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Europeans' health data sold to US firm run by ex-Israeli spies
https://archive.ph/1c0ED https://archive.ph/1c0ED
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- jack_tripper 10mo agoIt's always companies run by Unit 8200 ex-Israeli spies that are running these telemetry-/ad- surveillance dragnets, and there's never any retaliatory action against them. Like how about a call to Benny's office saying "hey buddy, reign your dogs in, our citizens are off limits"?
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- juggert 10mo ago[flagged]
- mikkupikku 10mo agoOnline scamming and malware are Israel's most cherished national industry, they've been specializing in this stuff for nearly 30 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley > Download Valley is a cluster of software companies in Israel, producing and delivering adware to be installed alongside downloads of other software.[1] The primary purpose is to monetize shareware and downloads. These software items are commonly browser toolbars, adware, browser hijackers, spyware, and malware. Another group of products are download managers, possibly designed to induce or trick the user to install adware, when downloading a piece of desired software or mobile app from a certain source. > Although the term references Silicon Valley, it does not refer to a specific valley or any geographical area. Many of the companies are located in Tel Aviv and the surrounding region. It has been used by Israeli media[2] as well as in other reports related to IT business.[3] Getting an Israeli extradited is almost impossible, their in-group ethnic bias is so strong that they even fight the extradition of rapists. The Israeli government would rather see a jewish rapist escape justice in Israel than face justice in a gentile nation. Extraditing some businessmen who merely scam and destroy people's computers? Fat chance in hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malka_Leifer_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malka_Leifer_affair https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jewish-american-pedophiles-hide-from-justice-in-israel/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jewish-american-pedophiles-...
- sumalamana 10mo agoIsrael is gonna have a really big PR problem as the boomer generation ages and dies.
- jack_tripper 10mo ago[flagged]
- anonym29 10mo agoThe latter has always been true already of mainstream social platforms like Facebook, and the former isn't a patch, that's the old strategy. It's not working anymore.
- ipaddr 10mo agoThe Larry Ellison purchase Tiktok, CBS and possible Warner Bros/CNN is still in play ensuring a media takeover.
- anonym29 10mo agoIt's too late to matter. Try finding someone under 30 who isn't already a zionist that has anything positive to say about Israel. It's like pulling teeth.
- Nasrudith 10mo agoGiven how loosely zionism is defined that is pretty much a tautology. There is no definition of zionist in use here, it is just vibes based 'reasoning'. Zionist is rhetorically used to maintain their political bubble. They cannot say if for instance a moderate and nuanced opinion ("October 7th was legitimate causus beli -but blocking aid is a hard crossing of the lines.") is Zionist or not. Let alone statements like "Israel has a right to exist." qualify. There is plenty of motte and bailey to go around and the truth has already been buried in an unmarked grave.
- ishi 10mo agoIt isn't a "telemetry-/ad- surveillance dragnet". Kitenet's product is a "Private Data Network (PDN) to control, monitor, and secure data exchanged between people, machines, and systems across user collaboration, automated workflows, and enterprise AI". It stands to reason that ex-cryptographers from Unit 8200 would use the expertise they gained to launch legitimate companies that provide cybersecurity solutions.
- stocksinsmocks 10mo agoI think it’s much more likely they’re creating honeypots as contractors. There is a lot more money in surveillance than privacy
- ishi 10mo agoIs there any factual basis to this claim, or just your personal opinion? It's like claiming Oracle's real business isn't a database, but rather stealing customers data which was stored in Oracle's databases. Or practically any other company that has access to customers data.
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- cluckindan 10mo agoAre you sure such claims about Oracle are completely unfounded?
- ishi 10mo agoIt's easy to make baseless accusations that are impossible to disprove, that's exactly my point.
- cluckindan 10mo agoCome on. The CIA was Oracle’s first customer.
