As a tourist arriving in Israel, authorities now have the right to look through your personal e-mail for security purposes. Israel's attorney general said on Wednesday that the country's internal security force, Shin Bet, can look through a foreign traveler's email, but only in cases where the person shows suspicious signals, reported CNN.
Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, told CNN: "Security may under the law demand this, but no one is forced to open their accounts to anyone they don't want to."
Lila Margalit, an attorney for the Association for Civil Rights said to CNN that she believes it to be a violation of privacy rights. "A tourist who has just spent thousands of dollars to travel to Israel, only to be interrogated at the airport by Shin Bet agents and told to grant access to their e-mail account, is in no position to give free and informed consent," she said to CNN. "Such 'consent,' given under threat of deportation, cannot serve as a basis for such a drastic invasion of privacy. In today's world, access to a person's e-mail account is akin to access to their innermost thoughts and personal lives. Allowing security agents to take such invasive measures at their own discretion and on the basis of such flimsy 'consent' is not befitting of a democracy."
Security at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport are known to be extensive and exhaustive. The ruling came after some people who were trying to enter Israel last year were ordered to open their emails after hours of interrogation at Ben Gurion airport. In one instance, three Palestinian-American women were not aloowed to enter after email checks were conducted.
The Associated Press reported that some critics say it targets Muslims and Arabs.
"It was a concern because of the level of invasion inherent in (checking) a personal email account," Margalit said to the AP. "It constitutes a violation of privacy."
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