On a recent cold afternoon, Rotem Spiegler and Gidon Ben Rivka took photos and videos of protesters at a pro-Palestinian protest at Harvard University.
The two counter-demonstrators told GBH News they were there to document what they see as pro-Hamas activists. Spiegler said she planned to turn over her photographs to Harvard officials.
“Our purpose of taking pictures is to report to the administration how those people violate the safety and the well-being of Jewish students here on campus,” said Spiegler, wearing an Israeli flag wrapped around her shoulders.
Harvard officials could not be reached for comment. But Spiegler and Ben Rivka’s presence is a sign of a growing effort in Massachusetts and across the country to identify and punish pro-Palestinian protesters through surveillance.
Among them, a far-right pro-Zionist organization called Betar USA has claimed credit for the arrest of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil earlier this month. Khalil is accused of supporting Hamas and is facing deportation although he is a legal U.S. resident. His lawyers deny the allegations and his case is pending. He’s currently being held in a Louisiana detention center.
Targeting Pro-Palestinian Activists Using Cameras and AI
Betar spokesman Daniel Levy told GBH News that the organization is receiving daily reports from “Zionists” who believe they are in danger on college campuses, including those in Massachusetts.
“Yes, we are using AI technology and yes, it, we believe, led to deportations,’’ he wrote. “We continue to counter Hamas supporters and work to get them deported.”
He said they are targeting activists in the Boston area, soliciting photographic “evidence” from defenders of Israel.
“The Jew-haters are inside the building at places like Harvard University,” he wrote. “These are schools which are beyond being saved which simply aren’t safe for Jews. Massachusetts is a place where we see schools like MIT and UMass Amherst with regular Pro-Hamas events and seminars.”
Nobody from the U.S. State Department could be reached for comment.
Spiegler and Ben Rivka declined to say whether they were working with Betar. They also declined to provide more information about themselves. Spiegler’s LinkedIn profile indicates she graduated from Harvard Law School. The university did not respond to requests for confirmation.
Ben Rivka is a familiar face at Harvard pro-Palestinian actions, the Harvard Crimson reported , but doesn’t appear to have an affiliation with the school.
They were both clear in confirming that they were taking pictures of activists protesting the war in Gaza to identify and unmask them.
“The best way to not have a picture taken of you supporting terrorists is not to support terrorists,” said Ben Rivka, referring to those who see themselves as defenders of human rights in Gaza.
Ben Rivka said that after attending nearly two years of protests in the area he “recognized a lot of faces” in the crowd standing in front of a Harvard University library, including Jewish students holding placards reading, “Jews Stand with Mahmoud.”
“I take photographs because I think it’s important to document, historically, the wave of antisemitism that has swept over college campuses and the United States, but particularly the college campus that I’m on right now,” he said.
The Anti-Defamation League – a New York based civil rights organization – has branded Betar as an extremist group. Yet the group on March 9 expressed support for the Trump Administration’s arrest of Khalil.
Civil rights specialists told GBH News that Betar’s surveillance complements Trump’s expressed desire to eliminate so-called “illegal protests.” Surveillance of Boston area student activists using facial recognition technology is also being carried out by other entities whose politics are closely aligned with right wing U.S. and Israeli politicians.
A collective of technology specialists called Canary Mission has solicited photographs from supporters on college campuses for the purpose of exposing what it calls “antisemitic activity.” The group runs a website that links to a dossier of individual protesters, identifying them by name, face and other information.
A Chilling Effect
Kade Crockford, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said efforts to identify college students raises serious First Amendment concerns and is intended to discourage political speech. Everyone is vulnerable as a result, Crockford argues.
“Just think, for example, how easy it would be to take a photograph of people at a Black Lives Matter protest or at a protest for abortion rights. And then run that image through a facial recognition program,’’ said Crockford who directs the ACLU’s Technology for Liberty Program. “It would essentially enable the government to download a list of everyone who attended that protest.”
Boston civil rights attorney Carl Williams says these tactics are intended to create a chilling effect on student activism.
