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.
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).
You mean like in financing a ball room?
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.
It's kind of like how everything can be securities fraud[0]
bloomberg article: https://archive.is/ixwRi
> Yesterday New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a securities-fraud lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corp. “alleging that the company misled investors regarding the risk that climate change regulations posed to its business.”
Blatant lying
> if you are a public company that suffers a massive data breach and exposes sensitive data about millions of customers without their consent, and that data is then used for nefarious purposes, and you find out about the breach, and then you wait for years to disclose it, and when you do disclose it your stock loses tens of billions of dollars of market value, then shareholders are going to sue you for not telling them earlier
Blatant lying
The fact that most of this lying (see Exxon) is done under some kind of "nudge nudge, wink wink, we all know what's really going in" doesn't stop it from knowingly lying.
That knowingly lying is securities fraud seems very logical, and nothing like "everything".
This is all moot anyway now that the US is no longer interested in upholding any laws against large companies whatsoever.
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.
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.
Who exactly here is the victim that gets it legal rights deprived or what is the gain at the expense of the victim?
In many/most? cases, a customer can be notified and can attempt to block such information gathering, but there are also many where it's not permitted.
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.
Courts imposing gag orders over criminal or civil matters is a critical protection, and attempting to violate those gag orders is harm. The specific victims aren’t known, but they intend for there to be victims.
There is wide latitude in the criminal code to charge financial crimes. This reminds me a bit of Trump's hush money conviction. IIRC, a central issue was how the payment was categorized in his books. In this case, there would be a record of this payment to Israel in the books, but the true nature of the payment would be concealed. IANAL, but I believe that is legally problematic.
[1] If they actually violated a gag order, which realistically they won't. In all likelihood there's language to ensure they're not forced to commit crimes. Even if that wasn't explicit, the illegality doctrine covers them anyway, and they can just ignore any provisions which would require them to commit crimes.
It can very well be, and it's called obstruction of justice.
Though in this case, the real crime is treason. Those companies collaborate with a foreign government against their own.
Almost all crime requires some form of lying, at least by omission and often of the explicit sort. Fraud though, is much more narrow than "they deceived but also crimed"... and anyone saying otherwise should be so embarrassed that we never have to hear their halfwittery ever again.
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.
Same deal as most illegal things public companies do also being SEC violations.
Here we don’t know which specific laws were broken because we lack details, but the companies definitely signed a contract agreeing to commit fraud.
Anyway, the comment I responded to had “require an intention to harm to a victim” it’s that aspect I was addressing. My point was the transmission of information itself can be harmful to someone other than the recipient of that information. So the same act fulfills both aspects of fraud (deception + criminal intent), and also breaks some other law.
US rules are, unfortunately, nortoriously and outlandishly broken whenever it comes to Israel: Foreign Agent Registration Act, the Leahy Law, and probably a bunch of others as well.
The act of communicating privileged or sealed information on itself is at minimum contempt of court and perhaps theft of government property, wire fraud or other crimes. Typically accounts payable aren’t aware of evidence gathering or discovery, so the actor is also facing conspiracy or other felonies.
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)
To spy on law enforcement that is trying to fight crime is not a good thing. Israel is not the world police.
People use the country = government metaphor as a shortcut for communication, but this one takes it further than usual.
This will probably never be particularly useful, but this figure of speech is a "synecdoche" (a "metonymy" instead of a "metaphor")
Saying the US did something when referring to the government is metonymy, but not synecdoche.
This is criminal conspiracy. It's fucking insane that they not only did this, but put the crime in writing.;
The mob tried your argument generations ago. It never worked.
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?
(Australia apparently outlaws the practice, see: <https://boingboing.net/2015/03/26/australia-outlaws-warrant-...>.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
This is directly violating gag orders. Passing a message, even if it's encrypted or obfuscated is absolutely illegal. The article is a little BS as this sort of thing has been tested in court.
