High Court releases names of Israeli brothers indicted for selling AI-generated info. to Iran – The Jerusalem Post

Following a Walla request, a High Court of Justice judge permitted the publication of the names of two brothers who were indicted for conducting espionage on behalf of Iranian agents.
The brothers, Meir and Yosef Nahum, residents of Beit Shemesh and Beitar Illit, were charged last month with transferring information to Iranians in exchange for tens of thousands of shekels. Much of the information was false and AI-generated, including claims of an imminent attack against Iran.
Justice Alex Stein rejected an appeal filed by the brothers’ defense attorney, Adv. Ariel Atari, against the publication of the defendants’ names.
Atari argued that publication would cause psychological harm to Yosef Nahum and could potentially endanger him, as well as Meir Nahum, the main defendant in the case.
“Imposing a publication ban on the name of a defendant after an indictment has been filed is an exception among exceptions, reserved for extreme cases in which publication may, with a high degree of probability, lead to very severe harm,” Stein wrote, noting that he was not convinced that this was the case here.
“The psychological harm claimed by Yosef Nahum does not distinguish him from other defendants who are in a similar situation, in the sense that the publication of their names, as those who allegedly committed serious offenses, places them in a similar situation and in a traumatic experience. Such harm is regrettable, but it does not single out Yosef, and its intensity is not high enough to outweigh the principle of publicity and the public’s right to know,” the judge wrote.
An indictment filed against the brothers described how the main defendant deceived the Iranian agent with whom he was in contact and provided false information he generated using artificial intelligence tools such as Chat GPT, Grok, and Gemini.
The defendant found personal details of an Iranian citizen and his wife on Telegram and passed them on to the handler, along with a forged document he created, which implicated the “Iranian” with cooperating with Israel during strikes targeting senior Iranian regime officials during Operation Rising Lion last June, the indictment said.
The connection was made in August, when the agent contacted the defendant via Telegram, asking if he was interested in making money, it said.
The defendant, suspecting that the handler was an Iranian agent, responded positively, provided a fake name, and told the handler he was a computer-science student who was about to enlist in the IDF Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 8200, which is responsible for signal intelligence and analysis of chatter.
The defendant later fabricated a story about having a friend in the unit, using the name of an actual person whose identity card and driver’s license he had found online. He created a false impression with the agent by presenting screenshots of a supposed conversation that he had had with the Unit 8200 soldier in which he tried to convince him to cooperate with the Iranian handler.
The defendant then created a Telegram group where the agent, the defendant, and “soldier,” who was actually the defendant as well, were members. The agent then started chatting with the “soldier” and asked him to send his ID card for verification.
The defendant found a video of an unspecified Israeli citizen, including a driver’s license, and sent it to the agent. The agent was not satisfied with this, however, and insisted on receiving a photograph of the “soldier” with an ID document. He eventually agreed to accept a picture of them making an “okay” hand gesture.
The defendant created this image using AI software and sent it to the agent, the indictment said. The agent then asked for a document proving that the “soldier” really served in Unit 8200, causing the defendant to send a forged document he found online, which he edited with the details of the “soldier.”
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