Feb 3, 20192 min read

Israel unveils a global system for tracking online anti-Semitism.

Updated: Sep 28, 2022

Israel has unveiled what it says was new global technology for detecting anti-Semitic content on the internet. The software, called the Anti-Semitism Cyber Monitoring System, or ACMS, is “the most advanced development in the world for monitoring anti-Semitism in real time,” Naftali Bennet, a top Israeli minister, said in a statement. According to the Israeli minister, the ACMS tracks anti-Semitic posts globaly on social media and can detect how widely they’ve been shared, who is sharing them, and which cities and countries produce the most anti-Semitic content. This however raises a number of issues. First is it even legal for Israel to track the citizens of other countries, without their knowledge or consent, and then take their information/data/posts and do with it whatever it pleases. For instance, where is it mentioned in FB's “terms and conditions” how Israel is allowed to spy and collect data on FB users? But the far larger issue is the fact that Israel considers criticism of Israel as “antisemitism”. This means that people who will criticize Israel might find themselves being tracked by Israel, with their names profiles and posts saved and archived to be used by Israel as it see fits.

Israeli minister Naftali Bennet unviels the Anti-Semitism Cyber Monitoring System.

Israel says that the system uses the controversial and problematic "International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism" when scanning for content, and will initially monitor posts in English, Arabic, French and German on Facebook and Twitter before expanding to other platforms and languages. The problem with this is that this "International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism" compounds between anti semitic criticism of Jews, and criticism of Israel. During a month-long trial of the ACMS, Israel said it detected a total of 409,000 anti-Semitic posts by 30,000 users with some 10,000 anti-Semitic posts and tweets on a daily basis. You can expect that number to increase exponentially as Israel has said it will expand the "search for antisemitism" to include almost the whole internet. In addition to the monitoring system itself, Israel will operate a “war room” to analyze the "anti-Semitic" posts and will share the content with internet companies so they can be removed. Israel also stated that it will work with the authorities in other countries to take "concrete steps" against those who, according to Israel, are "spreading hate" online.