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It does seem a bit baffling. This method just adds a second potential crime, in the form of fraudulent payments.
by nitwit005 1y ago
It does seem a bit baffling. This method just adds a second potential crime, in the form of fraudulent payments.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- sebzim4500 1y agoIn what sense would the payments be fraudulent? It would be real money paid out of Amazon's accounts as part of a contract they willingly signed with Israel.
- master_crab 1y agoIt is two crimes: 1. Alerting a country to secret actions taken by a third party government (my nation of citizenship, the US, definitely has rules against that) 2. Passing money to commit a crime. See money laundering. Honestly, the second crime seems aggravated and stupid. Just pass random digits in an API call if you want to tell Israel you did something.
- sebzim4500 1y agoI'm not disputing that the company would be breaking the law by doing this. That's not what fraud is though.
- Retric 1y agoFraud is intentional deception + criminal intent. The deception comes from using payments as a code instead of say an encrypted channel.
- gmueckl 1y agoIANAL, but all criminal definitions of fraud that I am aware of require an intention to harm to a victim. It's kind of hard to argue that sending money fulfills this criteria.
- Retric 1y agoAmericans get legal protections for their private health data because the disclosure of such information is considered harmful. Other countries provide legal protections for other bits of information because disclosure of that information is considered harmful to the individual, it’s that protection they are trying to breach which thus harms the person.
- gmueckl 1y agoHow is this related to the fraud discussion in this thread? Illegal disckosure of confidential information is usually handled by a separate legal framework.
- Retric 1y agoStuff is generally also fraud rather than only being fraud. We don’t know the details of what else happened so we can’t say what other crimes occurred. Same deal as most illegal things public companies do also being SEC violations.
- immibis 1y agoThe other person is saying that disclosure of health data in violation of HIPAA wouldn't be fraud. It would be a HIPAA violation, not fraud.
- Retric 1y agoThe same action can break multiple laws. Unlawful discharge of a firearm is a crime, but it can also kill someone and thus break a different law. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03107.htm https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03107.htm Here we don’t know which specific laws were broken because we lack details, but the companies definitely signed a contract agreeing to commit fraud. Anyway, the comment I responded to had “require an intention to harm to a victim” it’s that aspect I was addressing. My point was the transmission of information itself can be harmful to someone other than the recipient of that information. So the same act fulfills both aspects of fraud (deception + criminal intent), and also breaks some other law.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoNo, fraud is intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Who exactly here is the victim that gets it legal rights deprived or what is the gain at the expense of the victim?
- Retric 1y agoIE criminal intent vs criminal activity, critically the criminal activity only needs to be intended not actually occur for it to be fraud. Specifying which criminal intent is applicable is reasonable but nothing I said was incorrect. The victims are the people being deprived of their legal protections. Not everyone agrees which information should be protected but sending information can be a form of harm. If I break into your bank, find all your financial transactions, and post it on Facebook, I have harmed you. Courts imposing gag orders over criminal or civil matters is a critical protection, and attempting to violate those gag orders is harm. The specific victims aren’t known, but they intend for there to be victims.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoso which intent of benefit at the cost of which victim do you claim that Aws had when they committed the crime?
- Retric 1y agoThe payoff for AWS is the contract itself. Ultimately, it’s Israel that benefits from this information but being paid by your employer to commit fraud in a call center counts even if you’re not getting a cut of that specific victim.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoso who is the victim? who is Israel stealing money from? AWS that willingly signed the agreement?
- deleted 1y ago
- LorenPechtel 1y agoBut this is a signaling system, not a meaningful transfer of money.
- Retric 1y agoThe signal based on private information is what’s causing the harm not the movement of money. They could cause the same harm by encoding a signal in the timing of a money transfer, or hell using carrier pidgins. I could send your username and password using similar methods, the medium doesn’t matter here but the signal and their attempt to hide it does.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pcthrowaway 1y agoWouldn't just having 1000 canaries be a "legal" way to do the alerting? A government can compel Amazon to avoid notifying a target (Israel in this case) that their information has been subpoenaed, but can't compel Amazon to lie and say it hasn't sent their info. Or is the concept of a canary pretty much useless now? I'm personally one of the "activists" who is trying to avoid Amazon and Google to a practical degree, due to project Nimbus, so I'd be more than happy if their data could be accessed, and even happier to see Amazon and Google just cut ties with them altogether.
- JuniperMesos 1y agoAnd I'm personally one of the "activists" who is trying to avoid Amazon and Google to a practical degree, because they might be ordered by a foreign government (or my own government) to turn over my data to that government and be legally forbidden from saying that they have been required to do this. Or because they might succumb to activist pressure to deplatform me.
- einpoklum 1y ago> (my nation of citizenship, the US, definitely has rules against that) US rules are, unfortunately, nortoriously and outlandishly broken whenever it comes to Israel: Foreign Agent Registration Act, the Leahy Law, and probably a bunch of others as well.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Spooky23 1y agoThe payments are an act of fraud as they deprive the company of resources for no tangible business purpose. No contract authorizes the use of payments to bypass communications controls and exfiltrate data. The act of communicating privileged or sealed information on itself is at minimum contempt of court and perhaps theft of government property, wire fraud or other crimes. Typically accounts payable aren’t aware of evidence gathering or discovery, so the actor is also facing conspiracy or other felonies.
- falcor84 1y agoWhy would it be fraudulent in this case? I assume that these would be paid as refunds accounted for as a discount to a particular customer - aren't these generally discretionary? Also, I would assume that it would be the Israeli government getting services from the Israeli subsidiary of that company, so it's not clear whether even if it were a crime, which jurisdiction would have an issue with it. You could argue that it's against something like the OECD Anti‑Bribery Convention, but that would be a much more difficult case, given that this isn't a particular foreign official, but essentially a central body of the foreign government. Just to clarify, not saying that it's ok, but just that accusing it of being a "crime" might be a category error.
- prodigycorp 1y agoNot speaking to the fraudulence of this specific case, but wire fraud is an umbrella term that covers pretty much every non tangible crime. It's kind of like how everything can be securities fraud[0] bloomberg article: https://archive.is/ixwRi https://archive.is/ixwRi
- deaux 1y ago"Everything" here meaning "blatant lying" - and knowingly staying silent on something that obviously has a huge impact on a company is lying - which in corporate America is so normalized that some mistake it for being "everything". Securities fraud is incredibly easy to avoid if executives just stop lying. This soon becomes clear when clicking through the links in the article. > Yesterday New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a securities-fraud lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corp. “alleging that the company misled investors regarding the risk that climate change regulations posed to its business.” Blatant lying > if you are a public company that suffers a massive data breach and exposes sensitive data about millions of customers without their consent, and that data is then used for nefarious purposes, and you find out about the breach, and then you wait for years to disclose it, and when you do disclose it your stock loses tens of billions of dollars of market value, then shareholders are going to sue you for not telling them earlier Blatant lying The fact that most of this lying (see Exxon) is done under some kind of "nudge nudge, wink wink, we all know what's really going in" doesn't stop it from knowingly lying. That knowingly lying is securities fraud seems very logical, and nothing like "everything". This is all moot anyway now that the US is no longer interested in upholding any laws against large companies whatsoever.
- DeathArrow 1y agoWho is going to prosecute those crimes?
- Yeul 1y agoLol are we still pretending laws are more than ink on a paper? No laws require prosecution and enforcement. Western countries shield Israel from all of that.