6 ms·
>Under the terms of the deal, the mechanism works like this: > If either Google or Amazon provides information to authorities in the US, where the dialing code
by gruez 1y ago
>Under the terms of the deal, the mechanism works like this:
> 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.
- mikeyouse 1y agoThis 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.
- randallsquared 1y agoFrom the article: > 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.
- AstralStorm 1y agoWarrant canary depends on agreed upon inaction, which shields it somewhat. You cannot exactly compel speech by a gag order. This, being an active process, if found out, is violating a gag order by direct action.
- votepaunchy 1y agoWarrant canaries depend on action, the removal or altering of the canary document. It’s too clever but no more clever than what Israel is requiring here.
- gruez 1y ago>Warrant canaries depend on action, the removal or altering of the canary document. 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.
- mikeyouse 1y agoRight - the whole premise is that the government cannot compel speech (in the US). So if you publish something every week that says, “we’ve never been subpoenaed as of this week” and then receive a subpoena, the government can’t force you to lie and publish the same note afterwards. The lack of it being published is the canary here.
- d1sxeyes 1y agoWhether you can be compelled to lie under these circumstances or not is not a resolved question of law. Although it seems fairly likely that compelling speech in this way is unconstitutional, if it has been tested in court, the proceedings are not public.
- lazide 1y agoGood thing no one is doing anything unconstitutional right now?
- 8note 1y agothe canary notification method is a lack of updates, not a specific update. 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"
- YZF 1y agoWhen those experts are not named one could wonder if they even exist. Why would a journalist not reveal the name of an expert who is consulting on a matter of law?
- cogman10 1y agoNot to get super conspiratorial, but I think this is almost certainly a weasel statement simply to avoid directly accusing Israel/google/amazon of breaking the law. I can't imagine any "legal expert" dumb enough to say you can violate a gag order if you use numbers instead of words.
- dlubarov 1y agoIn all likelihood there's just language like "to the extent permitted by law", which The Guardian isn't telling us about. Even if they didn't write that explicitly, it's implied anyway - Israel knows any US court would void any provision requiring Google/Amazon to commit criminal acts (illegality doctrine). It's also not really possible for Israel to be break laws of foreign states, since it's not bound by them in the first place.
- joe_the_user 1y agoAh, I think I get it. Violating the spirit of a law can be, often is, enough to get you convicted of a crime. Arguably more often than violating the letter of the law but not it's spirit. 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.
- puttycat 1y agoAgree that there's something fishy/missing in this story. Never say never, but I find it extremely unlikely that Google/Amazon lawyers, based in the US, would agree to such a blatantly mafia-like scheme.
- OhioMan2943 1y agoIt's certainly very interesting and difficult to explain...
- belter 1y ago> a blatantly mafia-like scheme. 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-donors-list-00620230 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/23/trump-ballroom-dono...
- deanCommie 1y agoWouldn't the lawyers be based in Israel - under some Israel-based shell/subsidiary of Google/Amazon, that owns the data centers, and complies with local law?
- potatototoo99 1y agoFirst day on this planet?
- worik 1y ago> I find it extremely unlikely that Google/Amazon lawyers, based in the US, would agree to such a blatantly mafia-like scheme. I trust The Guardian. So I agree It was unlikely. I find it very sad Very sad
- wahnfrieden 1y agoI don't know about Google but Amazon works with lawyers and other roles to routinely operate illegal union-busting strategies. It is blatantly illegal behavior that they use all their might to get away with. I don't know why you would find it so unbelievably surprising that they would do illegal mafia-like things.
- 1y ago
- tdeck 1y agoThis only works for Israel because members of the Israeli government expect to be above the law. They need to offer only the flimsiest pretext to get away with anything. Look what happened with Tom Alexandrovich.
- Andrex 1y agoFrom reading the Wiki, it seems like the state cops (who were somehow in charge of the case) forgot to take his passport when they arrested him, and then he just fled after he paid bail? Is there any evidence he was helped in his escape by anyone? Genuinely asking (and genuinely seeking hard facts and data).
- tdeck 1y agoHe was interviewed by the feds after his arrest and mentioned his upcoming flight in the interview transcript but still was allowed to leave the country.
- Andrex 1y agoRight, because his passport wasn't confiscated. I still err on this being stupidity by the Clark County cops in the lack of further information.
- tdeck 1y agoJust jumping in to point out that thus had 6 points before the hasbada bots swooped in and now it's at 1.
- hex4def6 1y agoYeah. 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...
- skeeter2020 1y agoIf you ever dealt with the laws around exporting technology to specific jurisidictions, this would be like saying "We can convert the algorithm code to Python and THEN export it to North Korea!"
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y agoOne of the earliest example would be "we can print PGP as a book and then..."
- LorenPechtel 1y agoI think the point here is to ensure they are legally compelled to make the payment. They can't admit to the gag order, but the existence of the gag order compels them to pay the 1,000 shekels, does the gag order compel them to not pay what they owe??
- skeeter2020 1y agoThe 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!"
- Zigurd 1y agoIt'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?
- rainonmoon 1y agoIf you're working with the people Amazon works with, the risk assessment isn't "Will we get in trouble for this?" it's "When we get in trouble for this, can we defend it on legal grounds?" Given that even the American spooks cited in this article are defending this blatantly immoral and obscene trespass, obviously Amazon's lawyers have reason to believe they can.
- somenameforme 1y agoI don't think evade the law is the right term, at least if we stick with tax analogs. Clearly the goal was to 'avoid' the law. Doing something that avoids legal obligations is legal, doing something that evades them is illegal.
- Zigurd 1y agoIt's evasion. And it is arguably a conspiracy, since the other party in the contract is complicit in crafting language that gets around an anti-terrorism law. It's serious and wrong.
- somenameforme 1y agoIt's evasion based on what? To say that with any degree of certainty you'd need to have immense knowledge in the esoteric of the balance of US laws, international treaties, and more. Even that is probably not enough as the exact bounds and constraints of laws can be somewhat ambiguous especially when they start interacting with other laws. And then on top of all of this need to start factoring in sovereign immunity, the interplay with Israel Laws and Google, and countless other things. And while 'anti-terrorism' is the pretext for these secret courts, secret orders, and other nonsense - in reality I expect they've done extremely little to actually stop terrorists. Yet it's certainly created a system where even a defacto Western/allied bloc government is worried that their data is going to be secretly seized. It's quite dystopic, all done in the name of errorism.
- godelski 1y ago> This sounds like warrant canaries It's not. This is direct communication. 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 Agreed. This is direct. It is like putting up a posting "The FBI *has* issued a warrant". Which this would be in direct violation of a gag order. Their codes are even differentiating who the issuer is. I'm pretty confident a comprehensive set of warrant canaries detailing every agency would not comply with gag orders either as this leaves little ambiguity. But this isn't even doing that. It is just straight up direct communication. 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
- sillysaurusx 1y agoWhat happens if in the gag order they explicitly forbid the target from removing warrant canaries, and give examples of existing ones? 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763032
- godelski 1y agoYeah there's lots of ways to implement them but expiration is very common. I guess you can technically be compelled to update your canary. But the main idea is to make it hard to compel the action that results in the canary existing. But don't ask me, like most HN users IANAL
- eviks 1y ago> warrant canary works by removing information, not by transmitting it. 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
- ncr100 1y agoThis feels like an "intentional self-stereotyping / Self-Mocking" technique to employ.