“It is clearly a thing to make people believe that they are not safe expressing political opinions in public,” he said. “This is a scare tactic.’’ But he insists that it will not dampen ongoing demonstrations against what he called the carnage in Gaza. “That is never going to happen. There will be resistance.”
Williams said he has been in and out of Massachusetts courts on a regular basis defending the civil rights of students protesting Israeli violence in Gaza and on the West Bank.
Among them is a Palestinian woman who spoke to GBH News on condition of anonymity. The Boston University student said, “strangers taking our photographs” is part of the price of being an activist.
“It happens quite often,’’ she said. “Luckily, at least not that I know, I have not gotten doxed.”
The woman said she has U.S. citizenship but worries it won’t protect her. She’s even more concerned about friends here on visas. She said many are no longer attending protests.
“I’ve seen, honestly, a drastic change in the international students,” she said. “They were already fearful of how protesting would affect their visas.’’
Another student from Brandeis University told GBH News she too is worried about surveillance. She arrived for a GBH interview with a bullhorn she had just used at a vigil on the Brandeis campus, a historically Jewish institution. She spoke on condition of using only her first name, Dahlia.
The woman says she belongs to a group, the Brandeis Jewish Bund, that criticizes Israeli policies and calls for a “free” Palestine.
She said the politically contentious definition of antisemitism, equated with anti-Zionism, has given a green light to the Israeli far right to threaten physical violence. Her group, she says, was recently menaced by Betar after they publicized a campus rally.
“Betar made direct threats that they would come and that they would disrupt. We didn’t know if they would be violent,’’ she said. “This was for a completely peaceful vigil, simply honoring the lives of Palestinians.”
Betar, in an email to GBH News, did not deny that allegation.
“Betar absolutely confirms that those who seek to harm Zionists and promote falsities will be challenged,'' Levy wrote. ”We disrupt the disruptors and some 'bund’ has no place in civilized society, nor at Brandeis. They promote violence by honoring Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and we will challenge these spoiled petulant violent people.“
Levy said Betar would continue working to expose pro-Palestinian activists at Brandeis and other area campuses.
“Shame on Brandeis for allowing this garbage,’’ Levy wrote. “Brandeis as an institution is guilty of permitting this and other Jew hatred on campus.”
Mask Up
Boston University Sociology Professor Daniel Kleinman told GBH News that universities should not remain “silent” in the face of “understandable concerns” by students about reported use of artificial intelligence to pinpoint their movements and uncover their identities.
“Any kind of facial recognition like this strikes me as something a police state would do,’’ he said. “I hope we’re not at the point of being a police state. I would love to see university administrations saying that these students have a right to express themselves.”
Kleinman, who is Jewish, says he’s also concerned that antisemitism has been effectively weaponized by right-wing supporters of Israel. “Being critical of Israel, even against Israel, doesn’t amount to antisemitism,” he said.
Crockford, of the ACLU, advises students to “mask up,” in “this new age of McCarthyism.”
“There’s no clearer sign that wearing a mask at a protest is a good idea than what we’ve seen — the Trump Administration targeting a member of the Columbia University community and non-governmental groups using facial recognition technologies to identify members of communities that are protesting in ways that they find distasteful.”
Dahlia said pro-Palestinian activists at Brandeis are encouraged to not only mask up but to wear head coverings, long sleeves to hide tattoos and to try “as much as humanly possible to get people to stop taking unwarranted photos and videos that can be used to directly threaten and harm students.”
That’s a tricky proposition, said Peter Suber, a lawyer and philosopher specializing in open access and technology at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
“Street photography is legal,” he said. “Maybe with limits. You can’t go right up to somebody’s face, but if somebody’s walking on a public sidewalk, you have a right to take a picture of them.”
But Suber said there is a compelling, simple argument to counter the increasing use of facial identification and photography by Betar and other groups to track down student activists.
“It goes back to the right of peaceful protest, which in my view has to mean peaceful protest without retaliation,” he said.
