NEW YORK (news agencies) — When a protester was caught on video in January at a New York rally against Israel, only her eyes were visible between a mask and headscarf. But days later, photos of her entire face, along with her name and employer, were circulated online.
“Months of them hiding their faces went down the drain!” a fledgling technology company boasted in a social media post, claiming its facial-recognition tool had identified the woman despite the coverings.
She was anything but a lone target. The same software was also used to review images taken during months of pro-Palestinian marches at U.S. colleges. A right-wing Jewish group said some people identified with the tool were on a list of names it submitted to President Donald Trump’s administration, urging that they be deported in accordance with his call for the expulsion of foreign students who participated in “pro-jihadist” protests.
Other pro-Israel groups have enlisted help from supporters on campuses, urging them to report foreign students who participated in protests against the war in Gaza to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
The push to identify masked protesters using facial recognition and turn them in is blurring the line between public law enforcement and private groups. And the efforts have stirred anxiety among foreign students worried that activism could jeopardize their legal status.
“It’s a very concerning practice. We don’t know who these individuals are or what they’re doing with this information,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “Essentially the administration is outsourcing surveillance.”
It’s unclear whether names from outside groups have reached top government officials. But concern about the pursuit of activists has risen since the March 8 arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student of Palestinian descent who helped lead demonstrations against Israel’s conduct of the war.
Immigration officers also detained a Tufts University student from Turkey outside Boston this week, and Trump and other officials have said that more arrests of international students are coming.
“Now they’re using tools of the state to actually go after people,” said a Columbia graduate student from South Asia who has been active in protests and spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about losing her visa. “We suddenly feel like we’re being forced to think about our survival.”
Ayoub said he is concerned, in part, that groups bent on exposing pro-Palestinian activists will make mistakes and single out students who did nothing wrong.
Some groups pushing for deportations say their focus is on students whose actions go beyond marching in protests, to those taking over campus buildings and inciting violence against Jewish students.
“If you’re here, right, on a student visa causing civil unrest … assaulting people on the streets, chanting for people’s death, why the heck did you come to this country?” said Eliyahu Hawila, a software engineer who built the tool designed to identify masked protesters and outed the woman at the January rally.
He has forwarded protesters’ names to groups pressing for them to be deported, disciplined, fired or otherwise punished.
“If we want to argue that this is freedom of speech and they can say it, fine, they can say it,” Hawila said. “But that doesn’t mean that you will escape the consequences of society after you say it.”
Pro-Israel groups that circulated the protester’s photo claim that she was soon fired by her employer. An employee who answered the phone at the company confirmed that the woman had not worked there since early this year. In a brief phone conversation, the protester, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing, declined to comment on the advice of an attorney.
The unearthing and spreading of personal information to harass opponents has become commonplace in the uproar over the war in Gaza. The practice, known as doxing, has been used to expose both activists in the U.S. and Israeli soldiers who recorded video of themselves on the battlefield.
But the use of facial-recognition technology by private groups enters territory previously reserved largely for law enforcement, said attorney Sejal Zota, who represents a group of California activists in a lawsuit against facial recognition company ClearviewAI.
“We’re focused on government use of facial recognition because that’s who we think of as traditionally tracking and monitoring dissent,” Zota said. But “there are now all of these groups who are sort of complicit in that effort.”
The calls to report protesters to immigration authorities have raised the stakes.
“Please tell everyone you know who is at a university to file complaints about foreign students and faculty who support Hamas,” Elizabeth Rand, president of a group called Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism, said in a Jan. 21 post to more than 60,000 followers on Facebook. It included a link to an ICE tip line.
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