The Voters for Life forum of bereaved families and terror victims filed a formal complaint on Friday with Shin Bet chief David Zini over an app called Aswatcom, which the forum says senior Ra’am activists used to manage their election-day operation and track voters in real time.
According to the complaint, the app allowed activists to receive reports on voters at the level of individual polling stations and to manage voting operations station by station. The forum argues this violated legal requirements and High Court rulings, and called for an examination of what information was collected, who used the app and who had access to the data.
The forum said the app was created on September 15, about six weeks before the October 27 election, and recorded more than 500 downloads on Google Play. It also claimed that Ramallah-based parties with ties to the Palestinian Authority were involved in developing the system, and demanded an investigation into their role and whether they had access to information about Israeli voters.
The forum asked Zini to open an immediate criminal investigation, seize and preserve the app’s servers, databases and activity logs, and identify those who commissioned, financed and developed it, as well as the activists who used it on election day. It also called for an examination of whether Ra’am activists operated the system from inside polling stations and where the collected data was sent. Copies of the complaint were sent to Police Commissioner Danny Levy and to Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg.
“These are serious findings that require immediate investigation,” the forum said. “We demand that the Shin Bet chief examine who stood behind the application, who operated it, what information was collected through it and into whose hands it reached. The Israeli public deserves to know that its elections are conducted according to law.”
The allegations have not been independently verified, and Ra’am has not responded to the complaint. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas has previously said that he and his party are prepared to appear before any law enforcement authority.
