4 ms·

Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations? If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain thin

Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations? If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain things for spying, so ... just have Israel spy on our populace and since we basically fund them and let them spy on us anyway, just make sure their database is open to us? Where else is there 1) the talent and 2) the relative degree of trust? There are a lot of stories from my childhood (of debatable ranking on the conspiracy scale) of the dirty pool and awful unconstitutional behavior by the CIA and other agencies. It is my vague impression that the increased information awareness from the web tempered the bad behavior for a couple decades, but I think the old habits will start reappearing in "cyberspace" once they gain sufficient deniability, and people's live reach a level of "mortal" dependence on it.

FridayoLeary 5y ago
Perhaps. But perhaps news outlets are singling out Israel for whatever reason. So i feel quite uncertain.
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    Criticizing Israel is a big no-no when it comes to certain issues, but I’m not sure it’s the case here. In this case they seem to be an easy foil to place the blame upon, when other governments are either doing the same thing or are collaborating with Israel to export the development.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    I always try and work with the assumption that the media is lying to me. Mainly by omission. These things are owned by private people and/or are run by people with agendas. There has to be limits to their trustworthiness. I salt every news story that gets served up to me.
  - keewee7 5y ago
    >I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel. There is plenty of criticism of Israel by The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters etc. It's not the media's fault that the Democratic and Republican party are so pro-Israel.
- gruez 5y ago
  What are the other countries that aren't being covered?
  - jb12 5y ago
    For example, Ethiopia literally drone-striked a refugee camp last month and there was almost no media coverage. Compared with the wall to wall breathless coverage of the Gaza conflict last year.
    - joecool1029 5y ago
      You're right, we could really use some more coverage of how terrible Israel treats Ethiopians too. [1][2] [1] https://forward.com/culture/481124/with-no-land-ethuopian-jews-documentary-israel-operation-moses/ https://forward.com/culture/481124/with-no-land-ethuopian-je... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056
      - gashmol 5y ago
        You can always cherry pick news items to depict Israel as bad or as good as you want to. But remember, reality is more complex than what's on the news. While there are some terrible mistakes, Israel's treatment of Ethiopian Jews is definitely not terrible.
        joecool1029 5y ago
        >While there are some terrible mistakes, Israel's treatment of Ethiopian Jews is definitely not terrible. Our definition of 'not terrible' surely must be different. I first became aware of the issues this community faces when the news broke last decade about the government sterilizing immigrant Ethiopian women without their knowledge or consent. A matter of record: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ethiopians-fooled-into-birth-control-1.5226424 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ethiopians-fool...
        5y ago
keewee7 5y ago
>If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain things for spying, so ... just have Israel spy on our populace You basically described various "X eyes" programs. Western intelligence services are completely out of control. My country (Denmark) was involved in a similar program with the NSA: >Danish intelligence (FE) also helped the US agency to spy on the Danish foreign and finance ministries as well as a Danish weapons manufacturer. The FE also cooperated with the NSA on spying operations against the US government itself. https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on-germanys-angela-merkel-report/a-57721901 https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...
0xedd 5y ago
Highest Nobel prize per capita. Has an advanced military intelligence arm and released soldiers are great employees for the IT security sector. These two combined create a strong cyber security presence. Regardless, I don't know what regulations you refer to when the US and China lead the charge on actively spying on the entire world. The US drags down with it many western countries. Which is how the "5 eyes" was created. And no one bats an eyelash. After the US was exposed for what the NSA did against its allies, no one was persecuted and the Senate was powerless to do anything. All inquires were met with "classified". So, at best, the propaganda over there convinced one person that there are regulations restraining military intelligence and the CIA.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Also they have (or had) a very high technology export tax; this has the tendency to concentrate certain kinds of development entirely within Israel. So it's not just that they have a high level of expertise; there is a strong economic disincentive for firms to move tech business out of Israel.
  - tguvot 5y ago
    tech firms actually add presence in israel but ip is usually owned by other entities, outside of israel. usually the biggest problem with ip in israel, it's in case that there was investment into company/development by chief scientist. it comes with a lot of strings attached and requires payoff to transfer ip outside of state
- pthread_t 5y ago
  > Highest Nobel prize per capita Israel is #11 [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Interesting list. I think you can ignore the first 2 or 3 as places that have one 1 or 2 winners and have a small population skew it. However that doesn’t move Israel up much. The Scandinavian countries are looking good as per usual.
jb12 5y ago
> Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations? No, why bother going all the way to Israel? They just do it in the US. When have regulations ever made a difference to surveillance?
snthd 5y ago
>Where else is there 1) the talent and 2) the relative degree of trust? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gch... >When GCHQ does supply the US with valuable intelligence, the agency boasts about it. In one review, GCHQ boasted that it had supplied "unique contributions" to the NSA during its investigation of the American citizen responsible for an attempted car bomb attack in Times Square, New York City, in 2010. >No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

