Facial Recognition Software Identifies Hamas Music Festival Attacker as Possible Gaza Policeman: Report

Hamas fighters who attacked an Israeli music festival over the weekend included one man who may be a police officer in a Gaza municipality, according to a report.

After Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Saturday morning, videos started to circulate on social media showing fighters terrorizing Israeli citizens and abducting, kidnapping, and killing men, women, and children.

One of the hardest hit areas was the Supernova music festival in southern Israel, where 260 bodies of Israelis were discovered after the attack.

Images and videos from the festival started to circulate on Telegram and other social media services almost immediately, showing rapes, kidnappings, and the horrific aftermath of the attack.

In the past few days, media taken prior to the incident has been released, including videos of Shani Luek, a German tattoo artist identified as one of the bodies being displayed and desecrated in Gaza.

In a report on the music festival, the BBC used facial recognition technology to identify the face of a gunman seen in a video and discovered that the technology matched his likeness with a man pictured on the website for the Nuseirat municipality in Gaza.

The image on the municipality's website showed a man wearing what appeared to be a police officer's uniform.

The BBC said they used Amazon Rekognition software to make the identification, and that the software linked the two images with "94-97%" similarity.

This would not be the first time facial recognition software has been used to identify combatants. Clearview AI is open about the use of its software during the conflict in Ukraine, saying that its CEO wrote a letter to the Ukrainian government at the beginning of the invasion offering assistance and that its technology has been used to help identify soldiers since.