The only reason warrant canaries are in the gray zone is because they are specifically crafted that the business has to remove their cooperation clause to keep the ToS contract valid.
There's nothing like that at play here. It's literally "Just break the gag order, here's our secret handshake".
> 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.
> This sounds like warrant canaries
A warrant canary works by removing information, not by transmitting it. You put up a sign like "The FBI has not issued a warrant" and then remove it if they do, even if there is a gag order stating you cannot disclose that they issued you a warrant. This only works because you have not told anyone that a warrant has been issued but they must infer that the missing canary implies such a warrant has been dispatched.
> but in this case it's pretty clear to any judge that such payments constitute disclosure
I think what is funniest is that it could have been much more secret. When I saw the reference in the intro to payments I was thinking "don't tell me they're so dumb they're coding info like Costco". That they'd use the cents to detail access. Like .99 for all clear and .98 for access. But that's not "clever" at all lol
You transmit information by changing the content of the transmission, basically just like any communication works
> This only works
do you know that? Haven't heard of it actually working in any high profile case.
> because you have not told anyone that a warrant has been issued
you have told them explicitly by agreeing to a scheme both parties understand and by enacting the message change under said scheme. You basically just used some encoding to hide the plain message
I’ve always wondered. It seems just as easy for authorities to forbid removing canaries as it is to forbid telling someone something.
EDIT: ah, this is explained downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763032
> 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.
This, being an active process, if found out, is violating a gag order by direct action.
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"
I suspect they didn't go for this route as it is too slow.
As I understand, this theory wouldn’t even hold up in other countries where you could be compelled to make such a false update.
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
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.
I can't imagine any "legal expert" dumb enough to say you can violate a gag order if you use numbers instead of words.
However, if a judge dodesn't want to find someone guilty, "not violating the letter of the law" can provide a fig leaf for the friendly judge.
Is there any evidence he was helped in his escape by anyone? Genuinely asking (and genuinely seeking hard facts and data).
I trust The Guardian. So I agree It was unlikely. I find it very sad
Very sad
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...
I do think it’s kind of a different situation though because apparently the employees of Facebook could have gotten into legal trouble in those other countries they were trying to expand into.
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...
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”
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.
I think it's just more likely that we send them whatever they ask for when they ask for it.
It's cute, really. Country A turns a blind eye and even helps country B vacuum all of it's citizen's data. Then country B gifts back to A. And vice versa.
Since country A didn't do the surveillance, it didn't break any laws. Furthermore, it's legal to accept data from third parties.
As to why country A would allow even its senators and congressmen to be spied on by B? That's obvious - country A's intel agencies are most interested in their budget!
But this is a special case. It's Israel.
> Since country A didn't do the surveillance, it didn't break any laws.
Of course it did, that's where the data came from!
And laws are also written extremely broadly, which gives the intelligence agencies extreme leeway in interpreting them as they see fit. And even if they go beyond that, it's not like there are any consequences. For one of the most overt - James Clapper indisputably lied under oath and absolutely nothing happened. Furthermore politicians are generally ignorant on most topics, especially on anything remotely technically related. But revealing that ignorance is politically damaging, so they turn into yes men on most of these topics.
2. The power of the constitution ends at the border.
It's pretty sick, but that's what it amounts to. The CIA can't operate within US borders but it can operate at and outside borders. That means sending messages internationally are fair game for warrant-less searches.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Cloud doesn't just mean foreign data centers it means 3rd party infrastructure and expertise, which in this case at least, some of is local to the country. The point is that any 'secret' surveillance is reported. I.e. person in US gets ordered to access data, they connect to data center with appropriate credentials, which is monitored and either questioned and billed, or get flagged locally as not reportable and so not logged (making it show up on the shadow logs installed by local Israeli intelligence assets). Foreign employees best efforts to comply with espionage orders still reveal their actions and local employees happily obey local reporting laws knowing they are outside of those jurisdictions and helping their country.
