Israel Police

A national system that photographs vehicles on Israeli roads, decodes the registration plate and photographs the vehicle's occupants. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel describes it in Hebrew as an automated system that tracks and records the movements of citizens travelling on the country's roads. It was in use before any statutory authority existed: ACRI's first Supreme Court petition was filed in January 2021 and was dismissed by consent in March 2024 once the Knesset had legislated. A second petition, filed August 2024, was dismissed in November 2024 with the petitioners directed to exhaust the regulations process. A third, filed March 2025, is live, and on 14 July 2026 the Court issued a conditional order against the State before an expanded panel of seven justices.

What the law does and does not cover matters here. Amendment No. 40 authorises identification of an 'object' — a registration plate — for a closed list of purposes: preventing or detecting serious offences and offences endangering public safety or state security, preventing severe harm to person or property in the face of real danger, locating missing persons, and enforcing exclusion and restraining orders. It does not authorise biometric identification, and a facial recognition clause was removed during passage.

No start date is given: no source establishes when the system began operating, only that it predates the January 2021 petition. No vendor is given: no source names a supplier.

Sources. This entry rests on the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a litigant reporting proceedings it is party to, in English and Hebrew; on law.co.il's report of the Knesset's second and third readings on 14 January 2024; and on Shakuf's report of 19 September 2024 on the approval of the implementing regulations and the two-year retention rule. Hebrew sources are translated here. The legal basis is given as these sources report it, not quoted from the amendment.

Update, November 2026. Shomrim (1 February 2026, Uri Blau and Daniel Dolev) reports, from police court filings in the petitions, that 6,641 cameras were connected to the police's national camera network at the end of 2024, with 5,000 more planned, after 26 separate networks were merged; a police document of the previous week put the total at about 6,500. It describes Eagle Eye as an automated plate-reading system that photographs vehicle occupants. It reports that the Knesset legislated only for Eagle Eye, that the Justice Ministry initially sought powers for facial identification cameras and settled for cameras that identify objects, and that a police tender nevertheless calls for cameras capable of "facial recognition and registration, including the creation of lists (white/black)", uses it says were reportedly excluded from the law. A police spokesperson said: "We do not comment on operational methods and capabilities."