In 2014, a group of reservists in Israel’s military signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency (Unit 8200) published a letter announcing their unwillingness to continue serving in the unit on missions relating to the West Bank, due to practices of mass surveillance against unwitting civilians not involved in hostilities. While this revelation led to weeks of media coverage in Israel, the anonymous reservists were maligned and threatened with prosecution, and seemingly no change was brought about. These allegations, however, provide a window into the rarely-seen secretive practices of the intelligence collection apparatus, inviting their evaluation under international law.

This Note addresses these alleged intelligence collection practices in light of two significant regimes of international law: international human rights law, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Humanitarian Law (IHL). First determining that, despite Israeli and U.S. contention to the contrary, the ICCPR is applicable extraterritorially, the Note goes on to discuss the substantive privacy right embodied in Article 17 and applies it to the facts alleged by the Unit 8200 refuseniks, as well as the unavailability of an ICCPR Article 4 National Security Exception in this context. Further, the Note discusses the implications of IHL in light of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, focusing on the Hague Regulations, Customary International Law, and the Geneva Convention IV.

Continue reading An International Right to Privacy: Israeli Intelligence Collection in the Occupied Palestinian Territories