IDF introduces AI monitoring system to track soldiers’ social media posts after Hamas gathered sensitive intel – report

The Israel Defense Forces will start monitoring the social media activities of all conscripted soldiers via an AI-powered system in order to clamp down on rampant security breaches, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.

The report follows the revelation that Hamas mined Israeli social media for years leading up to the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion, gathering valuable intelligence that helped it carry out the surprise attack.

Army Radio said that the new initiative is aimed at stopping the leak of sensitive information by soldiers, which happened on a large scale despite ostensible rules against it.

A new Artificial Intelligence system called “Morpheus” will be used to monitor the social-media accounts of IDF soldiers, analyzing texts, photos, and videos uploaded by them.

The report quotes the IDF as acknowledging that the project pushes the delicate balance between military necessity and the privacy of Israeli soldiers “to the limit”.

However, the need to improve information security and prevent a repeat of the massive data leak in the years prior to Oct. 7 outweighed these concerns.

The AI system is trained to analyze posts to flag leaks of relevant information about base locations and layouts, classified weaponry etc.

Soldiers will receive an automated message directing them to delete the post, and, when needed, the flagged content will be reviewed by information-security officers who will directly contact the soldiers.

The Army Radio report revealed that a pilot program has been running for four months, monitoring some 45,000 soldiers. It already flagged thousands of cases, military sources said.

The Morpheus system is expected to enter full operations at the start of December, once all required legal approvals are issued.

However, the report outlined two major limitations of the AI system.

First, it can only monitor the around 170,000 public accounts operated by soldiers, but not accounts that are set to private mode.

Secondly, legal restrictions prevent the IDF from monitoring the accounts of reserve soldiers, meaning that in a war where the IDF has to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists, operational security cannot be guaranteed by the system.

Army Radio revealed earlier this week that Hamas began operating an intelligence gathering network on social media as early as 2018, collecting information from around 100,000 accounts of soldiers and officers. 

Hamas collected the various pieces of information to build a remarkably detailed and precise picture of Israel’s military capabilities, including the construction of the inside of a Merkava Mark 4 tank to train its fighters to drive and operate the tank. 

Hamas also created “avatar” accounts, which they used to gain access to private social media groups, including those for new recruits. 

The wealth of information allowed the terror organization to produce detailed reports on IDF troop deployments, the physical layout of IDF bases, including the positions of gates, security cameras, armories, and safe rooms.