Yes it can be forced to fall apart, but it has to be done in the open (because it will require changing local data center operations) and will be time consuming unless an actual open order by the US to immediately stop working with Israel on this which is extremely unlikely to happen.
That does not help
Signing the contract was a criminal conspiracy
I am not holding my breath for prosecution, though.
Google/Amazon could just say yes until the contract is signed, and then just not comply. Israeli government would have no recourse since they can’t go to a US court, and file charges for a US company NOT breaking the law or for complying with a court order. Israel also would not want this to come to light.
It’s like a criminal’s promise. The only recourse is taking your business elsewhere, which Israel would do when they’re tipped off anyways. But at least if Google/Amazon fail to wink, contract lasts a little longer.
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...
> The terms of the Nimbus deal would appear to prohibit Google and Amazon from the kind of unilateral action taken by Microsoft last month, when it disabled the Israeli military’s access to technology used to operate an indiscriminate surveillance system monitoring Palestinian phone calls.
I don’t understand the connection between these two things. The article seems all over the place.
> Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
This bar is virtually impossible to clear. You'll never get a US court to convict anybody of treason for anything concerning Israel. Espionage sure, but not treason. The last time anybody got convicted of treason for anything in America was for acts committed during WW2, which is the last time America was in a properly declared war.
If for some reason the US were storing sensitive data in US-based datacenters operated by a foreign corporation, don't you think they would try to take measures to prevent that data from being exfiltrated? It would be idiotic for Israel not to take what measures it could.
As for the idea that Amazon is acting treasonously - is warning someone that your country is spying on them treasonous? I think they should warn anyone and everyone whose data is being shared with any government, as long as they stay within the letter of the law in the places they operate.
Yes it is if you are American. Snowden revealed that the American government was spying on every single American, now he is forced to live hidden in Russia.
It is like if it is illegal to import more then $1000 into the country without declaring, and you (clever) give $900 each to 4 of your friends who are conveniently traveling with you, so you only walk across the border with remaining $400, not breaking any laws. Then when inside the country, your friends give you back the $900 each, meaning you just de-facto imported $4000 while technically crossing the border with less then $1000, as legally required.
If normal people tried to do this they would obviously be charged with the crime of illegally importing money, but also with something like a conspiracy to evade the law.
At least for us. For the more fortunate, maybe it’s just a “creative interpretation of law.”
Wouldn't those involved be liable to years in prison?
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.
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?
E.g. you will find references in AWS docs to Bureau of Industry/Security rulings.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-isra...
I don't imagine Google and Amazon are any better. I.e. take boatloads of money, while sticking the head into sand and pretend it's not likely used to help the illegal occupation of Palestinians, to persecute and harm them.
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...
Insane. Obeying the law or ToS, apparently, is discriminatory when it comes to Israel.
I hate to break it to you, but the largest oil "companies in the world" are not Exxon or Royal Dutch Shell -- they are non-democratic, state-controlled Arab entities which are orders of magnitude larger. If you think for a moment that said countries are not quietly pouring millions if not billions of dollars to cover up their own injustices and to foster hatred for Israel, you would be among the great majority, but also tragically uninformed.
You're strenuously refuting a point I didn't make. So, I decided anything else you wrote would be quite inappropriate and not worth my time.
You remind me of a person who (years ago) accused Israel of "killing minors". Not mentioning that the minors in question were committing terrorist acts.
Israel literally forced Israeli settlers from Gaza to completely give it to Palestine. Yet HAMAS kept the population in poverty by rejecting any attempts at peace. It was a de-facto capital crime in Gaza to work with Israeli government.
From Israel's point of view, they tried playing fair with HAMAS. While HAMAS kept playing dirty. HAMAS at various times: murdered civilians, indiscriminately bombed cities, attacked hospitals, used ambulances for troop transport, used rape as a weapon of war, etc.
