Other Israeli parties and candidates in primaries have used the Elector app, but Likud in this campaign is the first party to publicly ask thousands of its members and supporters to download it.
Just like every other party running in the election, Likud was provided with the updated voters registry by the Central Election Commission, but it is illegal to allow the public access it because it contains private addresses and identity card numbers.
On Sunday, Haaretz revealed that users of Likud’s Elector app could easily download the voters’ registry entire contents.
Likud claimed that it was a glitch caused by unknown hackers who had attacked the software company. Elector Software responded that it was a “one-off incident that was immediately dealt with.”
The voters registry is no longer exposed; Likud, now under yet another investigation, is still using Elector; and questions linger over its use of databases for targeted messaging and voter motivation.
Yet the mega-leak of the private information of every Israeli adult has not created the expected stir in the election campaign. Likud’s rivals have not criticised it publicly over the incident.
“Every party has its own database, usually maintained for it by private sub-contractors, and no-one wants to ask if these databases have been compiled legally,” says a digital expert working for one of the parties.
Likud’s digital powers are legendary.
In the election of 2015, it targeted wavering right-wing voters with text messages containing fake headlines on turnout in the Arab sector and invented quotes from Arab leaders on their support for a Labour government.
In the two elections of 2019, Facebook twice suspended Likud’s account on the social media platform — first, when a “chat bot” pretending to be Mr Netanyahu said that “the Arabs want to destroy us”, and second when the account was used to disseminate polling results during the purdah period of the last days of the campaign.
But nearly all the revelations and complaints against the misuse of social media by political parties are made by private individuals, journalists and privacy organisations, not by the politicians themselves.
Wherever they are on the political spectrum, they are all at it to some extent, and prefer not to open the digital can of worms.
