Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret 'wink' to sidestep legal orders

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

It does seem a bit baffling. This method just adds a second potential crime, in the form of fraudulent payments.

> 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).

Very much doubt something this hot in an agreement with a foreign government as counterparty gets signed off by some random salesman

> 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.;

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?

> 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?

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!"

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.

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?

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...

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”

> 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.

My thoughts as well. Also, "only" violating a contract sounds less illegal.

> 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.

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/

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

It is more of people who can manage servers have no standing in front of people who buy or sell cloud services.

> ...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...

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

In a nation that strictly follows its own laws, sure.

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.

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..

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.

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).