"The Reality of Privacy and Digital Data Protection in Palestine", 24 August 2021

This study seeks to identify the reality of privacy and protection of digital personal data in Palestine1 in terms of the collection, processing and use of Palestinian users’ data. It addresses some of the human rights violations faced by Palestinian users as well as the key parties that violate their data privacy.

...The [report] showed that the concept of privacy and personal data is relatively new and not fully known, especially in Jerusalem, and that efforts are needed to publicize it and its importance. This is considered a main reason for the low percentage of those who read and are familiar with the privacy policies of sites, applications and services before using them.

...Due to the specificity of the political, security and human rights situation related to the Palestinian cause and its dimensions, the parties that seek to violate and breach the privacy of Palestinians and their private data vary...These parties can be classified as follows: the Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority, private sector companies and external parties, including global social media platforms such as Facebook. The reasoning for these violations varied, the most prominent including security goals, political goals, commercial and advertising goals.

...In-depth interviews revealed that several private or public parties may be working on collecting Palestinians’ personal data, and although they do not have sufficient technical and logistical ability to process this data and analyze it using artificial intelligence algorithms and techniques, yet, in the coming years, the process may become more accessible by all parties who collect personal data...[Therefore] it is necessary to develop a regulating law that manages and protects the privacy of Palestinian users and serves as the main step towards building permitted and prohibited actions and within the framework of data collection, processing and use.