[HN Gopher] Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret 'wink' ...
___________________________________________________________________
Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret 'wink' to sidestep
legal orders
Author : skilled
Score : 540 points
Date : 2025-10-29 13:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| So if a government agency or court (presumably the US government)
| makes a data request with a non disclosure order (FBI NSL, FISA,
| SCA) - Google and Amazon would break that non disclosure order
| and tell Israel.
|
| Wouldn't those involved be liable to years in prison?
| alwa wrote:
| I imagine it depends on which country makes that request, its
| legal basis, and how their gag order is written.
|
| I find it hard to imagine a federal US order wouldn't proscribe
| this cute "wink" payment. (Although who knows? If a state or
| locality takes it upon themselves to raid a bit barn, can their
| local courts bind transnational payments or is that federal
| jurisdiction?)
|
| But from the way it's structured--around a specific amount of
| currency corresponding to a dialing code of the requesting
| nation--it sure sounds like they're thinking more broadly.
|
| I could more easily imagine an opportunistic order--say, from a
| small neighboring state compelling a local contractor to tap an
| international cable as it crosses their territory--to
| accommodate the "winking" disclosure: by being either so
| loosely drafted or so far removed from the parent company's
| jurisdiction as to make the $billions contract worth preserving
| this way.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| In a nation that strictly follows its own laws, sure.
| votepaunchy wrote:
| Your terms are acceptable.
| breppp wrote:
| and your assumption is that if Google has conflicting legal
| obligations to the USA and Israel it will choose Israel...
|
| In my opinion that's extremely unlikely. This was probably set
| up for other kinds of countries
| rwmj wrote:
| The method is buried about 60% through the article, but it's
| interesting. It seems incredibly risky for the cloud companies to
| do this. Was it agreed by some salespeople without the knowledge
| of legal / management?
|
| _Leaked documents from Israel's finance ministry, which include
| a finalised version of the Nimbus agreement, suggest the secret
| code would take the form of payments - referred to as "special
| compensation" - made by the companies to the Israeli government._
|
| _According to the documents, the payments must be made "within
| 24 hours of the information being transferred" and correspond to
| the telephone dialing code of the foreign country, amounting to
| sums between 1,000 and 9,999 shekels._
|
| _If either Google or Amazon provides information to authorities
| in the US, where the dialing code is +1, and they are prevented
| from disclosing their cooperation, they must send the Israeli
| government 1,000 shekels._
|
| _If, for example, the companies receive a request for Israeli
| data from authorities in Italy, where the dialing code is +39,
| they must send 3,900 shekels._
|
| _If the companies conclude the terms of a gag order prevent them
| from even signaling which country has received the data, there is
| a backstop: the companies must pay 100,000 shekels ($30,000) to
| the Israeli government._
| levi-turner wrote:
| > Was it agreed by some salespeople without the knowledge of
| legal / management?
|
| Never worked for either company, but there's a zero percent
| chance. Legal agrees to bespoke terms and conditions on
| contracts (or negotiates them) for contracts. How flexible they
| are to agreeing to exotic terms depends on the dollar value of
| the contract, but there is no chance that these terms (a)
| weren't outlined in the contract and (b) weren't heavily
| scrutinized by legal (and ops, doing paybacks in such a manner
| likely require work-arounds for their ops and finance teams).
| rwmj wrote:
| That's my experience too, but it seems impossible that a
| competent legal team would have agreed to this.
| gadders wrote:
| Legal can advise, but it's ultimately up to the business to
| risk-accept. If they think the risk vs reward analysis
| makes it worthwhile, they can overrule legal and proceed.
| bostik wrote:
| When advice from legal conflicts with the upcoming sound
| of _ka-ching!_ the only question that matters is: "how
| loud is that cashier going to be?"
| belter wrote:
| (b) weren't heavily scrutinized by legal ...
|
| You mean like in financing a ball room?
| IshKebab wrote:
| > If the companies conclude the terms of a gag order prevent
| them from even signaling which country has received the data,
| there is a backstop: the companies must pay 100,000 shekels
| ($30,000) to the Israeli government.
|
| Uhm doesn't that mean that Google and Amazon can easily comply
| with US law despite this agreement?
|
| There must be more to it though, otherwise why use this super
| suss signaling method?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| How can they comply with a law that forbids disclosing
| information was shared, by doing just that? THe fact it's a
| simply kiddie code instead of explicit communication doesn't
| allow you to side step the law.
| shevy-java wrote:
| I don't quite understand this. How much money would Israel be
| able to milk from this? It can't be that much, can it?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| It's not about money, it's about sending information while
| arguably staying within the letter of US law
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Kinda similar to a
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary, with the same
| untested potential for "yeah that's not allowed and now
| you're in even more trouble".
