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Police Use Eagle Eye Surveillance System to Track Drivers

  • ACRI
  • Jul 14
  • 6 min read

Below is an overview of ACRI’s yearslong efforts to challenge and disallow police use of the Eagle Eye surveillance system. This is an automated system that reads license plates and photographs occupants of a vehicle and that can track and record movements of anyone traveling on roads in Israel. This information is then collected and stored in a vast database accessible to police with few regulations governing its use and little oversight. The collection of travelers’ data is sweeping, and has no relation to whether a person or vehicle is suspected of having committed or been involved in a crime. 

 

This system is a major infringement on the right to privacy, and creates a chilling effect on the exercise of other rights, such as the right to protest, since people know that at any given moment the police may be tracking their movements.  

 

The following description of our legal efforts is in chronological order; scroll down for the latest updates. For a full list of legal correspondence and articles (all written in Hebrew), see here.  


First Petition


On January 28, 2021, ACRI and Privacy Israel filed a petition with the Supreme Court challenging the police use of the Eagle Eye surveillance system. This is an automated system that tracks and records the movements of people traveling on roads throughout Israel by reading vehicle license plates and photographing the vehicle’s occupants. The system collects and stores information on all individuals whose vehicles pass the cameras, including video footage and still images of the vehicle and those in it. In this way, the police maintain a vast database documenting the movements of people traveling on the country's roads and use it for various purposes. 


The petition argued that the system is an extreme surveillance mechanism that enables the police, at the click of a button, to obtain sensitive personal information about the whereabouts of people traveling on Israeli roads in real time. It also allows the police to travel back through a “time tunnel” to reconstruct a person's location, travel route, and, in some cases, past contacts with others. All of this occurs without any kind of judicial warrant being issued, or oversight. The use of this system infringes on the constitutional rights to privacy and liberty, and in the absence of explicit statutory authorization, it fails to meet the requirements of the limitations clause of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and must therefore be halted immediately. 


The petition further argued that even if the system did operate pursuant to explicit statutory authorization, its infringement of fundamental rights would fail the proportionality test, and the authorizing legislation would not withstand constitutional review. A situation in which every trip taken by every person automatically generates a trail of information for future, amorphous police purposes is disproportionate and should not be permitted in a democratic state. 


At a hearing held on May 27, 2021, the Supreme Court instructed the State to publish a draft bill regulating the Eagle Eye surveillance system for public comment within no more than 45 days, and to allow the Knesset to make a decision. During the hearing, the Chief Justice noted that there was no arguing that the system infringed on privacy and could not be operated under the general powers of the police. The Court criticized the fact that although the Deputy Attorney General had instructed the authorities to formulate authorizing legislation as early as 2015, no legislative progress had been made. 


On January 11, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a conditional order, directing the police to explain within 90 days why they believed they could continue operating the Eagle Eye system without explicit legislative authorization. 


On November 2, 2022, the Court held a hearing on the petition. Following the hearing, it granted the State an additional extension to advance the legislative process and instructed it to update the Court by March 2, 2023. The petition was dismissed by consent on March 6, 2024, after the Knesset enacted an amendment to the Police Ordinance that anchored the authority of the police to use surveillance systems based on the identification and decoding of an “object” (for example, a license plate in the case of Eagle Eye). 


HCJ 641/21 ACRI v. Israel Police 

Attorneys: Anne Suciu, Avner Pinchuk 


The petition, January 2021 (Heb) 

State's response, May 2021 (Heb) 


Second Petition


Following the first petition, the Knesset enacted an amendment to the Police Ordinance regulating the use of the Eagle Eye system. In ACRI’s view, the law is unconstitutional and allows for serious and disproportionate infringements on human rights. Accordingly, we filed a petition with the Supreme Court on August 20, 2024 seeking its repeal. 


The petition detailed the system's infringement on the privacy rights of innocent individuals who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. It creates an unprecedented and enormous database of the movements of all citizens' vehicles, which is then retained for future use, and enables the continuous, long-term monitoring of specific vehicles by placing them on a real-time alert list. The law imposes no meaningful limit on the number or types of police cameras that may be deployed; permits the retention of camera data for lengthy periods of up to two years; and allows easy access to the information by any police officer, without a judicial warrant and without external oversight. The police have refused to publish the procedures governing use of the system. 

The combination of all these features creates a massive infringement of the rights to privacy and liberty and has a chilling effect on the exercise of other rights, such as freedom of expression and freedom of protest, because people know they may be under surveillance at any given moment. This technology gives the police a level of power previously held only by the Shin Bet and allows the police to generate intelligence about the private lives of all citizens, including their locations, relationships, leisure activities, and more, effectively turning Israel into a surveillance state. 

Together with the petition, ACRI filed a motion for an interim order freezing use of the system, after the regulations essential for implementing the law had not been enacted within six months, as required by the law. 


Following the petition and the request for an interim order, the National Security Committee convened to discuss the regulations enabling operation of the Eagle Eye system, and the regulations were approved. In light of this development, we sought to amend the petition, but the Court decided to dismiss it and directed us to exhaust proceedings regarding the regulations before filing another petition. 


HCJ 48720-08-24 ACRI v. Knesset 

Attorney: Gil Gan-Mor 


The petition, August 20, 2024 (Heb) 

Judgment, November 14, 2024 (Heb) 

 

This petition was written with the assistance of ACRI legal intern Elza Bugnet 


Third Petition


On March 3, 2025, ACRI again petitioned for the repeal of the law. As in the previous petition, we argued that the law allows the police to conduct sweeping surveillance, to track the movements of innocent citizens, and to collect sensitive information on the entire population through advanced surveillance technologies. This is an unprecedented and dangerous law that disproportionately infringes constitutional rights, including the right to privacy, the right to liberty, and the rights of suspects and defendants, far beyond what is necessary for policing purposes. It grants the police a surveillance system similar to those previously available only to the Shin Bet for the purpose of preventing threats to state security. Moreover, searches of the database are not subject to meaningful restrictions and may be conducted by police without a judicial warrant and without any meaningful external oversight. 


Following a hearing on the petition, the Supreme Court issued a conditional order on July 14, 2026. In the order, the Court required the State to explain, among other things, why the provisions allowing the use of the system for enforcing restraining orders and entry bans, the inclusion of numerous misdemeanor offenses within the database, the use of information for “pattern investigations,” the retention of vehicle location data for extended periods, searches of the database without a judicial warrant, the lack of criteria governing the inclusion of vehicles in real-time alerts, and the failure to publish procedures regulating the operation of the system should not be repealed or amended. The Court further ordered that the continued proceedings would be heard before an expanded panel of seven justices. 


HCJ 5406-03-25 ACRI v. Knesset 

Attorneys: Gil Gan-Mor, Nitsan Ilani 


The petition, March 3, 2025 (Heb) 

The decision (conditional order), July 14, 2026 (Heb) 

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