What is Canary Mission?

The Canary Mission, a pro-Israel website, first appeared in the spring of 2015 with a series of online attacks on undergraduate student activists who had spoken out about the violation of Palestinian human rights. In the past decade, it has evolved from an anonymous website to a state-influencing actor, exemplifying the transformation of online doxxing into a geopolitical tool of transnational surveillance. Its reach extends from student protests to immigration detention cells, and two successive United States governments have used its content to identify, detain, deport, and intimidate pro-Palestinian activists.

Despite operating under the guise of transparency, Canary Mission remains opaque: run from a padlocked building in Israel, funded by U.S. donors seeking anonymity, and used to monitor dissent in both Israel and the U.S. Its collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been exposed in court. Lawsuits, policy reform, and student advocacy are its ongoing work. Still, the core mission of the site remains the same: to punish and dissuade those who speak out for Palestinian rights.

What are the goals of Canary Mission?

Canary Mission’s website declares that “Canary Mission documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses.”

As per the Ethics Policy on their website, Canary Mission contends that the following are tantamount to anti-Semitism and support for terrorism:

any criticism of Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territories or of Zionism as a political ideology,

any form of support for Palestinian human rights or the BDS movement,

any criticism of US policy in the Middle East

By producing what is, in effect, a blacklist, Canary Mission seeks to silence free and open discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like McCarthy-era blacklists that branded individuals as Communist sympathizers to destroy their careers, Canary Mission has created profiles of nearly 5,000 students and academics, labeling them as “anti-Semitic,” “terrorist sympathizers,” or “extremists,” often with no credible basis.

It claims that “every individual and organization [in its database] has been carefully researched and sourced.” It openly proclaims that it seeks to prevent former students from being employed, whom it defines as “radicals.” The civil rights group Palestine Legal has reported that employers and graduate schools have questioned numerous students in the US about their Canary Mission profiles.

What tactics does it use?

Canary Mission’s approach is tripartite:

Doxxing: Publishing personal details of individuals—names, photos, affiliations, graduation years, and social media accounts—framed to suggest extremism.

Defamation: Framing quotes by individuals without context, and using the label of antisemitism on peaceful protesters to portray them as terror supporters.

Amplification: Using social media, especially X (formerly Twitter), to drive harassment, with trolls in the comments swarming targets and calling for their expulsion, and sometimes issuing violent threats.

The group has even created an “Ex-Canary” page for those who recant their political views, a move likened to ideological extortion. Victims report rape threats, death threats, and misogynistic slurs. Columbia student Layla Saliba, for instance, received hundreds of such threats and was later physically assaulted on campus. Layla Saliba, a graduate student at Columbia University, received hundreds of death and rape threats after being profiled.

Offline, Canary Mission’s proxies have engaged in intimidation: giant yellow “canary” mascots appeared at a George Washington University divestment vote. At the same time, digital billboard trucks circled Columbia with faces of student protesters branded as “antisemites.”

Is the information on Canary Mission accurate?

Although Canary Mission states that it is open to correcting factual inaccuracies, there is scant evidence that it has addressed concerns raised by targets featured on the site or removed the numerous false claims it hosts. Those targeted have limited recourse options, largely due to the difficulty, time, and financial and emotional expense of filing defamation lawsuits in the US, the website’s anonymous nature, and the fact that the Canary Mission’s servers appear to be located in Israel.

How does Canary Mission attack its targets?

By analyzing its website, The Polis Project found that it displays profiles of individual students and faculty, as well as organizations, containing personal information, quotes, photos, videos, institutional affiliations, and links to friends and colleagues.

Many individuals and organizations may also be subjected to Twitter trolling campaigns linked back to Canary Mission, as found by The Polis Project in analyzing tweets over the past year. This typically unleashes a wave of denunciations from (mostly anonymous) Twitter and email accounts.

Canary Mission retweets its attacks dozens of times during a single day. This set of tactics is inexpensive and effective: victims are never able to confront their accusers, who hide behind many layers of electronic cloaking.

On February 26, 2018, Twitter suspended Canary Mission’s account, but it was restored just two days later. No reasons were given for either action, but Canary Mission has been accused of violating X’s stated rules of conduct on many occasions; however, no action has been taken against the organization.

What are its origins?

A scrub of the website by The Polis Project found that Canary Mission first appeared in May 2015 as an anonymously-run website that profiles student and academic activists advocating for Palestinian rights and criticizing Israel, by presenting them as “anti-semitic.” Its launch was accompanied by a provocative YouTube video declaring: “It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees.” The website often publishes information on individuals after tracking them through protest activities and social media activism.

Since the beginning, Canary Mission has been deliberately opaque. As per a May 2015 article by The Forward, no names of staff, founders, or donors are listed on the website; its domain is privacy-protected; and it lacks nonprofit status in the US. Early investigative attempts traced the operation to Israel. A now-deleted Twitter link led to an Israeli man named Warren Betzalel Lapidus. Narrators of Canary Mission........

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