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Are there any instances anyone knows of in which a
| warrant canary has been found to violate antidisclosure
| law?
|
| (Australia apparently outlaws the practice, see:
| <https://boingboing.net/2015/03/26/australia-outlaws-
| warrant-...>.)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Any such case seems likely to wind up in something like
| the secret FISA court.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intel
| lig...
| nitwit005 wrote:
| It does seem a bit baffling. This method just adds a second
| potential crime, in the form of fraudulent payments.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| In what sense would the payments be fraudulent? It would be
| real money paid out of Amazon's accounts as part of a
| contract they willingly signed with Israel.
| master_crab wrote:
| It is two crimes:
|
| 1. Alerting a country to secret actions taken by a third
| party government (my nation of citizenship, the US,
| definitely has rules against that)
|
| 2. Passing money to commit a crime. See money laundering.
|
| Honestly, the second crime seems aggravated and stupid.
| Just pass random digits in an API call if you want to tell
| Israel you did something.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I'm not disputing that the company would be breaking the
| law by doing this. That's not what fraud is though.
| Retric wrote:
| Fraud is intentional deception + criminal intent. The
| deception comes from using payments as a code instead of
| say an encrypted channel.
| gmueckl wrote:
| IANAL, but all criminal definitions of fraud that I am
| aware of require an intention to harm to a victim. It's
| kind of hard to argue that sending money fulfills this
| criteria.
| Retric wrote:
| Americans get legal protections for their private health
| data because the disclosure of such information is
| considered harmful.
|
| Other countries provide legal protections for other bits
| of information because disclosure of that information is
| considered harmful to the individual, it's that
| protection they are trying to breach which thus harms the
| person.
| gmueckl wrote:
| How is this related to the fraud discussion in this
| thread? Illegal disckosure of confidential information is
| usually handled by a separate legal framework.
| Retric wrote:
| It's still fraud if they intended to get such information
| but haven't yet gotten it.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| No, fraud is intentional deception to deprive a victim of
| a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or
| unfairly.
|
| Who exactly here is the victim that gets it legal rights
| deprived or what is the gain at the expense of the
| victim?
| Retric wrote:
| IE criminal intent vs criminal activity, critically the
| criminal activity only needs to be intended not actually
| occur for it to be fraud. Specifying which criminal
| intent is applicable is reasonable but nothing I said was
| incorrect.
|
| The victims are the people being deprived of their legal
| protections.
|
| Not everyone agrees which information should be protected
| but sending information can be a form of harm. If I break
| into your bank, find all your financial transactions, and
| post it on Facebook, I have harmed you. Lesser activity
| still qualifies as harmful here.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Wouldn't just having 1000 canaries be a "legal" way to do
| the alerting?
|
| A government can compel Amazon to avoid notifying a
| target (Israel in this case) that their information has
| been subpoenaed, but can't compel Amazon to lie and say
| it hasn't sent their info.
|
| Or is the concept of a canary pretty much useless now?
|
| I'm personally one of the "activists" who is trying to
| avoid Amazon and Google to a practical degree, due to
| project Nimbus, so I'd be more than happy if their data
| could be accessed, and even happier to see Amazon and
| Google just cut ties with them altogether.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Why would it be fraudulent in this case? I assume that these
| would be paid as refunds accounted for as a discount to a
| particular customer - aren't these generally discretionary?
| Also, I would assume that it would be the Israeli government
| getting services from the Israeli subsidiary of that company,
| so it's not clear whether even if it were a crime, which
| jurisdiction would have an issue with it.
|
| You could argue that it's against something like the OECD
| Anti-Bribery Convention, but that would be a much more
| difficult case, given that this isn't a particular foreign
| official, but essentially a central body of the foreign
| government.
|
| Just to clarify, not saying that it's ok, but just that
| accusing it of being a "crime" might be a category error.
| Havoc wrote:
| Very much doubt something this hot in an agreement with a
| foreign government as counterparty gets signed off by some
| random salesman
| 8note wrote:
| > If either Google or Amazon provides information to
| authorities in the US, where the dialing code is +1, and they
| are prevented from disclosing their cooperation, they must send
| the Israeli government 1,000 shekels.
|
| its a buggy method, considering canada also uses +1, and a
| bunch of countries look like they use +1 but dont, like
| barbados +1(246) using what looks like an area code as part of
| the country code.
| toast0 wrote:
| > its a buggy method, considering canada also uses +1, and a
| bunch of countries look like they use +1 but dont, like
| barbados +1(246) using what looks like an area code as part
| of the country code.
|
| You are correct that ITU code is not specific enough to
| identify a country, but I'm sorry, +1 is the ITU country code
| for the North American Numbering Plan Area. 246 is the NANPA
| area code for Barbados (which only has one area code) but as
| a NANPA member, Barbados' country code is +1, same as the
| rest of the members. There is no '+1246' country code.
|
| There's not a lot of countries that are in a shared numbering
| plan other than NANPA, but for example, Khazakstan and Russia
| share +7 (Of course, the USSR needed a single digit country
| code, or there would have been a country code _gap_ ), and
| many of the former Netherland Antilles share +599, although
| Aruba has +297, and Sint Maarten is in +1 (with NANPA Area
| code 721)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If either Google or Amazon provides information to
| authorities in the US, where the dialing code is +1, and they
| are prevented from disclosing their cooperation, they must send
| the Israeli government 1,000 shekels_
|
| This is criminal conspiracy. It's fucking insane that they not
| only did this, but put the crime in writing.;
| coliveira wrote:
| It's a criminal scheme to spy on law enforcement. Both the
| company and the scheming country are committing crimes.