Perhaps. But perhaps news outlets are singling out Israel for whatever reason. So i feel quite uncertain.

bitcharmer 5y ago
I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  Criticizing Israel is a big no-no when it comes to certain issues, but I’m not sure it’s the case here. In this case they seem to be an easy foil to place the blame upon, when other governments are either doing the same thing or are collaborating with Israel to export the development.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  I always try and work with the assumption that the media is lying to me. Mainly by omission. These things are owned by private people and/or are run by people with agendas. There has to be limits to their trustworthiness. I salt every news story that gets served up to me.
- keewee7 5y ago
  >I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel. There is plenty of criticism of Israel by The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters etc. It's not the media's fault that the Democratic and Republican party are so pro-Israel.
gruez 5y ago
What are the other countries that aren't being covered?
- jb12 5y ago
  For example, Ethiopia literally drone-striked a refugee camp last month and there was almost no media coverage. Compared with the wall to wall breathless coverage of the Gaza conflict last year.
  - joecool1029 5y ago
    You're right, we could really use some more coverage of how terrible Israel treats Ethiopians too. [1][2] [1] https://forward.com/culture/481124/with-no-land-ethuopian-jews-documentary-israel-operation-moses/ https://forward.com/culture/481124/with-no-land-ethuopian-je... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056
    - gashmol 5y ago
      You can always cherry pick news items to depict Israel as bad or as good as you want to. But remember, reality is more complex than what's on the news. While there are some terrible mistakes, Israel's treatment of Ethiopian Jews is definitely not terrible.
      - joecool1029 5y ago
        >While there are some terrible mistakes, Israel's treatment of Ethiopian Jews is definitely not terrible. Our definition of 'not terrible' surely must be different. I first became aware of the issues this community faces when the news broke last decade about the government sterilizing immigrant Ethiopian women without their knowledge or consent. A matter of record: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ethiopians-fooled-into-birth-control-1.5226424 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ethiopians-fool...
        5y ago

keewee7 5y ago

>If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain things for spying, so ... just have Israel spy on our populace You basically described various "X eyes" programs. Western intelligence services are completely out of control. My country (Denmark) was involved in a similar program with the NSA: >Danish intelligence (FE) also helped the US agency to spy on the Danish foreign and finance ministries as well as a Danish weapons manufacturer. The FE also cooperated with the NSA on spying operations against the US government itself. https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on-germanys-angela-merkel-report/a-57721901 https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...

0xedd 5y ago

Highest Nobel prize per capita. Has an advanced military intelligence arm and released soldiers are great employees for the IT security sector. These two combined create a strong cyber security presence. Regardless, I don't know what regulations you refer to when the US and China lead the charge on actively spying on the entire world. The US drags down with it many western countries. Which is how the "5 eyes" was created. And no one bats an eyelash. After the US was exposed for what the NSA did against its allies, no one was persecuted and the Senate was powerless to do anything. All inquires were met with "classified". So, at best, the propaganda over there convinced one person that there are regulations restraining military intelligence and the CIA.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Also they have (or had) a very high technology export tax; this has the tendency to concentrate certain kinds of development entirely within Israel. So it's not just that they have a high level of expertise; there is a strong economic disincentive for firms to move tech business out of Israel.
- tguvot 5y ago
  tech firms actually add presence in israel but ip is usually owned by other entities, outside of israel. usually the biggest problem with ip in israel, it's in case that there was investment into company/development by chief scientist. it comes with a lot of strings attached and requires payoff to transfer ip outside of state
pthread_t 5y ago
> Highest Nobel prize per capita Israel is #11 [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Interesting list. I think you can ignore the first 2 or 3 as places that have one 1 or 2 winners and have a small population skew it. However that doesn’t move Israel up much. The Scandinavian countries are looking good as per usual.

jb12 5y ago

> Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations? No, why bother going all the way to Israel? They just do it in the US. When have regulations ever made a difference to surveillance?

snthd 5y ago

>Where else is there 1) the talent and 2) the relative degree of trust? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gch... >When GCHQ does supply the US with valuable intelligence, the agency boasts about it. In one review, GCHQ boasted that it had supplied "unique contributions" to the NSA during its investigation of the American citizen responsible for an attempted car bomb attack in Times Square, New York City, in 2010. >No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.