Summary: The UK government and several police forces have bought surveillance tools from Israeli-linked firms whose products were developed and deployed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Contracts include Cellebrite’s phone-extraction software and BriefCam’s video-analysis platform; public records show renewals and purchases by multiple UK forces. Human-rights groups, including Amnesty International, warn these technologies contribute to discriminatory policing and rights abuses, and critics urge the UK to halt contracts with firms tied to occupation-driven development.
UK Contracts With Israeli Spyware Firms Spark Rights Concerns Over Use In Palestinian Territories
Police officers are deployed in occupied East Jerusalem, where, records show, technology supplied to the UK has been used extensively [File: Atef Safadi/EPA]
The UK government and several British police forces have purchased surveillance tools developed and refined through extensive use in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, even as UK officials publicly criticise Israel’s conduct in those territories. The purchases include phone-extraction software from Cellebrite and video-analysis systems from BriefCam, both of which have documented links to surveillance and policing practices used against Palestinians.
What Was Bought
Cellebrite: An Israeli company known for forensic extraction tools that can bypass device locks to copy data from smartphones and computers. Public procurement records show multiple UK agencies and police forces have contracts or renewals with Cellebrite, including the City of London Police (renewed in June for more than £95,000) and Leicestershire Police (renewed in March for £328,688). Other public bodies with contracts or reported use include British Transport Police, the Serious Fraud Office, Kent and Essex police, and Northumbria Police.
BriefCam: Founded in Israel and later acquired by Canon and then Milestone Systems, BriefCam provides video-synopsis and analytical tools that compress hours of CCTV into searchable clips. Cumbria Police has used BriefCam since at least 2022, and Police Scotland confirmed in June that it is considering the service. BriefCam’s platform can include facial-recognition and license-plate search features and allows the creation of watchlists.
How These Tools Have Been Used In Occupied Territories
Investigations and rights groups report that similar technologies have been deployed across Palestinian areas. Reports say Israeli forces used Cellebrite’s extraction tools on phones of thousands of detained Palestinians — many of whom rights groups say were subjected to torture — and that BriefCam-style systems have been used in East Jerusalem and at checkpoints where facial recognition helps identify, track and detain people.
Amnesty International’s May 2023 report documented how surveillance technologies play a central role in practices that maintain what the report described as “continued domination and oppression of Palestinians,” warning that facial recognition at checkpoints reinforces discriminatory policing and restricts freedom of movement.
Company Responses And Wider Concerns
Cellebrite emphasises that its tools are “forensic” and “used in legally sanctioned investigations” and says they require physical possession of a device rather than enabling remote access. A Cellebrite spokesperson declined to comment on specific customer contracts. Rights groups, however, have raised alarms that the technology is exported to authoritarian regimes (including Myanmar, Serbia and Belarus) and used to target activists, journalists and opposition figures.
BriefCam’s technology was developed from research at Hebrew University and has documented procurement in East Jerusalem. While Cumbria Police says it does not currently use BriefCam’s facial-recognition features and that it consulted independent ethics and advisory panels before adopting the software, requests for those consultation records went unanswered.
UK Accountability And Public Responses
Al Jazeera reported that inquiries to the UK Home Office, the Home Secretary and the commercial supplier Blue Light Services received no public responses. Critics argue that awarding public contracts to companies whose products were developed and tested through surveillance of Palestinian communities risks enabling technologies linked to human-rights abuses.
Ryvka Barnard, deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told Al Jazeera: “These companies develop and test their products through Israel’s regime of military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians. It is unacceptable for public money to be given to these companies, allowing them to profit from and develop new products used to surveil and harm Palestinians.”
Why This Matters
The debate highlights wider tensions between law-enforcement procurement priorities and human-rights concerns. As surveillance tools become more powerful and more widely exported, civil-society groups warn of growing risks that techniques trialed in conflict and occupation settings will be repurposed to suppress dissent and erode privacy elsewhere.
Key sources and reporting: Amnesty International (May 2023), American Friends Service Committee, Al Jazeera, The New York Times (March 2024) and public procurement records cited for contract values and renewals.
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