| dummydummy1234 wrote:
| Can a country commit a crime?
| rdtsc wrote:
| Now that the trick is out the gag order will say explicitly not
| to make the payment. Or specifically to make a "false flag"
| payment, tell them it's the Italians.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| I don't think speech can be compelled like that latter idea
| rdtsc wrote:
| Are payments "speech" though? Just like the Israeli govt
| thinks they are being "cute" with the "winks" so can other
| governments be "cute" with their interpretation of "speech".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Supreme court has labeled political spending as free
| speech. No reason it can't extend everywhere.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Money talks.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| There's no need to alter a gag order. If you attempt an end-run
| around a gag order by speaking in French or Latin or Swahili,
| the gag order is still violated. This is exactly the same:
| changing the language in which the gag order is violated.
| gruez wrote:
| >Under the terms of the deal, the mechanism works like this:
|
| > If either Google or Amazon provides information to authorities
| in the US, where the dialing code is +1, and they are prevented
| from disclosing their cooperation, they must send the Israeli
| government 1,000 shekels.
|
| This sounds like warrant canaries but worse. At least with
| warrant canaries you argue that you can't compel speech, but in
| this case it's pretty clear to any judge that such payments
| constitute disclosure or violation of gag order, because you're
| taking a specific action that results in the target knowing the
| request was made.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| This reads like something a non-lawyer who watched too many bad
| detective movies would dream up. Theres absolutely no way this
| would pass legal muster --- even warrant canaries are mostly
| untested, but this is clearly like 5x 'worse' for the reasons
| you point out.
| randallsquared wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > _Several experts described the mechanism as a "clever"
| workaround that could comply with the letter of the law but
| not its spirit._
|
| It's not clear to me how it could comply with the letter of
| the law, but evidently at least some legal experts think it
| can? That uncertainty is probably how it made it past the
| legal teams in the first place.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Warrant canary depends on agreed upon inaction, which
| shields it somewhat. You cannot exactly compel speech by a
| gag order.
|
| This, being an active process, if found out, is violating a
| gag order by direct action.
| votepaunchy wrote:
| Warrant canaries depend on action, the removal or
| altering of the canary document. It's too clever but no
| more clever than what Israel is requiring here.
| gruez wrote:
| >Warrant canaries depend on action, the removal or
| altering of the canary document.
|
| No, they can simply not publish a warrant canary in the
| future, which will tip people off if they've been
| publishing it regularly in the past.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Right - the whole premise is that the government cannot
| compel speech (in the US). So if you publish something
| every week that says, "we've never been subpoenaed as of
| this week" and then receive a subpoena, the government
| can't force you to lie and publish the same note
| afterwards. The lack of it being published is the canary
| here.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Whether you can be compelled to lie under these
| circumstances or not is not a resolved question of law.
| Although it seems fairly likely that compelling speech in
| this way is unconstitutional, if it has been tested in
| court, the proceedings are not public.
| lazide wrote:
| Good thing no one is doing anything unconstitutional
| right now?
| 8note wrote:
| the canary notification method is a lack of updates, not
| a specific update.
|
| you update your canary to say that nothing has changed,
| at a known cadence.
|
| if you ever dont make the update, readers know that the
| canary has expired, and so you have been served a gag
| order warrant.
|
| changing or removing the canary in response to a warrant
| is illegal. not changing it is legal.
|
| for an equivalent cloudwatch setup, its checking the flag
| for "alarm when there's no points"
| verdverm wrote:
| I would think to stopping doing something is equally an
| action as to do something, in regards to warrant canaries
| and gag orders. You had to take make some change to your
| process, or if automated take an actual action to
| disable. In either case, there was a cognizant choice
| that was made
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| Yes but the theory, at least in the US, is that the
| government cannot compel you to say something. That is,
| they can't make you put up a notice.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| More specifically, the theory is that cannot compel you
| to _lie_ , there are all kinds of cases where businesses
| are compelled to share specific messages.
| Andrex wrote:
| Ah, that was confusing to me. Thank you.
| verdverm wrote:
| yea, I get that, but my gut tells me this doesn't pass
| the sniff test
|
| It's a choice you make and action you take either way, be
| it not updating a canary or sending a covert financial
| transaction
|
| That it has not been tested in court is why it's still a
| "theory" (hypothesis?)
|
| My hope is that a jury of our peers would stay closer to
| the spirit than the letter of the law
| nkrisc wrote:
| The legal theory is that in the US the first amendment
| prevents the government from forcing you to make a false
| update. I don't know if it's ever been tested.
|
| As I understand, this theory wouldn't even hold up in
| other countries where you could be compelled to make such
| a false update.
| shkkmo wrote:
| And this would be why warrant canaries aren't seen as a
| proven legal shield yet.
| puttycat wrote:
| Agree that there's something fishy/missing in this story.
| Never say never, but I find it extremely unlikely that
| Google/Amazon lawyers, based in the US, would agree to such a
| blatantly mafia-like scheme.
| t0lo wrote:
| It's certainly very interesting and difficult to explain...
| belter wrote:
| > a blatantly mafia-like scheme.
|
| Yeap...they would never do it ....
|
| "Tech, crypto, tobacco, other companies fund Trump's White
| House ballroom" -
| https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/23/trump-ballroom-
| dono...
| deanCommie wrote:
| Wouldn't the lawyers be based in Israel - under some
| Israel-based shell/subsidiary of Google/Amazon, that owns
| the data centers, and complies with local law?
