> 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).

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

> 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's a criminal scheme to spy on law enforcement. Both the company and the scheming country are committing crimes.

Obviously illegal lowbrow schemes asixe, it's hilarious that the company has to SEND money to Israel to notify them of a breach.

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’d assume they have agents inside the companies smoothing the way or even running interference against any inconvenient questions.

> 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?

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?

I don't understand these legal mambo jumbo, but lets make it simpler. Israel and the US have a tight intelligence agreements. No one have to keep secrets since they share information readily. That is what it means to be friends. Israel is the best outpost for western influence in the Middle East, and the US have a strategic need to maintain that to oppose forces such as China, Russia and Iran axis. There is no need for bribes or anything like that to get intelligence from both sides... The last time they started lying to each other was disastrous and henceforth I believe the relationship is stable. Not to mention it includes European powers, even though they are happy to defame Israel, they share intelligence, participate in joint operations and buy a huge amount of arms and technology from Israel and sell arms to Israel. So don't let the media fool you...

  > 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

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?

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!"

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.

>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.

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.

> officials created a secret warning system: the companies must send signals hidden in payments to the Israeli government, tipping it off when it has disclosed Israeli data to foreign courts or investigators.

> 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.

It seems crazy to me that any country would outsource storage of military intelligence data to a foreign corporation. But my reading of the article is that the data is physically stored in Amazon and Google datacenters on Israeli soil.

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.

It's only treason if Israel is an enemy. YMMV

Isn’t there a legal term for this?

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.

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.

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.

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/

In Microsoft case they provide services for storing and possibly processing (transcribing) calls of millions of people that are under belligerent occupation:

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.

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

Apparently, yes: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/858tb-of-governme...

> ...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...

Some states can get away with what ever they want, so it does not matter for them.

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

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'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?

So Microsoft is nowadays the American "do no evil" tech giant. How the times have changed!

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.

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.

I don’t think speech can be compelled like that latter idea

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> If we take "Israel" out of the equation

No, I don't think I will.

Since when is talking about Israel controversial?

> If we take "Israel" out of the equation

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.

> why would Israel not invest in making sure that the their were storing in third-party vendor clouds was not encrypted at rest

If it's encrypted in the cloud, it also cannot be processed in the cloud. For AI in particular that kinda defeats the point.

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..

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).

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.

> If we take "Israel" out of the equation

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.

Sadly not.

https://grokipedia.com/page/Bosnian_genocide

https://grokipedia.com/page/Rwandan_genocide

Saying things like “first genocide since WWII” makes me not take you serious at all. Just as a single example, Rwanda genocide in 1994 saw between 500,000 and 800,000 people killed. And it’s by far not the only one in the last 80 years.

Why do you post nothing but this to Hacker News?

Not until it was unveiled. Also still allowing. none has any backbone.

The correct amount of military or any other American money going to Israel is $0.

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.