- user_7832 10mo agoWhy would you assume the said counties wouldn't want their citizens surveilled? "But they will know what our citizens do..." yeah unfortunately 5 eyes proves otherwise. Govt surveillance is a big club, and you ain't in it.
- user_7832 10mo agoI am... really not sure why this comment is getting downvoted? It's not really a conspiracy theory so many years after Snowden now, is it?
- foundddit 10mo agoIt's really, truly strange just how intertwined the US is with Israeli spies at all levels. If people affiliated with The Netherlands or Rwanda had this much influence in the US, nobody would tolerate it.
- jack_tripper 10mo ago[flagged]
- mikkupikku 10mo agoIn case anybody is curious about this, archived correspondence between JFK and Israel tells the tale. Through the CIA/etc, JFK was aware that Israel was developing nuclear weapons at Dimona. He was also aware that neither Egypt nor any other regional power was doing the same, and believed that Israel doing so would destabilize the region. He was therefore calling for inspections of Dimona to stop Israel's bomb program. At the same time, the Israelis were playing dumb saying they weren't doing anything while simultaneously justifying their bomb program by accusing Egypt of having or developing nukes too. JFK did no believe this and was challenging Israel to prove it. Later that year, JFK got shot in the head, and then days later the supposed gunman was himself assassinated by a jewish gangster named Jacob Rubenstein. All of this is archived in their letters to and from each other and easily locatable online.
- coliveira 10mo ago[flagged]
- tonyhart7 10mo ago[flagged]
- jdietrich 10mo agoUnit 8200 hand-picks the best and brightest young Israelis and trains them in computer science. You might as well say "It's always MIT" - of course an elite educational institution produces a lot of successful startups. If you're looking for a sinister plot, look no further than In-Q-Tel.
- Fnoord 10mo agoMIT students have different loyalty than to a fascist government like Trump's administration. The political situation in USA is also not like the one in Israel (which country is a direct result of the outcome of WWII and hatred by nazi-Germany, who are in constant fight with their neighbors). It isn't a fair comparison. One should also take into account that Mossad's way of operating is aggressive. The English article doesn't mention this, but vulnerabilities were found in Zivver. See my comment elsewhere in the thread referring to the Dutch version of the article.
- flyinglizard 10mo agoThere's something very visceral in being attacked by Jihadists, rockets and ballistic missiles which makes Israelis quite enthusiastic about taking on the fight.
- sa501428 10mo agoThere's something very visceral in being attacked by Zionists, rockets, and bombs (for 70+ years) which makes some folks quite enthusiastic about resisting ethnic cleansing and genocide in their homeland.
- zappb 10mo ago[flagged]
- Hikikomori 10mo ago>>maybe they shouldn't be killing that many children >You are literally hitler
- leoh 10mo agoIt’s largely because military service is mandatory and 8200 is like the MIT or Stanford of Israel.. not some nefarious bullshit about intelligence
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- unyttigfjelltol 10mo agoTL;DR: An EU health data firm run by ex-military cryptographers offers a web portal for encrypting documents, which inherently exposes unencrypted documents to the company and US national security laws. The media outlet incidentally also doubts the trustworthiness of military veterans from Israel. Even following the "if there's smoke there's fire" model, unclear there's a strong scent of "smoke" here. One could write a similar guilt-by-historical-association article concerning anyone, in the same position, really. Obviously if you're uploading a file to a 3d party website, the vendor has some technical access, this should be warned.
- pareidolia 10mo agoThe bigger problem is that this model is inherently flawed. Even if end-to-end encryption with browser crypto were implemented, there is never any security since the code in the browser can simply be swapped with compromised code that diverts the plaintext somewhere. I've been forced to use this service, by way of healthcare professionals just disclosing correspondence to this service without asking for my consent. Smeerlappen.
- _el1s7 10mo agoSecurity is an illusion.
- pareidolia 10mo agoThen reply with your passwords.
- sallveburrpi 10mo ago****** Luckily HN automatically detects when you post your password and obfuscates it with * - try it out yourself!