There's nothing that Israel is doing to HAMAS that HAMAS hadn't done to Israel before. Yet we're not seeing any pushback against HAMAS from the usual suspects. I guess their only problem is just that Israel is doing everything _better_ than HAMAS?
you're taking from a very privileged position in terms of media consumption. the media that criticizes the genocide and the blackflag on oct 7th is very niche and you seem to consume it exclusively. the message is very different within mass media.
And how is it dodgy to want to know who spies on your data?
you don't live on earth, do you?
Did you not read the article?
They will have agents both known and unknown operating at those companies. A company cannot as a policy set out to violate the law (if it's smart). It would be trivial for individuals to have covert channels set up.
There is certainty they broke the law. Both federally and, in all likelihood, in most states.
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.
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.
Not a lawyer. Can this statement hold in a US court of law? To me it sounds sleazy and ambiguous. To say if an “idea is wrong” could mean it’s a bad idea, an immoral one or a false “idea”. But in any case, an idea is not a statement or a fact. I have a hundred ideas everyday. Some are right, some are wrong and others in between.
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.
I can imagine that this Alphabet General Counsel-approved language could be challenged in court.
So Microsoft is now more ethical than Google and Amazon? What times we live in!
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.
Iran attacking US-East-1 would certainly be unusual.
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.
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).
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.
Conversely, if you don't, it's not hard to understand at all when you consider that there are oodles of American politicians, at all levels, actually publicly declaring that they put Israeli interests over US interests. What's hard to understand about _that_ is that, for some reason, it's not considered pure and simple treason.
No, I don't think I will.
Since when is talking about Israel controversial?
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..
If it's encrypted in the cloud, it also cannot be processed in the cloud. For AI in particular that kinda defeats the point.
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).
"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.
If after Oct 7th Israel went and killed a single child in retaliation, that would be unjust. Justification and proportionality are not measured like that.
Justification is established by a valid objective to go to war. Proportionality is measured in comparison to the military objectives. The Oct 7th attack clearly justifies the removal of Hamas. The proportionality of doing so is dependent on the size of Hamas's army (20k-30k), the size of their infrastructure (500 kms of tunnels), and their ability to separate their operations and operators from civilians.
Just to clarify, are you saying all Jews are murderous by nature?
This is equivalent to you claiming that calling out ethnic cleansing campaigns in Sudan is racist. I hope that makes it clear how ridiculous that sounds.
Just because Hamas, build the biggest underground bomb shelter network and refused to let any civilians in it and that that it operated militarily out of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, causing inevitable casualties by civilians does not make it a genocide. It makes it a terrible war. A war that Hamas started on October 7.
AKA, hostages.
They just released 2k as part of a swap a week ago, but are still holding more hostages than Hamas: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/who-are-palestinia...
----
October 7 was horrendous, but it's not like history started from a blank slate that morning.
Are you saying what I think you're saying? Holding 200+ hostages justifies killing 18 thousand children? "inevitable casualties" - what a feckless way to call what anyone else can see clearly as a systematic attempt to kill and eradicate a group of people.
My man, Israel had a blockade surrounding Palestine on all sides for years prior. October 7th was a retaliation for a lot of the pain Israel had inflicted on Palestine (sorry- Greater Israel). And Bibi was well in the know and all too happy to let it happen.
> largely ignores role of Hamas in the conflict
Bibi loved and loves Hamas. Also, Israel has nuclear weapons. A lot of them.
It's like David and Goliath, except in this case David is malnourished to the extreme, has no future, no present, no past except seeing his family and friends bombed to oblivion....and only can attack Goliath with a few pebbles. Meanwhile, Goliath has plot armor and nukes.
>Frames the country as a "settler-colonial" project ignoring realities of jewish history in the region.
And not ignoring Palestine, which had existed for 12 centuries before the birth of Christ?
A blockade that was specifically accounted for the the preceding ceasefire agreement that was in place on Oct 6th.
