Excerpt from BBC
Facebook "is a big, big thing that the Israelis use", says Ehab al-Hussein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry.
"Many people don't have security sense. They go on the internet and talk about all their personal problems such as with their wives or girlfriends," he says.
Israel's intelligence services can then contact people by telephone, e-mail or using existing Israeli agents in Gaza, and use the information to pressure people to become spies.
The internet "allows them to make people feel Israel knows everything about them", says Mr Hussein.
Ronen Bergman, an Israeli expert on intelligence and author of Israel's Secret War with Iran, says monitoring social networking sites is the very minimum you would expect from his country's intelligence services.
"Israel is using the personal information that is put in massive amounts on the internet to identify the people who can maybe help Israel," he says.
"If in 50 years they open up the secret files of the Israeli secret service, the Shin Bet, and military intelligence, the sophistication of electronics that is being used by Israel now in the Gaza Strip would put even the legendary Q from the James Bond movies to shame."
But Mr Bergman says that the intelligence community's current thinking is that using personal information gleaned from the internet to pressure or even blackmail potential informants is not considered effective in recruiting long-term informants.
He says such threats are not often enough to get people to commit such a serious offence as collaborating.
But online detail, he says, can help intelligence services identify people who might be useful - such as those with good access to Hamas or to criminal networks.
When asked to comment, the Israeli government said it was not its practice to talk about its security services' modes of operation.
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