IsraelPublic sector2014–2022Israel Police
Predictive profiling of arriving passengers for drug searches
Israel Police discontinued airport drug-courier profiling after operating a system whose decisions officers could not explain
Problem
Police wanted to identify passengers who might be bringing drugs into Israel. The system used statistical profiles to select arriving passengers for detention and searches.
Approach
The system entered a pilot at Ben Gurion Airport in 2014 and used machine learning to produce lists of potential drug couriers. In a September 2022 disclosure decision, the Central District Court found that officers could not explain the model's weights or reconstruct its decisions, preventing effective review; it ordered disclosure of a system description with operational details redacted. In August 2024, the state told the High Court that police had discontinued the system in April 2022 for operational reasons. The court dismissed the subsequent civil-rights petition in November 2024 after the state said it did not intend to resume the system.
Results
No published figures
Takeaway
Police had used model outputs to support intrusive searches without an adequate explanation of how individual selections were made. Operational secrecy also left the court without the information needed to review those decisions.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Public sector
- Business function
- Production and qualityFinance, risk and legal
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Predictive analytics and ML
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Goal
- Quality and risk
- Evidence
- Regulator, audit or court
Sources
Source summaries
The disclosure decision identified a 2014 pilot and described a machine-learning system whose data weights officers could not explain. The judge questioned its validation and operating procedures and ordered partial disclosure to the defence. The decision did not impose a general ban on police machine learning.
The investigation described passenger profiling using police and government databases and reported that the airport system was based on an earlier police-developed system. Police defended their authority to conduct airport drug searches and said parts of the relevant proceedings were confidential.
The report covered the prosecution's statement that police had stopped the system approximately two years earlier for operational reasons. It also reported the civil-rights association's objections to the secrecy surrounding its deployment.
The petitioner described its objections concerning privacy, equality and unexplainable search decisions. It recorded the state's statement that use ended in April 2022 and the court's dismissal of the petition on November 17, 2024, after the state indicated that it would not resume the system.
Full details are in the original sources.
