EXCLUSIVE: Former Obama AG Eric Holder Provided Israeli Company AnyVision Clean Audit Despite Having Evidence to the Contrary

Obama’s former Attorney General, Eric Holder, performed an audit of an Israeli Company, AnyVision, in late 2019 and early 2020.  Holder and his team claimed there was no evidence AnyVision had violated its facial recognition pledge. 

The Gateway Pundit has obtained evidence that Holder’s team had evidence indicating this was not the case.

On November 16, 2019, NBC News reported that former Obama Attorney General, Eric Holder, was hired by Microsoft to audit an Israeli company regarding its compliance with Microsoft policies:

Microsoft has hired former United States Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct an audit of facial recognition company AnyVision to determine whether it complies with Microsoft’s ethical principles on how the biometric surveillance technology should be used.

Microsoft’s venture capital arm, M12, invested in AnyVision as part of a $74 million Series A funding round in June. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft stipulated that AnyVision should comply with its six ethical principles to guide its facial recognition work: fairness, transparency, accountability, nondiscrimination, notice and consent, and lawful surveillance.

The last principle states, “We will advocate for safeguards for people’s democratic freedoms in law enforcement surveillance scenarios and will not deploy facial recognition technology in scenarios that we believe will put these freedoms at risk.”

AnyVision, headquartered in Israel, sells an “advanced tactical surveillance” software system, Better Tomorrow. It lets customers identify individuals and objects in any live camera feed, such as a security camera or smartphone, and then track targets as they move between different feeds.

NBC News reported in October that according to five sources familiar with the matter, AnyVision’s technology has powered a secret military surveillance project that has monitored Palestinians in the West Bank. The project was so successful that AnyVision won Israel’s top defense price [prize] in 2018 for preventing “hundreds of terror attacks” using “large amounts of data.”

On March 31 it was reported that Holder’s audit of AnyVision was over and the company received a clean audit result confirming there was no indication AnyVision had violated Microsoft’s facial recognition pledge.  Regardless, Microsoft divested of its investment in the firm at that time:

Covington & Burling has completed its audit of the Israeli facial recognition specialist AnyVision. The audit was carried out at the request of Microsoft in an effort to determine whether or not AnyVision’s technology was being used in a mass surveillance scheme of Palestinians in the West Bank, as had been alleged in a series of media reports in late 2019.

Microsoft was a minority investor in AnyVision, and had asked the company to sign the Microsoft Global Finance Portfolio Company Pledge on Facial Recognition before that deal was finalized. A mass surveillance program would represent a breach of that pledge. Microsoft has consistently advocated for oversight and the ethical use of facial recognition, and has previously refused to sell the technology to law enforcement agencies and to government organizations that plan to use it for purposes of mass surveillance.

The AnyVision audit was carried out by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. His team did not find evidence to support the allegations about a mass surveillance program in the West Bank, and concluded that AnyVision had not violated its facial recognition pledge. However, AnyVision did acknowledge that its technology has been deployed at border checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel.

However, we have obtained information that this was not the case – Holder’s team had obtained information that supported the allegations about a mass surveillance program in the West Bank and therefore AnyVision had violated its facial recognition pledge.

On November 20th, 2019, an individual from Microsoft emailed an individual with AnyVision and stated that Microsoft had sent HB [Hebron system – screenshots below] to the C&B [Covington Law firm] reviewer.  The emailer went on to state that “Legal instructed us to deny any surveillance activity and high FDRs. [False Detection Rates]  They also told us to delete all of the content from our systems.”:

Here are screenshots below showing AnyVision was targeting certain individuals:

Eric Holder’s Covington team was provided information from Microsoft that showed that AnyVision was surveiling individuals in the West Bank.  AnyVision also denied any FDR’s.  Instead of reporting this as a breach to the Microsoft agreement for facial recognition, Holder’s team decided to claim they had no evidence of wrongdoing.  It appears this was not the case.

Microsoft was wise in divesting of its stake in AnyVision. 

Obama’s former AG Eric Holder appears to be continuing the corruption and dishonesty he portrayed while heading up the DOJ.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Former Obama AG Eric Holder Provided Israeli Company AnyVision Clean Audit Despite Having Evidence to the Contrary appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.