NEW YORK — Someone was caught on tape at an anti-Israel rally in New York in January. Her eyes were the only thing that could be seen because she was wearing a mask and a headscarf. But a few days later, pictures of her whole face were posted online with her name and workplace.
In a social media post, a new technology company bragged that “months of them hiding their faces went down the drain!” and that its facial-recognition tool had identified the woman even though her face was covered.
There was no one else after her. Also, the same software was used to look at pictures taken during months of pro-Palestinian student marches in the United States. A Jewish group on the right said that some of the people who used the tool were on a list of names it sent to President Trump’s administration, asking that they be removed in line with his call for foreign students who took part in “pro-jihadist” protests to be sent home.
Other pro-Israel groups have asked college supporters to help them by telling the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency about foreign students who took part in protests against the war in Gaza.
Face recognition is being used to try to find hooded protesters and turn them in. This is making it harder to tell the difference between public law enforcement and private groups. And the efforts have made international students nervous because they think that being politically active could hurt their legal standing.
“This is a very worrying habit.” “We have no idea who these people are or what they plan to do with this information,” said Abed Ayoub, who is the national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “Basically, the government is hiring outsiders to do surveillance.”
It’s not clear if names from outside groups have reached the top of the government. But people are more worried about being chased by activists since Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University who helped lead protests against Israel’s handling of the war, was arrested on March 8.
This week, immigration officers also detained a student from Turkey at Tufts University outside of Boston. Trump and other officials have said that more arrests of foreign students are on the way.
An active protester from South Asia who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she didn’t want to risk losing her visa said, “Now they’re using tools of the state to actually go after people.” “All of a sudden, we feel like we have to think about how to stay alive.”
Not being sure what will happen
One thing that worries Ayoub is that groups that want to find pro-Palestinian supporters might go wrong and pick out students who didn’t do anything wrong.
Some groups that want to deport immigrants say they are focusing on students who do more than just march in protests, like those who take over school buildings and call for violence against Jewish students.
“If you’re here on a student visa causing chaos, assaulting people in the streets, and calling for people to die, why the hell did you come to this country?” asked Eliyahu Hawila, a software engineer who made the tool to find protesters wearing masks and who revealed the woman at the January rally.
He sent the names of protesters to groups that want them to be sent home, scolded, fired, or punished in some other way.
“If we want to say that this is free speech and they can say it, then they can,” Hawila said. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t have to deal with the consequences of what you say.”
Pro-Israel groups that shared the protester’s picture say that her boss fired her soon after. The person who answered the phone at the business said that the woman had not worked there since the beginning of the year. During a short phone call, the protester, who has not been charged with any crime, refused to say anything because his lawyer told him not to.
Calls for kids to be reported to the authorities
In the chaos over the war in Gaza, it has become normal to find and share personal information about opponents in order to bother them. It is called “doxing,” and it has been used to reveal both U.S. activists and Israeli soldiers who filmed themselves on the battlefield.
But private groups using facial recognition technology goes into areas that were mostly used by law enforcement before, according to attorney Sejal Zota, who is representing a group of activists in California in a case against ClearviewAI, a facial recognition company.