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| First day on this planet?
| worik wrote:
| > I find it extremely unlikely that Google/Amazon lawyers,
| based in the US, would agree to such a blatantly mafia-like
| scheme.
|
| I trust The Guardian. So I agree It was unlikely. I find it
| very sad
|
| Very sad
| tdeck wrote:
| This only works for Israel because members of the Israeli
| government expect to be above the law. They need to offer
| only the flimsiest pretext to get away with anything. Look
| what happened with Tom Alexandrovich.
| Andrex wrote:
| From reading the Wiki, it seems like the state cops (who
| were somehow in charge of the case) forgot to take his
| passport when they arrested him, and then he just fled
| after he paid bail?
|
| Is there any evidence he was helped in his escape by
| anyone? Genuinely asking (and genuinely seeking hard facts
| and data).
| hex4def6 wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| I mean, why pay the money? Why not just skip the payment and
| email a contact "1,000"? Or perhaps "Interesting article about
| in the Times about the USA, wink wink"?
|
| This method is deliberately communicating information in a way
| that (I assume) is prohibited. It doesn't seem like it would
| take a judge much time to come to the conclusion that the gag
| order prohibits communication.
|
| Creating a secret code is still communication, whether that's
| converting letters A=1, B=2, sending a video of someone
| communicating it in sign language, a painting of the country,
| writing an ethereum contract, everyday sending a voicemail with
| a list of all the countries in the world from A to Z, but
| omitting the one(s) that have the gag / warrant...
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| If you ever dealt with the laws around exporting technology
| to specific jurisidictions, this would be like saying "We can
| convert the algorithm code to Python and THEN export it to
| North Korea!"
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| The key with a canary is that the thing you're trying to signal
| ensures the positive or negative signal itself, like "I will
| check in every 24 hours as long as everything is good, because
| if I'm not good I won't be able to check in.". THis is just a
| very thin, very simple code translation. It's like saying "if
| you get a request for our info, blink 3 times!"
| Zigurd wrote:
| It's a "cute" mechanism. The lawyers and the companies they
| work for found this to be an acceptable thing to put in a
| contract, when doing so could be interpreted as conspiring to
| evade the law. Did they get any assurances that they wouldn't
| get in trouble for doing this?
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| years of "but we have to because of our enemies" undisciplined
| realpolitik has ended in states that insist upon their own
| legitimacy but don't even pay lip service to the rule of law.
| your enemies are people you can and should fuck over and your
| allies are people you've hoodwinked, and can and should fuck
| over.
|
| Why is the US in particular tolerating Israel sabotaging
| antiterrorism investigations?
| kujjerl7 wrote:
| >Why is the US in particular tolerating Israel
|
| We all know why. Imagine the backlash if there were half as
| many powerful people in America's media, politics, finance, etc
| who had dual-Senegalese citizenship or ancestry, and spent more
| time defending the Senegalese government, complaining of anti-
| Senegalese sentiment, and advocating for material support for
| the Senegalese people than they ever bothered with Americans.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| People seem more accepting of the concept than you might
| expect. Compare the song "My Uncle Dan McCann", which you can
| hear here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_puzpI03Xcs
|
| _I found me uncle Dan McCann
|
| A very prosperous Yankee man
|
| He holds a seat in Congress
|
| And he's leader of his clan
|
| He's helped to write America's laws
|
| His heart and soul in Ireland's cause
|
| And God help the man who opened his jaws to me uncle Dan
| McCann_
|
| As far as the song is concerned, this is admirable behavior.
| Of course, the song is written from the perspective of an
| Irishman visiting from Ireland to look for his uncle. But
| it's marketed to Americans. The question "is it a good thing
| to have American legislators whose purpose in life is to work
| for the benefit of Ireland?" never seems to come up.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Though I recognise the similarity, a Irish song about a
| relative who emigrated to America in the 19th century,
| fought in the Civil War, becomes a politician and advocates
| for Irish Independence isn't really on the same scale as
| what the Israel lobby is being accused of.
|
| And a double reminder that it's an Irish song that tells an
| Irish perspective,not an American one.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| There has been a concerted effort to tie Jewish identity to
| the modern state of israel. It certainly doesn't help that
| the birth of said state came in the wake of the Jewish people
| nearly being wiped out by an industrialized genocide. Add to
| that the previous 1000 years or so of systematized
| antisemitism and it's easy to see why the proposition can be
| very appealing to a Jewish person who had (and sometimes
| still has) very material reason to fear for their safety.
