Shin Bet chief said refusing to track domestic bot-powered election influence campaigns

Shin Bet chief David Zini has refused to take responsibility for countering illicit online Israeli influence campaigns ahead of the October 27 election, leaving the task to police, who lack the necessary technology and have appealed to private companies for help, Haaretz reported Thursday.

According to the newspaper, officials in the Justice Ministry and the Israel Police have in recent weeks requested the Shin Bet take on the task of tracking Israeli influence campaigns that use fake social media accounts.

Shin Bet representatives reportedly responded that Zini’s view was that handling such “domestic actors” was outside the internal security agency’s purview, as opposed to influence campaigns run by external actors like Iran or Russia.

Haaretz quoted an unnamed senior law enforcement official as accusing Zini and his aides of having “completely shirked responsibility, even though it’s a classic Shin Bet job.”

The newspaper also noted that one of the Shin Bet’s responsibilities under law is to “thwart and prevent illicit activity that seeks to harm state security, the democratic order or its institutions.”

The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for comment, Haaretz said.

Researchers cited by Channel 12 in January said about half of the politically active accounts on Israeli social media belonged to bots rather than real people, on par with levels seen in other countries.

The researchers said at the time that many of the accounts boosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies, while his opponents did not make such use of bots.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported Friday that two private Israeli companies had used open-source AI models to conduct or simulate influence campaigns on social media. The Times said of one of the companies that some of its bots posted in support of Netanyahu while others posted against him.