> David and Goliath
Yet, it is David who keeps starting this fight, losing, then calling Goliath unjust because his ability to punch back is greater.
> And not ignoring Palestine, which had existed for 12 centuries before the birth of Christ?
Nope not ignoring. Both groups have a long history in the region. Arabs through colonization centuries ago. Heck, "Palestine" even comes from the Jewish word for invader (the naming is not connected to the arabization of Palestine).
B) you’re missing out on cause and effect here — could it be that Israeli started blocking import of goods that can be used for military purposes shortly after Hamas gain control of Gaza in 2007 and started shooting missiles at Israel
B) they implemented immediately after Hamas won the election, including the West Bank. Until they were forced out.
B) 2005 - Israel withdraws from Gaza
Jan 2026 - Hamas wins popular elections
Feb 2026 - rocket and mortar attacks launched by new Hamas govt begin. 179 attacks in February alon
Feb 2026 - international sanctions and tightened Israeli border control begins
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/08/israel1
I see a different picture in 2006 Feb. not rocket attacks.
Then this whole story would disintegrate.
I am baffled by the manufactured outrage this story is generating. "oh no. <country> is sidestepping the NSA which we loudly proclaim to be evil at every opportunity, and (gasp) imposing their own conditions and bullying gigantic tech companies which are even more evil."
This from the same group of people who insist that europe should host their own data.
American companies sidestepping law related to international relationships between the US and other countries in order to benefit a foreign state??
That story would disintegrate? In what universe?
Assuming it's even true, there is no side-stepping international relations between the US and other countries.
If Egypt were to issue a legal order with a gag clause ordering Amazon to release Israeli data, and Amazon were to signal that fact to Israel, how does this involve the US at all?
Seems like you did not understand the story.
What can I say?
I am incapable of saying anything, so I asked Gemini:
``` "I find it difficult to discuss this so calmly. Are we becoming desensitized to the human suffering we're describing?" ``` https://gemini.google.com/app/7f55819532ae02cb
Have a good day!
This kind of absurd blunder is what happens when American public schools have twelve years of history education that consist of nothing but "Holocaust Class". Bro has probably had to read every popular holocaust book but has never even heard of Cambodia.
This seems like a very dumb way to communicate in a criminal conspiracy: it's more traceable than a simple message, with permanent record, and more people are involved to enact the communication.
Is there any benefit?
LOL. No. That is not how it works. Legal combs through every contract, negotiates, and gates the process, while revenue officers act very self-entitled to having the contract signed ASAP. Legal has to do their job, or they're a liability.
Why is this characterized as a "demand"? Amazon and Google have the freedom that Microsoft does to decline.
This story stinks.
MS/Azure being the good guys for once? Colour me surprised.
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.
It's not censoring, hn has a very low tolerance for flamebait.
Funny, I thought he was adjusting his Bayesian priors based on available evidence.
From a classical logic perspective, it's correct that authority does not imply truth.
But from a pragmatic Bayesian perspective, when verifying the truth of a matter is difficult-to-impossible for a layperson, we all try to figure out the truth based on what authorities say and our assessment of their trustworthiness.
----
HNers really need to grok that high-school debate club doesn't help you with reality.
There are different interpretations of israels responsibility under international law. But the maximalist claims don't take into account the reality of the situation at all. No other country would have acted differently given the circumstances. Most would have gone much further.
The underlying logic of all these assessments are flawed in my opinion. It's not crazy that a humanitarian organisation would care about humanitarian crises though it's odd that none of the other much larger crises currently going on are generating anywhere near as much outcry.
The red cross in particular has done itself no favours. They could not have done less to help the hostages. Their entire role was at best acting as a glorified uber service acting as props in hamas propoganda videos. Not the best look.
Every humanitarian organization on earth works for Hamas? Why don’t Zionists demand the same level of scrutiny for facts in favor of Israel?
