Rights groups petitioned Israel's top court on Monday to repeal new COVID-19 measures that authorize the country's domestic intelligence service to use counter-terrorism phone tracking technology to contain the spread of the Omicron virus variant. Announcing the emergency measures on Saturday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the phone tracking would be used to locate carriers of the new and potentially more contagious variant in order to curb its transmission to others. Israeli rights groups say the emergency measures violate previous Supreme Court rulings over such surveillance, used on-and-off by the country's Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency since March, 2020.

Israel is considered a world leader in medical data, which is partly why it has received priority access to the COVID-19 vaccines. Experts agree that the Pfizer deal offers reasonable protection of citizens’ personal data - but some parts of the deal prompt questions that need answering.