

Microsoft Investors Prod Company Over Work With Israeli Military

Bloomberg

The Associated Press, the Guardian and the Israeli news organization +972 Magazine have reported that the Israeli military and intelligence customers increased their use of Microsoft products such as the Azure cloud platform and AI models from OpenAI following the outbreak of the war. The military uses AI in part to search for patterns in data gathered through mass surveillance, work that helps identify candidates for future strikes, the AP reported. “In the face of serious allegations of complicity in genocide and other international crimes, Microsoft’s HRDD processes appear ineffective,” the resolution says, referring to human rights due diligence. Delivered to the company earlier this month, the proposal has about 60 cosigners, who collectively hold about $80 million in Microsoft shares, according to Ekō, an advocacy group that helped convene investors, and Investor Advocates for Social Justice. The resolution was brought by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an organization of Catholic women.

Internet outages and a 2G mobile network keep Gazans offline and silenced

The Journal

For Gaza to access speeds more suitable to the modern mobile internet, Israeli authorities must approve the use of next-generation spectrum frequencies. Since October 2023, connectivity for Gazans has deteriorated still further, with intentional internet shutdowns a common occurrence. These shutdowns have been condemned by the UN as a violation of international human rights law. Some individuals manage to maintain a connection through the use of eSIMs, a software-based version of a SIM card that may reach a faint signal from a network beyond the blackout. But these are typically accessible only to a privileged few.  The Palestinian Authority’s telecommunications ministry claims that one of the latest three-day outages was caused by the deliberate targeting of a fibre optic cable by Israeli forces. The UN also said this was likely the result of military activity, though Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement. Some connectivity has since been restored. Much of Gaza’s communications infrastructure has been destroyed over the past year and a half, inhibiting communications with the rest of the world and disrupting emergency humanitarian operations. Palestinians are cut off from friends, family and vital updates. 

Gaza Infocide: Disinformation and New Narratives Wars

IEMED

Israel employed strategic artificial intelligence systems in its military operations, notably targeting and tracking programmes such as Lavender and Gospel. These tools were instrumental in identifying tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza as potential targets for elimination. AI technologies were also used to compile lists of potential airstrike targets. Beyond military applications, Israel deployed new AI-driven models, used for the first time in information warfare, to control and shape the war’s narrative. Unit 8200 of the Israeli military, along with reservists employed at major tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Meta, established “the Studio.” This innovation hub was designed to connect experts with AI-driven projects related to information warfare and narrative control (Frenkel, 2025). Within this hub, they developed an Arabic-language artificial intelligence model to power a chatbot capable of scanning and analyzing text messages, social media posts and other Arabic-language data. This large language model was created during the war’s first few months and enabled the development of a chatbot capable of conducting queries in Arabic. Designed to identify optimal strategies for executing influence and intervention campaigns aimed at controlling and redirecting the narrative.