- pareidolia 10mo agoYou think I was born yesterday :P
- rr808 10mo agoDo Europeans care if their health data is secret or not? I feel in the US its a big deal that people dont want insurance companies to measure them and deny coverage to those who need it most, but in most of the world that isn't an issue.
- zapkyeskrill 10mo agoIsn't an issue yet.
- exasperaited 10mo agoWhy would they not? You still wouldn't necessarily want a life insurance company to know stuff they haven't formally asked to know, you still have health information that could be used to blackmail you or whose reveal would be humiliating or upsetting.
- leviliebvin 10mo agoOf course we do. And for exactly the same reasons, too.
- fuomag9 10mo agoAs an European, I HATE when my data is mishandled or leaked (and this is basically the entire point of the GDPR)
- Propelloni 10mo ago> Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not? Can't speak for all Europeans, but in my neck of the wood, Germany, they do very much.
- setopt 10mo agoYeah we do. For many reasons: Privacy is privacy. I ideally don’t want any of my data sold to anyone, but health data is even more vulnerable. In my country it was even a big deal when they allowed different doctors to access your health data via a common system, as there were e.g. concerns that the information recorded by one doctor might bias another doctor, so some felt that it should be your choice what data to share between different parts of the public health system (except for explicit referrals). Moreover, most European countries do have private doctors, private hospitals, and private health insurance – it’s just way less used than the public system. Those would have the same concerns as in the US.
- vader_n 10mo ago[flagged]
- stocksinsmocks 10mo ago[flagged]
- ipaddr 10mo agoThey will be discredited.
- dgellow 10mo agoWhat
- bsndjdkd 10mo ago[flagged]
- lukan 10mo agoCan you cite a law or verdict, here?
- bsndjdkd 10mo ago[flagged]
- dgellow 10mo agoPlease be specific
- bsndjdkd 10mo ago[flagged]
- hermanzegerman 10mo agoYou mean like the Article in the Flagship Publication of German Public Broadcasting about terrorist suspects, naming their nationality? https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/bayern/br-dingolfing-festnahmen-wegen-anschlagsplan-auf-weihnachtsmarkt-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/bayern/br-dingolfi... So please provide an example for your argument. Because right now it's "Trust me Bro, I'm a Lawyer"
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- jfifjxneodkf72 10mo agoReally HN? Kiteworks was founded by some swedish dude[1] and most of the execs aren't Israeli[2]. Trying to portray this as some secret mossad company is beyond nonsense. Should there be scrutiny when sensitive data is being sold off? Of course but this article is extremely low quality, with zero evidence and just based on vibes with a nice dose of antisemitism (and no I don't use that term lightly) As if cyber security experts running a cyber security company is somehow shocking. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiteworks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiteworks [2]https://www.kiteworks.com/company/management/ https://www.kiteworks.com/company/management/
- hermanzegerman 10mo agoI've never seen Zivver used in German Healthcare. Also Germany uses and is already Rolling out a Matrix-based Messenger and S/MIME-Mail with End-to-End-Encryption for Communication between Healthcare Professionals. So at least for Germany this is not a problem. More problematic was our prior health Minister who wanted to make data accessibile to OpenAI et al for "research". That's also why I opted out of the electronic health record https://www.heise.de/news/Lauterbach-zu-Gesundheitsdaten-Google-Meta-und-OpenAI-melden-Interesse-an-10179936.html https://www.heise.de/news/Lauterbach-zu-Gesundheitsdaten-Goo...
- jack_tripper 10mo ago>I've never seen Zivver used in German Healthcare. How would you even be sure of this just from what you can see from the outside? That doesn't mean your health insurance company isn't using Zivver internally same how they use Office 365 or SAP. It's not like they tell you all the SW they use.