|
| This was leveraged (some might say exploited) by unsavory
| actors in the creation of a reactionary, settler-colonial
| ethno-state. This should not be too surprising, given that
| zionism arose in the same sociopolitical milieu that gave us
| modern nationalism and pan-nationalist ideologies.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Imagine if we sent Senagal $10M per day in tax payer money
| and questioning it led to your own politicians labeling you
| as "anti-senagalese" and being ousted from every political
| party.
| zaoui_amine wrote:
| That's wild. Sounds like a sketchy legal loophole for big tech.
| cedws wrote:
| Is managing servers really such a lost art that even governments
| with sensitive data must cede to AWS/Azure/GCP?
| geodel wrote:
| It is more of people who can manage servers have no standing in
| front of people who buy or sell cloud services.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _...a lost art that even governments with sensitive data must
| cede to AWS /Azure/GCP?_
|
| Apparently, US aid to a country is usually spent on US
| companies; Israel is no exception:
| https://theintercept.com/2024/05/01/google-amazon-nimbus-isr...
| dpoloncsak wrote:
| Can't buy stock contracts on Amazon/Microsoft/Google right
| before you announce the $1B investment towards cloud
| infrastructure if you roll it all yourself, though
| foota wrote:
| Apparently, yes:
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/858tb-of-governme...
| advisedwang wrote:
| I wonder if Google's plan here is to just not actually make the
| "special payments" if a gag order applies. Possibly they think
| that the contract doesn't actually require those payments (most
| contracts have a provision about not contradicting the law), or
| just ignore the contract provision when a gag order comes (how
| would Israel know, and what would they do about it anyway).
| ngruhn wrote:
| My thoughts as well. Also, "only" violating a contract sounds
| less illegal.
| overfeed wrote:
| > how would Israel know, and what would they do about it anyway
|
| Spy on, insert or recruit an asset from the pool of employees
| who are involved in any "Should we tell Israel?" discussion.
| That way, even if an answer is "No, don't alert them", the mere
| existence of the mechanism provides an actionable intelligence
| signal.
| mdasen wrote:
| If they're able to gather the intelligence without a public
| signal, they wouldn't be wanting a public signal. Any
| discussion of "should we tell Israel" would be limited to
| people who knew of the secret subpoena's existence. If Israel
| already had an asset within that group, they'd just have that
| person signal them in a much more clandestine manner than a
| public payment mandated in a signed contract.
|
| Either Israel already knows about the subpoena, in which case
| the discussion doesn't matter, or they don't, in which case
| their asset wouldn't be in on the discussion.
| worik wrote:
| > Google's plan here is to just not actually make the "special
| payments"
|
| That does not help
|
| Signing the contract was a criminal conspiracy
|
| I am not holding my breath for prosecution, though.
| shrubble wrote:
| Israel reportedly has unredacted data feeds from the USA(this
| was part of the Snowden leaks, Guardian link:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-
| americans-...).
|
| This means that they can read even the personal email of
| Supreme Court justices, congressmen and senators.
|
| However they have a gentleman's agreement to not do that.
|
| "Wink"
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| link to any credible report?
| shrubble wrote:
| Updated my post with a link, thanks.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _However they have a gentleman's agreement to not do that._
|
| Trying to remember back to Snowden, I think I recall that not
| only DON'T they have such an agreement, but the intelligence
| folks consider this a feature. The US government is
| Constitutionally forbidden from reading "US persons"
| communications, but our Constitution has no such restriction
| on third parties. So if those third parties do the spying for
| us, and then tell our intelligence folks about it, everybody
| wins. Well, except for the people.
| greycol wrote:
| >most contracts have a provision about not contradicting the
| law
|
| But is there an Israeli law that states contracts must be in
| concordance with foreign law... When the damages of an Israeli
| contract get evaluated in an Israeli court and they include the
| loss of Israeli intelligence assets will the costs not be
| significant? Yes google can pull out of Israel but they
| literally built datacentres there for these contracts so there
| are sizeable seizable assets.
|
| And yes google may also get fined for breaking foreign law by
| foreign courts. The question is if the architecture of the
| system is set up so the only way data can be "secretly"
| exfiltrated by other governments is to go through local Israeli
| employees and they're the one's breaking the foreign law (and
| they were told explicitly by foreign bosses that they can't
| share this information _wink_ ) is there any punishment for
| google other than fines dwarfed by the contract and having to
| fire an employee who is strangely ok with that, who is replaced
| by a equally helpful local employee.
| mdasen wrote:
| I think it'd be unlikely for the Israeli government to try
| and push this issue. Yes, Google has assets within Israel
| that could be seized, but it'd be a bit of a disaster. Israel
| would be creating a scenario where it told companies: go to
| prison in your home country or we'll seize everything you've
| invested here.
|
| Also, I can't believe that Google or Amazon would sign a
| contract that doesn't specify the judicial jurisdiction. If
| the contract says "this contract will be governed by the
| courts of Santa Clara County California" and the Israelis
| agreed to that, then they won't have a claim in Israeli
| courts. If an Israeli court concluded that they have
| jurisdiction when both parties agreed they don't have
| jurisdiction, it'd create a very problematic precedent for
| doing business with Israeli companies.
