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To: Basketball Australia CEO Matt Scriven

Basketball Australia: stop filming kids with Israeli AI cameras


From November, AI cameras could be filming your kid’s basketball game. Basketball Australia has struck a deal with Pixellot, an Israeli company whose co-founders came from weapons maker Elbit Systems and an IDF intelligence unit. The cameras will record community games across the country, which could include kids as young as six, with every game linked to the player’s ID. And families could end up paying for it.

We’re Not All Clubs, a media and grassroots activist platform calling out inequality in sport. Community sport should be safe and affordable for every family. This deal fails on both.

Here’s what it means for your family:

  1. Your kids are filmed by default. Every game is filmed unless you opt out. Basketball Australia’s own policies say kids can only be filmed with a parent’s written approval.
  2. Opting out doesn’t stop it. Pixellot says opted-out footage “will still be held and used by us”, and it can be sent to Israel and the US.
  3. You could pay for it. Pixellot promised associations it would cost nothing upfront. In Ballarat, players say a new fee has been added to their registration.
  4. It’s already put a woman at risk. In Ballarat, a woman protected by a family violence intervention order was allegedly contacted by the man named in it after her game was livestreamed. The association had been warned a week before, and said only Pixellot could block the stream.

Hockey Australia already uses Pixellot. If Basketball Australia gets away with this, other sports are next.

  • No filming of under-18s
  • Adults filmed only if they say yes
  • All footage kept in Australia
  • No ads, AI training or extra fees
  • Real protections for family violence victims

Our kids’ games aren’t a data source or a cash cow. Drop Pixellot. Protect our kids.

Why is this important?

Children’s safety and consent
Kids as young as six will be filmed every time they step on court.[1][4] Basketball Australia’s own Child Safeguarding Policy says children can only be filmed with a parent’s “prior written approval”.[2] HoopsTV does the opposite. Games are filmed unless families opt out, and the footage goes straight to Pixellot.

Cost and access
And players could end up paying for it. Pixellot promised associations “zero upfront investment”.[3] But in Ballarat, players say they’re being charged “a new mandatory fee within their registration… to cover the cost of the Israeli AI system.”[4] Community basketball should be cheap enough for any kid to play, not another revenue stream for a tech company.

Family violence
In Ballarat, a woman protected by a family violence intervention order was allegedly contacted by the man named in it after her game was livestreamed on Pixellot cameras. A second woman was contacted by an estranged family member she’d been avoiding. Their coach says the association was warned a week before the game that streaming it could put the women in danger. When the team reported what happened, Ballarat Basketball said the association “does not have the level of administrative access within the platform to independently hide or block games”, and that requests like this have to go through Pixellot.[4]

Privacy
Basketball Australia says players will be able to opt out of being filmed.[5] But Pixellot’s current Australian privacy policy says opting out only stops footage being broadcast, and “this footage will still be held and used by us”. Pixellot keeps personal information “for as long as necessary” and deletes it “at our sole discretion”, with footage kept for whatever period Pixellot agrees with their customer.[6] Pixellot stores footage in Australia by default, but their policy says personal information may be sent to Israel and the U.S. for things like disaster recovery and processing, where Australian families have far less control over it.[6]

Military links and human rights
According to Sports Business Journal, Pixellot co-founder Miky Tamir was head of electro-optics at Elbit Systems, where his specialty was tracking objects such as missiles.[7] Elbit is the main supplier of the Israeli military’s drones and land-based equipment.[8] Co-founder and chief technology officer Gal Oz served in “an elite R&D unit in the Intelligence Corps of the IDF”.[9] Now their cameras are on our kids’ courts.

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