Two years and two months ago, Calcalist published an explosive investigation about the police’s use of spyware. The core of the investigation was solid and important: it turned out the police were using spyware without any authorization, misleading judges and defense attorneys — a frightening culture. At the far end of the investigation, however, the paper listed a long line of well-known people whose phones were allegedly hacked without a court order, with their content extracted. From all the examinations conducted to this day, that information was false. It triggered an unnecessary public storm and almost led to the establishment of a state commission of inquiry. As a result of the uproar, the Attorney General ordered a halt to the use of spyware.
Since then, an eternity has passed. Crime rates are horrific; everything has already been said about what’s happening in Arab society — and in the face of all this madness, the police are operating without what may be the most useful weapon at this time: the ability to tap into criminals’ cell phones and extract information.
It’s tempting to blame this paralysis on the government’s incompetence. The combination of the public security minister’s “management and execution skills” and the justice minister’s passion for the “real” issues under his purview usually produces this outcome — namely, zero results. But in this specific case, the explanation is even harder.
The Attorney General’s staff prepared a bill to finally regulate the issue. The Wiretap Law is outdated and unfit. The new bill includes oversight mechanisms, supervision, reporting to the Knesset. For those who, like me, fear Ben Gvir’s takeover of the police, it doesn’t offer much reassurance — but it is a genuine attempt to regulate the matter. The bill is stuck. Ben Gvir insists it apply only to homicide offenses. The AG wants it to cover more broadly: serious crimes carrying ten years or more, including money laundering, extortion, and most importantly — bribery.
The national security minister refuses outright. His reasoning: the tool is too intrusive. Suddenly, human rights interest him greatly — especially the rights of corrupt politicians. Behind him, apparently, stand the Prime Minister and the Justice Minister as well. They too have little interest in legislation that would enable the fight against public corruption with modern tools. The current situation is convenient for them: no corruption investigations against the highest echelons, while the police remain busy with Arab society and with protests. Likely, if Ben Gvir prevails in this debate, the Prime Minister’s mouthpieces will use it to claim: here’s proof that all spyware use before it was banned was illegal — including in the Prime Minister’s own cases.
It’s hard to overstate how deceitful and pathetic the opposition to spyware use in public corruption cases really is. Think of the information that was on Efi Naveh’s phones. It could have fueled several significant investigations — the kind that might have changed the way judges are appointed in Israel. That information could come by only two legal means: first, if Naveh, for some reason, willingly handed over his phones and agreed for their content to be used. Second, through an investigation in which spyware was installed. Any other method is ostensibly illegal, and therefore the damning information found there has never been turned into public investigations.
Since the war began, Ben Gvir doesn’t even pretend to fight crime — certainly not crime in Arab society. His voters aren’t interested. Nobody expected him to manage anything successfully anyway, but still, how cynical can a person be, that in order to shield his friends from bribery investigations, he is willing to let the horrific bloodshed in Arab society continue at this scale?