I can’t tell you the number of times IDF shills have tried to discredit internationally recognized humanitarian orgs only to post obviously fabricated drivel unworthy of being used as toilet paper in response… it’s so cringe worthy.
But I do not think we knew that Google and Amazon would engage in criminal conspiracy for profit
Maybe Amazon and Google created a compliance issue for themselves, but that's not Israel's problem; Israel isn't obligated to comply with foreign states' gag orders.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC, which is an obvious foreign agent that's blatantly operating in violation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac... for >70 years now.
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.
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.
And a double reminder that it's an Irish song that tells an Irish perspective,not an American one.
OK, they're probably OK with the way I worded it, but as soon as you admit that many of those pro-Israel factions are of one religious background in particular, it's a no-no.
Which is stupid. It's not stereotyping to admit powerful people care about their own subgroups. It's stereotyping to insist it's only one group that's like this, or that everyone in that group is like this.
The objection I have with that is that it's reductive.
"It's not *so* bad" is different than "it's not *entirely* bad", and my objection stands, whether or not "someone else could achieve good results"
To hold a strong opinion on whether those terms apply, I'd need more information than is available to the public, and go on a case by case basis.
If the Israelis are committing genocide, it's of a people obsessed with destroying them.
If it's colonisation, it's colonisation with about a dozen caveats.
That doesn't make things any better for Gazans, for whom I also have sympathy.
The aspect of the original comment that I was poking fun of is that it is reductive.
That's the same justification used by a certain failed Austrian painter.
Genocide is never right.
The situations seem quite different to me, but maybe there is an outrageous gap in my knowledge of Weimar Germany.
For me Zionists for Palestinians are fair game, the same as Germans Nazis were fair game to German Jews.
The fact that Nazis are backing up Zionists in the West tells all the story.
That's not the fault of palestinians, and so it does make zionists 'fair game' through a pro-palestinian lens.
On the other hand, it does make it hard to say either side is in the wrong.
And I don't attach significance to which side nazis support today. There are far-right movements who claim to support gay rights, too. It's meaningless.
Nazis in the West are actually divided quite a bit on this. Old-school Nazis were often anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian; some even converted to Islam from going down that path (e.g. Johann von Leers, Ahmed Huber). Support for Israel and Jews as "more white" than Arabs is a more recent phenomenon, and those two groups often fight each other.
By your logic, false flag attacks can be used to legitimize genocide. I am not saying those attacks were false flags. But, malicious actors aware of your logic can plan false attacks, “sacrifice few for greater good” and you will then support a genocide because it satisfied your conditions.
I should also note that the tactic itself dates way back before Israel became an independent state. Here's one honest Zionist writing it like it is:
Is there any subject in particular I am meant to address from that link? Quite a lot happened between 1923 and the founding of the modern state of Israel. As the letter itself implies, zionists had diverse goals and attitudes.
It should also be noted that the ruling party, Likud, is specifically a Revisionist Zionist organization, with an explicit historical link to Betar, and founded by Begin who was a Jabotinsky disciple. So this isn't just some kind of random coincidence; what we're seeing Israel doing in Gaza today is a direct consequence of taking Jabotinsky's main premise and running it to conclusion.
- when the colonists began colonizing, there were already a minority of jews in the region
- many of the colonizers believed themselves, with some reason, to be native to the land
- most israelis today, through no fault of their own, were born in israel
- when zionists came to colonize israel, it was already colonized (twice over)
- the initial colonization was carried out 'legally' (though, in hindsight, what that means is questionable)
- many of the colonizers were fleeing persecution and, especially around the holocaust, had no nations willing to accept them as immigrants
I'm thinking that 99% of people would feel horrible and/or morally responsible if they lent an axe to their neighbor Mr. Seemed-Nice, which he then used to kill his wife. Vs. far less so, if their neighbor bought his fatal ax from Amazon or Walmart.
This might seem like a silly distinction to some but what I find depressing about modern culture wars is how "we disagree on these points" seems to morph into "you and everything you represent is terrible". Nuance matters.