|
| Even if an Israeli court would ignore all that, what would
| Israel get? Maybe it could seize a billion in assets within
| Israel, but would that be worth it? For Google or Amazon,
| they face steeper penalties in the US and Europe for various
| things. For Israel, maybe they'd be able to seize an amount
| of assets equivalent to 10% of their annual military budget.
| So while it's not a small sum, it is a small sum relative to
| the parties' sizes. Neither would really win or lose from the
| amount of money in play.
|
| But Israel would lose big time if it went that route. It
| would guarantee that no one would sign another cloud deal
| with them once the existing contracts expired. Investment in
| Israel would fall off a cliff as companies worried that
| Israeli courts would simply ignore anything they didn't like.
|
| The point of these agreements is that Israel needs access to
| cloud resources. The primary objective is probably to avoid
| getting cut off like Microsoft did to them. That part of the
| contract is likely enforceable (IANAL): Israel does something
| against the ToS, but they can't be cut off. I'd guess that's
| the thing that Israel really wanted out of these deals.
|
| The "wink" was probably a hopeful long shot that they never
| expected to work. But they got what they needed: Amazon and
| Google can't cut them off regardless of shareholder pressure
| or what they're doing with the cloud no matter what anyone
| thinks of it. Suing Amazon or Google over a part of the
| contract that they knew was never going to happen would
| jeopardize their actual objective: stable, continued access
| to cloud resources.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Israel and the USA already coordinate, so I doubt this story.
| Other countries should stop selling data of their citizens to
| these two countries.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That's basically how all governments work.
|
| If you don't want your data in the hands of someone with access
| to the state's monopoly on violence, you're best off getting
| rid of all internet access in your life.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| They coordinate, but coordination doesn't mean totally aligned
| behavior and interests which never diverge, nor that they don't
| try to spy on each other. Multiple people in the United States
| have been been caught and convicted of spying for Israel and
| are serving lengthy prison sentences because of it; Israeli
| lobbying efforts have tried to get their sentences commuted, so
| far without success. That's not what you would see if
| "coordination" went as far as your post implied.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if this is all a part of the "game"
| of spycraft. Israel probably expects the US spy agencies
| would get wind of this agreement. "I see you watching me."
| gadders wrote:
| Imagine if someone asked for the data for money laundering
| investigations. The cloud provider could get prosecuted for
| "tipping off".
| neilv wrote:
| Initially, I suspected the cloud contracts were for general
| government operations, to have geo-distributed backups and
| continuity, in event of regional disaster (natural or human-
| made).
|
| But could it instead/also be for international spy operations,
| like surveillance, propaganda, and cyber attacks? A major cloud
| provider has fast access at scale in multiple regions, is less
| likely to be blocked than certain countries, and can hide which
| customer the traffic is for.
|
| If it were for international operations, two questions:
|
| 1. How complicit would the cloud providers be?
|
| 2. For US-based providers, how likely that US spy agencies would
| be consulted before signing the contracts, and consciously allow
| it to proceed (i.e., let US cloud providers facilitate the
| foreign spy activity), so that US can monitor the activity?
| dfsegoat wrote:
| fwiw towards your theory, I believe that the US Govt actually
| considers cloud providers - by way of specific services offered
| "dual use" systems for mil or civil use.
|
| E.g. you will find references in AWS docs to Bureau of
| Industry/Security rulings.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology
|
| https://www.bis.gov/
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/global-export-compliance/
| nova22033 wrote:
| If the US government asked Google and amazon for data using
| specific legal authorities and the companies tipped off the
| Israeli government, there's a chance they may have broken the
| law....
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there 's a chance they may have broken the law_
|
| There is _certainty_ they broke the law. Both federally and, in
| all likelihood, in most states.
| worik wrote:
| The agreement breaks the law
| yshuman wrote:
| theyre complicit and profiting off genocide just as they have
| been forever. The sad reality is, most of these criminals and
| white collar gangsters will never be held to account
| econ wrote:
| The empire is EOL tho
| Havoc wrote:
| Surprised that Israel didn't just decide to go it alone and build
| their own infra given the multiple reservations they clearly had.
| They have a vibrant tech ecosystem so could presumably pull it
| off
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I imagine the concern becomes survivability. Israeli's really
| like their multiple levels of backups, and having a data copy
| out of the reach of enemy arms seems high priority.
|
| Iran attacking US-East-1 would certainly be unusual.
| noir_lord wrote:
| They could likely work around that, multiple locations in-
| country _and_ an off site encrypted backup out of country.
|
| More likely is it was "aid" from the US which usually comes
| with stipulations about what/where they can spend it - common
| with weapons/military kit, wouldn't be surprised if they did
| something similar with cloud services.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Hundreds of missiles get colaunched making up multi-
| thousand missile waves. A 200 drone wave is "small".
|
| And any offsite that is "Israel's gov offsite" is an easy
| target even if in Cyprus or NYC.
|
| Comingling with a bunch of bulk commercial hosts is very
| safe from a threat modeling perspective (in this case).
