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Amazon and Google set up a secret "winking mechanism" to report data transfers to foreign governments as part of Israel’s Nimbus deal, leaked documents reveal.
Amazon and Google, which won the Israeli government's Nimbus cloud computing deal, agreed to demands to set up a special reporting mechanism about data handed to foreign governments, as part of the contract, according to leaked documents seen by the Guardian, as part of a joint investigation with left-leaning Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
Through a so-called coded system called the "winking mechanism," every request to hand over data to a foreign government is accompanied by a report made in a way that seems to come straight out of a spy thriller. Amazon and Google reportedly send Israel's Finance Ministry secret codes through a money transfer that reveals the identity of the country that required them to disclose the information, even if the country has issued an order preventing them from revealing that they provided such information.
According to the report, put together by activist and researcher Yuval Avraham of the Local Call website, the secret code system works through four-digit payments based on the international telephone code of that country.
Thus, in cases where Google or Amazon provides information to US authorities, they are obliged to transfer NIS 1,000 to Israel as part of the reporting mechanism, since the US country code is 1. If the companies are required to provide information to Italy, they will transfer NIS 3,900 to Israel, and in the case of Ireland, whose country code is 353, NIS 3,530 will be transferred. In the event that the companies are unable to legally report the identity of the country, they must pay Israel NIS 100,000 within 24 hours. The Guardian presented a legal opinion claiming that this is a circumvention of existing legislation in both the US and Europe, which prohibits reporting to a third party when the data is transferred to them by court order.
In addition to the unique "winking mechanism", the Guardian's investigation depicts a situation in which Google and Amazon agreed to extreme terms and extraordinary requirements from the state in order to be partners in its cloud projects. According to the Guardian, the agreement with Israel is exceptional in that "the companies cannot suspend or revoke Israel's access to their technology if it acts in a way that violates the terms of use and does not allow them to take a similar step to that taken by Microsoft."
Following a previous Guardian investigation, Microsoft canceled its cloud and AI agreement with IDF Intelligence Unit 8200 due to the claim that listening to Palestinians without their consent for the purpose of fighting terrorism constitutes a violation of its terms ...
Google and Amazon stood by Israel during the war and were partners in home front projects and managing civilian aspects of government activity. Google and Amazon fired employees — who publicly spoke out against Israel and against the company's contracts with Israel — for violating employment agreements that prohibit entry into controversial political issues.
At the same time, Israel is not without risk — it lacks a "sovereign cloud", a data center or network of servers that also manages the critical AI processes for the government and Israel's civilian sector and allows local AI processing with sovereign language models. Such activity reduces Israel's exposure to manipulation by hostile elements or to arbitrary decisions, such as the decision made by Microsoft on Unit 8200. The IDF is also far from moving to a Nimbus franchise-based operation and still relies largely on Microsoft servers, a company that has not signed with the state on terms like those granted by Google and Amazon, and, as demonstrated in the case of the 8200 unit, quickly buckles to pressures exerted on its operations in Israel.
The FBI’s growing list of domestic threats has mutated in recent years to include every conceivable affiliation of Americans across the political spectrum: right-wing violent extremists, left-wing violent extremists, black identity extremists, and animal rights extremists. The current administration has even added nihilistic violent extremists—those who “believe in nothing”—to the laundry list. The Biden administration, for its part, aided in this exercise by vastly overstating the threat posed by Trump-aligned conservatives in the wake of January 6th. But neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have ever grandstanded about another significant threat group that the FBI secretly monitors on U.S. soil: Israeli Based Organized Crime Syndicates, or “IBOCS”.
Leaked FBI records and court filings detail widespread money laundering, taxpayer theft, and drug smuggling enterprises operated in the U.S. by Israeli citizens connected or belonging to Israeli crime groups. Despite the trickle of prosecutions over the past 25 years, the FBI has never publicly disclosed the fact that it has designated resources allocated to investigating these criminal organizations. ...
As far back as 2009, leaked State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks detail one of the reasons why criminals belonging to or associated with Israeli crime families and syndicates have been able to operate inside America with ease: The State Department is not authorized to block their visas. The cables warn of the Israeli mafia taking on a growing role in the American trade of ecstasy, and of the loophole which prevents U.S. embassies from automatically denying Israeli crime figures travel documents.
While the State Department has formalized powers in its foreign affairs manual to restrict visas for Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, the Italian mafia, the Hells Angels biker gangs, Outlaws, Bandidos, Mongols and two dozen Latin American gangs including Tren de Aragua, Israeli organized crime groups remain absent more than a decade after the State Department cable first warned of the Israeli mafia loophole. ...
A former FBI special agent who worked on investigations involving IBOCS told The American Conservative, “There is real Israeli organized crime in this country, and there is a formalized FBI program for investigating these groups,” adding that “they look for the success of other criminals and then try to build a better model on those.”
He also said, “Once you move beyond that and your target becomes more sophisticated, they are presumed to be intelligence operatives and operatives of the Israeli government and then that gets moved highside in the national security division.” ...
“It’s no secret that politics inevitably shapes enforcement priorities,” the agent said, explaining why the bureau has never highlighted its IBOCS enforcement. “This has not been a popular thing to wave around in the press, which is why you see a steady stream of prosecutions related to Israeli crime figures without the same discussion of organization that you might have with cartels or gangs.”
So politically unpopular is criticism of illegal activities by Israelis that repeated espionage efforts have been swept under the rug, or at the very least, restricted from public view. In 2019, POLITICO reported that intelligence officials suspected that Israel was behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices planted around the White House and in other locations in Washington D.C. According to the report, the Israelis were not sanctioned with a formal reprimand from the State Department.
Another potential reason for the lack of visibility on IBOCS is the changing face of Israeli politics and the increasing proximity of organized crime figures to the ruling Likud party. Ten Likud officials chose to spend the Jewish holiday of Sukkot with convicted mobster Rafi Chaim-Kedoshim this year. In the past, members of Israel’s mafia families elected to parliament on the Likud line have attempted to use their positions to quash investigations in organized crime.
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