Vs. 99% of educated and rational people recognize that as a bombastic/emotive statement. Arguing its truth value is like kitchen-testing whether a cookie recipe turns out worse if you replace "2C sugar, 1/2t salt" with "2C salt, 1/2t sugar".
And sadly, such bombastic/emotive mis-statements are far, far older than our modern culture wars.
To the emotional statement: I think I’d get a reaction if rather than saying “I don’t think Go is a good language” I said something like “Go is objectively the worst programming language ever devised”. I get your point but if you feel emotional about something then say so - IMO the parent comment did much more than that.
>Vs. 99% of educated and rational people recognize that as a bombastic/emotive statement.
That's a cope. Words have meanings, and being able to make and walk back on misleading/false statements with "I was being bombastic/emotive and it wasn't meant to be taken literally" absolutely poisons any sort of attempt rational discourse. "Israel committed war crimes" becomes not a statement about whether Israel broke international laws but whether you support Israel or not, "fake news" becomes not a statement about whether the news story was conjured from thin air but whether you like the story, etc.
If you logically disproved the "Israel is pure and undiluted..." statement - say, by finding one saintly-pure Israeli preschool teacher - would anyone outside the Temple of Ultimate Pedantry really care?
Vs. if you took that statement to mean "I am very angrily anti-Israeli", might you find it quicker & easier to communicate your own position? Or at least make it a bit difficult for people (who you obviously don't like) to deny your interpretations of their positions?
Do you think Trump supporters actually cares whether the stories he calls out as "fake news" were actually fake or just displeased the president? Or whether the election was "stolen", or he simply didn't like the way it was conducted?
>Vs. if you took that statement to mean "I am very angrily anti-Israeli", might you find it quicker & easier to communicate your own position? Or at least make it a bit difficult for people (who you obviously don't like) to deny your interpretations of their positions?
But why add all that extra stuff about being the most evil? If you just wanted to express his displeasure at israel, you could have just said "I'm mad at israel", or even "israel is evil". The fact OP went out of his way to say that "israel is the most evil" suggests that he thought he had something to gain from doing so, like adding the fib makes his argument more convincing or something. Same with Trump calling stuff "fake news" instead of just saying "I don't like this story about me".
Most don't. A few (and more of the swing voters) care somewhat. Good reason to not spend (waste) time getting picky on the details, eh?
> But why...?
Some combination of social signalling/performance - "look at my uber-ultimate loyalty to the anti-Israel cause!!!" - and an ancient human tendency to exaggerate for emotional emphasis. Anecdote: Back in the 1900's, one of my nieces routinely referred to her kid sister as the "spawn of the devil" and similar. Why? Until the birth of the younger, the older niece had been the baby of the family, and had her own bedroom. Plus normal sibling rivalry. Fast-forward 2 decades from that - and the two nieces were on perfectly friendly terms. The older one both got the younger one a nice office job, and was happy to have the younger one babysit her own small children.
Arguing about pedantic details does not change that.
Honestly, what is your point? What are you seeing that the rest of us aren't getting? For the record, my mother's family is mostly Sephardic.
This was about 50 years ago, was accidental, and Israel apologized and paid reparations soon after.
This is a pretty clear example of double standards for Israel - no other country gets demonized for friendly fire incidents.
We may never know the truth, taking Israel's Military Censor into account.
Israel captured the Golan Heights because it had been used to shell Israeli communities for decades, and that continued even after Syria officially accepted the ceasefire. It would be unreasonable to expect Israel to tolerate that sort of aggression; no capable military would do so.
It would also be unreasonable to allow Israel to colonize the annexed territory in violation of international law, especially if the goal is to reduce the exposure of Israeli citizens to reparation attacks. The Knesset isn't exactly known for reasonable decisions though, and I'm willing to extend that judgement to the upper echelons of Israeli leadership as well. Maybe I'm bigoted.