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Something worth noting is that when they call a significant
| number of reserves to IDF, their industries suffer.
|
| Most SWEs are still 20-40-something men, which would be the
| same demographic being called to service (I realize women also
| serve in the IDF, but combat positions are generally reserved
| for men).
|
| So it's possible that Israel can't rely on their own private
| tech industry being unaffected during high-engagement periods.
|
| I think the _government_ does have plenty of its own infra (and
| military tech sectors would be unaffected by calling in
| reserves), but given the size of the country (and also
| considering its Palestinian second-class citizens who make up
| 20% of the Israeli population may not be trusted to work on
| more sensitive portions of its infrastructure) they 're
| probably not able to manage every part of the stack. Probably
| only China and the U.S. can do this.
| Havoc wrote:
| I work with people that have been called up for service there
| and don't think it's as disruptive to a country's data-center
| building ability as you suggest.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| > Microsoft said that using Azure in this way violated its terms
| of service and it was "not in the business of facilitating the
| mass surveillance of civilians". Under the terms of the Nimbus
| deal, Google and Amazon are prohibited from taking such action as
| it would "discriminate" against the Israeli government. Doing so
| would incur financial penalties for the companies, as well as
| legal action for breach of contract.
|
| Insane. Obeying the law or ToS, apparently, is discriminatory
| when it comes to Israel.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| It would be suicide to sign the contract. It basically allows
| them to hack their platforms without any repercussions or
| ability to stop it. They would quickly claim expanded access is
| part of the contract.
| ktallett wrote:
| This endless bowing down to Israel is and always will be
| ridiculous. When a country can do whatever they like
| unchallenged, no matter how wrong, or how illegal, we have
| failed as a society.
| ugh123 wrote:
| That now makes two of U.S.
| leoh wrote:
| On the contrary, endless shaking and freaking out about
| anything "Israel" is ridiculous. The article itself is
| entirely insinuation.
| ktallett wrote:
| I doubt the Guardian has any reason to lie about the
| documents they have seen. Based on the interactions
| regarding their war crimes, are you arguing Israel have not
| basically declared themselves above the law in many ways?
| leoh wrote:
| Let's stay to the topic at hand lest you continue to make
| my point, kimosabe. There is a "secret code" that does..
| what exactly?
| ktallett wrote:
| It is Israel's method introduced so that when Google and
| Microsoft who are legally required to pass over stored
| data based on where their servers are based, to find out
| who asked for it. I assume in the goal of trying to
| influence who asked for it.
|
| Did you not read the article?
| avh02 wrote:
| it doesn't matter what it does, why it's there, or how
| often it's used because: 1) skirts the law, 2) infringes
| on the laws of other countries, and finally 3) it's just
| so dodgy you have to be asking yourself wtf is going on.
| dlubarov wrote:
| How can an independent state "infringe on the laws of
| other countries"? If you think Israel is somehow bound by
| foreign states' laws, should it also be enforcing the
| Great Firewall, for example?
|
| And how is it dodgy to want to know who spies on your
| data?
| avh02 wrote:
| > How can an independent state "infringe on the laws of
| other countries"?
|
| you don't live on earth, do you?
| choeger wrote:
| U.S. law. It's pretty obvious that neither Amazon nor Google
| are good options for serious actors that are _not_ the U.S.
| government. So if they want to make business _outside_ the
| U.S., they need to dance around the fact that in the end they
| bow to the will of Washington.
| leoh wrote:
| It's not insane, at least based on the information in the
| article, which is entirely insinuation. Do we actually have
| access to the leaked documents and what specifically was being
| asked besides a "secret code" being used?
| vladgur wrote:
| If we take "Israel" out of the equation to remove much of
| controversy, i dont understand why wouldnt any actor, especially
| government actor, take every possible step that their data
| remains under their sole control.
|
| In other words, im curious why would Israel not invest in making
| sure that the their were storing in third-party vendor clouds was
| not encrypted at rest and in transit by keys not stored in that
| cloud.
|
| This seems like a matter of national security for any government,
| not to have their data accessible by other parties at the whims
| of different jurisdiction where that cloud vendor operates.
| nashashmi wrote:
| It would still be very alarming if a democratic country like
| Australia or European Union taking a step like this where they
| tell the vendor that it will use its data and service in
| whatever way it sees fit, and sidestep existing policies those
| vendors have on the uses of their services and data.
|
| Now maybe we can say that Israel is not a democratic system or
| environment, but then Microsoft would not be wholly desiring to
| do business serving such an entity, lest they break with US
| oversight.
|
| Israel here told the vendor that whenever there is a gag on
| them by their government against making Israel aware of their
| request, the vendor is to secretly transmit a message alerting
| them..
| Dig1t wrote:
| Because it is obviously illegal, violates both the letter and
| spirit of American law.
|
| Also because no other country has the power to get cloud
| vendors to do this and this one special country will face no
| consequences (as usual).
| vladgur wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to
| effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around
| the world"
|
| "Like other big tech companies, Google and Amazon's cloud
| businesses routinely comply with requests from police,
| prosecutors and security services to hand over customer data
| to assist investigations."
