Israel's military launched a new system this week to monitor information on the Internet, the chief military censor said on Tuesday.

Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil said that the new system will monitor visual and textual information on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, on blogs and on traditional news sites.

Open gallery view The Facebook logo. Credit: AP

Speaking at the Digit 2012 conference at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Vaknin-Gil explained that the new system will examine information using key words labeled in advance. The system will be able to monitor information that was previously difficult to reach. "I think that you can't try to catch everything," she said, "because that will make the censor lose its relevance, and furthermore – its morality."

Vaknin-Gil added that "as the chief censor, I have no intention of going into people's personal diaries, and it important for me to note that we do not 'sit' on private Facebook accounts."

Referring to recent incidents of censored information being published on social networks and blogs – notably by Jewish-American blogger Richard Silverstein - Vaknin-Gil said that "the censor is perceived as a body trying to control the Internet, to no avail. This is mistake – we try to operate within the Internet only in terms of elements related to us."

"The censor cannot reject everything," she added. "The censor can only touch things that are likely to harm the security of the state, and these incidents are few."

