Haaretz published a report in mid-July that said the Israeli army was using AnyVision's technology at checkpoints on the way into Israel and across a network of cameras within the West Bank.

Referring to Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Amos Toh, a senior researcher on artificial intelligence at New York-based Human Rights Watch, told the American magazine, Forbes, earlier this month that the use of such technology "in a very fraught political context" could be problematic.

"I think it's incumbent on Microsoft to really look at what that means for the human rights risk associated with the investment in a company that's providing this technology to an occupying power," Toh said, adding "It's not just privacy risk but a privacy risk associated with a minority group that has suffered repression and persecution for a long time. There are special considerations of discrimination there."

According to Forbes, Microsoft was also censured by cybersecurity entrepreneur Matt Suiche, who described the investment in AnyVision as "scandalous."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also condemned the investment.
Neema Singh Guliani, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the bill "falls woefully short of protecting people's privacy rights."

Shankar Narayan, the director of the Technology and Liberty Project at the ACLU, told Forbes he had met with Microsoft officials last year and at the time the company seemed to be open to the idea of holding back the spread of the facial recognition technology.

Saudi Arabia has reportedly bought $300 million worth of spy software from Israel to spy on its own people and track human rights advocates.

Forbes noted that AnyVision has ties to the Israeli spy agency and military, with former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo presiding the firm's advisory board and Amir Kain, former head of the so-called security department of Israel's ministry of military affairs, being its president.

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Pompeo has voiced outright support for acts of violence staged across various Iranian cities under the guise of protests against fuel price hikes. The violence has seen anarchists destroying public property and setting ablaze banks and gas stations among other facilities.

Larijani said through the remarks, "He (Pompeo) openly supports immolation of the Iranian people's properties through foolish shamelessness and opportunism, while calling it defending the Iranian people."

Such comments, Larijani added, serve to openly manifest the US's destructive ambitions regarding the Islamic Republic.

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