|
| The way I interpret this is Google, Amazon operates in
| multiple countries under multiple jurisdictions. The security
| services for any of these countries(including for example
| Egypt where Google has offices according to....Google), can
| produce a legal(in Egypt) order requesting Google to produce
| data of another customer( for example Israeli govt) and
| Google has to comply or leave Egypt.
|
| It seems to me that being under constant threat of your
| government sensitive data being exposed at the whims of
| another, potentially adversarial government is not a
| sustainable way of operating and Im surprised that Israel
| havent either found ways of storing its infrastructure
| locally or encrypting it five way to Sunday.
|
| This is not a comment on the specific accusation of actions
| by Israel but for strange reality of being a small-country
| government and a customer of a multi-national cloud vendor.
| tziki wrote:
| It's not irrelevant that it's Israel in question. There's not
| many countries that have been found to be committing genocide
| (by UN), are actively involved in a war or where the leaders
| are sought by ICC.
| km3r wrote:
| The UN has made no such ruling. Committees don't speak for
| the UN.
| worik wrote:
| We know already that Google and Amazon are morally bankrupt. (My
| brain is spinning that Microsoft are the "good guys" here).
|
| But I do not think we knew that Google and Amazon would engage in
| criminal conspiracy for profit
| xbar wrote:
| "The idea that we would evade our legal obligations to the US
| government as a US company, or in any other country, is
| categorically wrong,"
|
| I can imagine that this Alphabet General Counsel-approved
| language could be challenged in court.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| If you or I did this, we'd go to jail for a very long time.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Setting aside the legalities of the "wink" payments, I'm
| fascinated to know what is the purpose of the country-specific
| granularity? At most Israel would learn that some order was being
| sought in country X, but they wouldn't receive knowledge of the
| particular class of data being targeted.
|
| I wonder if there's a national security aspect here, in that
| knowing the country would prompt some form of country-specific
| espionage (signals intelligence, local agents on the inside at
| these service providers, etc.) to discover what the targeted data
| might be.
| avidiax wrote:
| Obviously, they must think it's a feature of some value.
|
| Knowing the country allows an immediate diplomatic protest,
| threats to withdraw business, and investigation.
|
| The payment is to be within 24 hours, which means that they can
| act quickly to stop the processing of the data, prevent
| conclusions from being drawn, etc.
|
| If the signaled country were the US, I would expect a bunch of
| senators to be immediately called and pressured to look into
| and perhaps stop the investigation.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| The WWW = Western Wall Wink.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Israel just can't get any more shittier.
| kossTKR wrote:
| My comment and others point to the israeli atrocities here all
| just all just got flagged and removed in a very suspicious way
| with tons of "disinformation" comments below them, basic stuff
| that's literally been said by the UN, Amnesty, Red Cross,
| Doctors without borders etc. for years is flaggable now?
|
| I thought censoring and straight up brigading was not allowed
| here? But i guess if they do what the article is about they can
| easily sway a thread like this in a few minutes, and i'm sure
| they do when stuff becomes frontpage on various sites. Can't
| talk about the genocide.
| parliament32 wrote:
| > According to sources familiar with negotiations, Microsoft's
| bid suffered as it refused to accept some of Israel's demands.
|
| MS/Azure being the good guys for once? Colour me surprised.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Israel is at war with terrorists like Hamas. Given the shady
| history of Google and Amazon shutting down servers over political
| opinions, like with Parler, Israel smartly insists on a no-cutoff
| clause in the Nimbus deal--if the companies sign on, that's on
| them. Totally reasonable. It's critical, mission-ready services.
| You can't back out of that in the middle of a war. Big Tech does
| the same for the U.S. military.
|
| Google fired ~50 protesters who tried to disrupt the project with
| their personal agendas.
|
| Israel moves intercepted Palestinian comms data from Microsoft to
| AWS after MS pulls the plug, and then the biased, anti-Israel UN
| --which the U.S. has publicly rebuked for UNRWA ties to Hamas
| terror in Gaza--starts complaining, as usual.
|
| Google and AWS, who actually know the contract details, flat-out
| deny any illegal stuff.
|
| This is critics with strong opposition to Israeli policies
| joining the political and digital front of the war. Who wrote the
| article? A super biased guy, Yuval Abraham, who's made a career
| out of slamming Israel and the IDF, teaming up with an anti-
| Israel media like +972 Magazine.
|
| But, at the end of the day, only a court with proper jurisdiction
| can properly investigate. This is my view.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > Several experts described the mechanism as a "clever"
| workaround that could comply with the letter of the law but not
| its spirit. "It's kind of brilliant, but it's risky," said a
| former senior US security official.
|
| If it wasn't Amazon, Google and Israel government, there wouldn't
| be people pretending it comply with the 'letter of the law'. It
| is simple treason, selling your own country secret to another.
|
| And the way it's done isn't that 'brilliant'. Oh yes they aren't
| writing on paper that x country asked for Israel data, they are
| instead using the country phone index and making payment based on
| that...
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Another day, another reason to love Israel. /s
| stogot wrote:
| This is basically just the warrant canaries from the FISA prism
| days. Which at the time hacker news was in favor of. Both
| companies deny doing this though
| CKMo wrote:
| Microsoft of all companies were the ones who had backbone here?
| What the heck
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