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By David Cronin / The Electronic Intifada
Israel’s spy technology will be displayed at an exhibition organized by the British government next month.
PenLink – one of the listed participants in the London expo named Security and Policing – is, to put it mildly, a firm that should be shunned.
Five years ago, Meta banned Israel’s Cobwebs Technologies – which PenLink has subsequently acquired – from gathering intelligence across the corporation’s platforms.
Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, had found that Cobwebs was using hundreds of social media accounts to surveil activists, civil servants and opposition politicians in Mexico and Hong Kong.
The details provided about PenLink on the website for the Security and Policing exhibition are misleading. They present PenLink as a British company.
PenLink is headquartered in Nebraska and has extremely strong connections to Israel.
Omri Timianker, a founder of Cobwebs, is among several Israelis on PenLink’s senior management team.
Timianker has in the not-too-distant past been promoted as a veteran of the “special forces” within the Israeli military and “Israel’s secret services.”
When speaking at conferences, he has been praised as being a pioneer among “Israel’s secret services” in the use of “tactical SIGINT.”
As signals intelligence (SIGINT) involves the interception of communications, it is really a fancy term for spying. It is highly probable that any innovation which Timianker helped to realize has been tested out on Palestinians living under an illegal occupation.
In January, Timianker hosted a visit to PenLink’s Israel offices by Michael Mann, the European Union’s ambassador in Tel Aviv.
By Timianker’s account, the pair chatted about “how fast reality is shifting and how critical it is to equip people not just with tools but with the ability to think, question and stay aware in a world shaped by algorithms and narratives.”
From a freedom of information request, I learned that Mann had met a PenLink representative during a November event in the city of Herzliya. In follow-up email correspondence, Mann stated that he would be “delighted to arrange a visit” so that he could see PenLink’s offices.
After I sent a query to Mann, the EU’s Tel Aviv embassy described his meeting with Timianker as a “courtesy visit.”
The visit, according to the embassy, “entailed an informal conversation about technology and disinformation.”
The EU, incidentally, is increasingly accusing journalists and academics with whom it disagrees of “disinformation.”
They include the German citizen Hüseyin Dogru, who is subject to EU sanctions that imperil his livelihood for publishing articles critical of Israel and German state violence against Palestine solidarity activists on Red, a media outlet which he set up.
“Ambassador Mann did not discuss concrete business opportunities for the firm in Europe or elsewhere,” the embassy added.
It is nonetheless indisputable that the meeting with Mann took place amid efforts by PenLink to woo Europe’s law enforcement agencies. PenLink, for example, showcased its wares at last year’s Europe Police Congress in Berlin.
Selling to ICE
Cobwebs – the Israeli firm now owned by PenLink – had previously sought to drum up business by illustrating how one of its systems could be used against Black Lives Matter protesters in the US.
Tangles, as the system is called, mines social media posts to find out which events targeted individuals attend and then combines that data with details leaked about those individuals online.
ICE – the notoriously bellicose US Immigration and Customs Enforcement – has spent approximately $5 million on using Tangles, particularly a feature named Webloc.
Long before he was named the EU’s ambassador to Tel Aviv, Michael Mann had developed cordial relations with Israel and its lobbying network.
Prior to taking up his current job, he was one of the leading figures dealing with the Middle East in the Brussels-based administration of the EU’s diplomatic service.
Another senior player in that service is Hélène Le Gal, a former French envoy to Israel and Morocco.
Through a separate freedom of information request, I learned that Le Gal agreed to receive a delegation from the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a prominent pro-Israel group, in November. The delegation had asked for a meeting to talk about “the current situation in the Middle East, as well as Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and its increasingly aggressive posture toward Europe.”
Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is undoubtedly a serious issue – as well as being a consequence of the West’s aggressive posture towards Russia (something that EU and NATO representatives would never acknowledge).
Achieving a fair and sustainable resolution of that war is not, however, foremost on the AJC’s agenda.
Rather, it exploits Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to try and distract attention from the genocide which Israel is committing in Gaza.
Lobbyists know very well, too, that the rapid growth in Western military spending prompted by the Russia-Ukraine conflict presents opportunities to boost Israel’s weapons exports.
Israel and its support network thrive on war. As the EU’s leading players are dedicated to building a war economy, it is grimly logical that they are looking to Israel and its advocates for inspiration and assistance.
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David Cronin
David Cronin is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada. His books include Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel and Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation.