The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) thwarted more than 450 terrorist attacks in 2019, director of the Shin Bet Nadav Argaman said last week.
Speaking at the UVID International Conference and Exhibition on Unmanned Vehicles in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Argaman credited his agency’s success to cutting-edge technologies, collaboration with the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police, and to what he called the Shin Bet’s “synergy with our counterparts around the world.”
The Israeli domestic-security and counterintelligence service’s efforts “have allowed Israeli citizens to go about their daily lives without knowing what’s going on behind the scenes,” he said.
While technology plays an important role in the agency’s work, said Argaman, it is the human factor that is the most important.
“As an organization, we first and foremost have people, excellent people. We try to use the best technology in the world and collaborate with our counterparts worldwide, and this allows us to maintain our relative advantage against the challenges our enemies pose.”
With regard to technology, he said, the Shin Bet always prefers the home-grown variety.
“We procure Israeli technologies before anything else,” said Argaman.
In addition to an extensive network of confidential informants and other conventional intelligence-gathering techniques, the Shin Bet has long been known to use advanced algorithms to scan social media and other databases for indications of terrorist activity.
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