Again - evidence-based speculation would be of use if the IDF didn't directly censor all domestic reporting and investigations. An honest postmortum was never going to be an option, even if Israel bombed the Liberty with custards and coffee. Cui bono, you decide.
This just seems like another double standard. What modern military doesn't censor reporting during a war in its own territory?
> An honest postmortum
Israel and the US settled the matter (with the help of substantial reparations) and went on to become allies. Why would they bother trying to convince anyone else?
And what would the convincing postmortum you're expecting look like? Some kind of third-party investigation? Can you name any military that willingly subjects itself to such investigations?
The ones willing to defer to an ICJ investigation? Hell, an IAEA inspection?
Both Dimona and the Liberty were critically reliant on America's infinite tolerance for Israeli transgression. Kennedy's stance towards Israel could have only convinced Johnson that resistance was futile, there's no way he could raise a finger if he did suspect foul play. The two nations were motley and often disagreeing partners united by a desire to mete out territory of neighboring petrostates. If a closed-door meeting ever decided that secrecy was the cost of keeping oil prices low, not a single American president would put their name on the line to speak up about it.
Not a damning accusation, sure. But it's also the same thing many Americans wondered in 1967.
What state has ever consented to an ICJ investigation that was focused on interrogating its military command or other sensitive military assets?
> Hell, an IAEA inspection?
If a state is an IAEA member, their nuclear program is (ostensibly) not a military program, so there should be no military secrets at risk.
> America's infinite tolerance for Israeli transgression
Even if we accept the extraordinary claim that the US would have tolerated what it knew was an intentional attack on an expensive ship, at best that means that we can't infer anything from the US reaction. There are plenty of other reasons to doubt that the attack was intentional. I.e. it's extremely difficult to imagine any risk-benefit analysis under which it would make sense for Israel to suddenly attack a neutral superpower in the middle of a war for its survival.
I don't buy them, especially given Israel's 1967 political situation. Fun discussion though, thanks for entertaining it!
Taking into account the lengths to which Israel goes currying favor with the US, pretending to show remorse for a sunken ship is nothing compared to the sham Dimona investigation they put together for the Kennedy administration. Lying isn't beneath their means.
Now my question: having purchased that land from France, did America have a right to eject the native people who lived there? Or did France in fact have no right to sell that land which, in all practical ways, actually belonged to the people who lived there?
Israel "bought" that land from people who had no legitimate ownership of the land in the first place.
Likewise, if you legally purchase double-digit percentages of Indian, Chinese, Brit, Australian land, it doesn't give you the moral or legal precedent to expel the natives from the rest of their land and declare it your state.
Israel is comitting a genocide and attacking/murdering everyone right now.
That is the crucial difference.
What is wrong with "helping" Sudan? Your comment suggested that the only reason you weren't "helping" in Rwanda is that you couldn't because it was 30 years ago.
If you think commenting here is "helping" "Palestine", you need to recalibrate your assessment of the impact of HN comments on the world.
It in no way diminishes the genocide in Gaza
Both countries should be sanctioned
What’s also neat is that in America you can say “free Sudan” and not worry about losing your livelihood, but good luck with saying “free Palestine” and not getting swarmed.
"Operation Cast Thy Bread was a top-secret biological warfare operation conducted by the Haganah and later the Israel Defense Forces which began in April 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war. The Haganah used typhoid bacteria to contaminate drinking water wells in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread
Not to mention that Israel has dropped the equivalent of several nuclear bombs on a tiny open-air concentration camp with no possibility to flee.
(No, this is not because of your views; yes it works the same way for accounts with opposite views. It's because this is a failure mode for HN, and therefore an important line to draw.)
Change it to Israel, sprinkle in some vaguely insidious language (a contract becomes a "secret agreement", etc), and suddenly it's a scandal.
[1] https://d1.awsstatic.com/Security/pdfs/Amazon_AWS_Informatio...