{"id":643429,"date":"2026-10-11T19:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T19:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/643429\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T19:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T19:46:08","slug":"israel-privacy-watchdog-orders-police-probe-into-leak-of-yahalomi-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/643429\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel privacy watchdog orders police probe into leak of Yahalomi footage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Privacy Protection Authority instructed Israel Police\u2019s internal privacy inspector on Sunday to examine how footage and sensitive information about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-910925\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mali and Liel Yahalomi<\/a> reached the media after the mother and daughter were found in Argentina, and what privacy considerations police weighed before authorizing publication.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The authority said its review of media reports indicated that at least some of the information may have come from the police. It has not determined that a privacy violation occurred.<\/p>\n<p>The pair were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/article-905561\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">found on a bus in Argentina<\/a> on August 14 after a weeklong search. Police released footage of an Israeli police representative approaching them.<\/p>\n<p>The authority cited later reports that included details from the investigation, such as private correspondence, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/diaspora\/article-905594\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">searches using artificial intelligence tools<\/a>, the women\u2019s financial situation and transactions, their movements and location, and their expected arrival date in Israel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The authority said the public should be informed when missing women are found and safe, but raised concerns about publishing footage of them in vulnerable moments and exposing personal details after they had been located.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cThe importance of reporting that missing women have been located and are safe is clear to all,\u201d Privacy Protection Authority head Gilad Semama said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cBut there is real difficulty in publishing videos of them in vulnerable moments and exposing their personal details, movements, location and financial transactions after they have already been found.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Semama said the reports appeared to have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/tech-and-start-ups\/article-906147\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">originated in the police investigation<\/a> and may have seriously infringed on the women\u2019s privacy without legitimate justification or in line with police procedures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Semama wrote to Police Commissioner Daniel Levy and the police\u2019s internal privacy inspector, George Kevorkian, directing the inspector to use the supervisory powers granted under the Privacy Protection Law to conduct a comprehensive review.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The inspector is to examine how the footage and personal details reached news outlets, whether police procedures were followed, and what criteria, if any, were considered before publication was authorized.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The inspector is also to develop lessons for handling privacy issues when police share information with the media in similar cases and provide the findings to the Privacy Protection Authority. The review is being conducted by the police\u2019s internal privacy inspector. No findings have been announced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Privacy Protection Authority instructed Israel Police\u2019s internal privacy inspector on Sunday to examine how footage and sensitive&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[737,85,21558,46,1158,32862,103533,43,102,2842],"class_list":["post-643429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-crime","tag-il","tag-investigation","tag-israel","tag-israel-police","tag-leak","tag-missing-person","tag-news","tag-police","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}