- hermanzegerman 10mo agoWhy would they use it internally? Internally, you have the Hospital Information System where you can look up all the informations you need. I can just say I know the inside of one of Germany's biggest Hospitals, since I'm a Doctor. And requesting Patient Data or giving it out to other Parties is unfortunately a Task that Doctors still have to do on their own And for communication with the outside world it's down to Fax, Phone or Letter. And that will be replaced with KIM in the future
- user_7832 10mo ago> Fax, Phone or Letter That's interesting because in The Netherlands most of my doctor's communications come through email (and zivver), followed by snail mail.
- hermanzegerman 10mo agoTheoretically they could already send this via S/MIME encrypted Mail (KIM) to the family doctor, but most Hospitals haven't rolled out this service yet. They just started installing Card Readers for the Doctor Identity Cards, so they can issue electronic prescriptions For communication with Patients some Hospitals have Web Portals/Apps for getting/sending information.
- lwn 10mo agoI used to get multiple Zivver messages a week from the health providers I work with. However, I haven't received a single one since the announcement of the takeover a while ago.
- tonyhart7 10mo ago[flagged]
- pbiggar 10mo ago[flagged]
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- sva_ 10mo ago> The CEO of the American tech company is a former cyber specialist from an elite unit of the Israeli army, as are several other members of its top management. This is about Unit 8200? The 'cybersecurity' unit that Israelis can join instead of doing their mandatory military service on the gun? I think this acquisition could indeed be problematic, but this seems like a weird framing. The article could give more context than that.
- xenospn 10mo ago8200 is mandatory military service.
- Cyph0n 10mo ago[flagged]
- yonixw 10mo agoThis is not written in the article. Can you give a source? Since based on linkedin he was not in the army since 1991.... (And I mean any source for any of your assumptions...)
- Cyph0n 10mo agoNo. I was responding to the implied claim that mandatory service generally absolves a person of any form of complicity.
- everdrive 10mo agoIt's not an opt-out in the literal sense. Everyone is conscripted, and then based on ability people are placed into different units. If you were talented, wouldn't you try to avoid getting put on patrol in Gaza or the West Bank?
- 4gotunameagain 10mo ago[flagged]
- rootsudo 10mo ago[flagged]
- c420 10mo agoIt's not deleted, it's "dead." Go to your profile and enable "showdead" and you'll see it collapsed towards the bottom of the page.
- Dumbledumb 10mo agoWhile the situation in Europe is, of course, diverse, the culture in Germany (which is often looked to as a thought leader in the eu) is strictly to disallow and discredit any substantial criticism of the „only democracy in the Middle East“. Usually under a blanket accusation of antisemitism. Especially due to germanys history, this claim can be brought forward and be spread in a news cycle without substantive scrutiny. The fact that conflating the State of Israel with jewish people could be met with the same accusation is largely ignored. If you are interested in the topic on a high level I suggest the following starting points United Nations: „UN experts urge Germany to halt criminalisation and police violence against Palestinian solidarity activism“ as well as numerous statements by amnesty international or the Wikipedia Section „Restrictions on Pro-Palestinian expression“ of the article „Censorship in Germany“
- debarshri 10mo agoI know a thing or two about zivver as i used to hangout with an early eng who was a scala dev. Idea was end to end encryption. So technically, the new org should not have access to customer data. Company hit gold in the netherlands during covid whe reports had to sent out to users digitally and was always encrypted in EU due to regulations. It could be different behind the scene. It does not look good for the netherlands where digital sovereignty is the key topic these days.
- astrobe_ 10mo agoDo you know if the encryption scheme covers metadata? For instance, who sends something to who.
- yupyupyups 10mo agoDoesn't matter. All of this stuff, servers included, need to be based on open source, maintained to a large part by European engineers, and hosted in the EU by people with security clearence. It makes NO sense whatsoever to risk this sensitive data getting stolen.
- german_mcdon 10mo ago[flagged]
- kittikitti 10mo ago[flagged]
- faidit 10mo agoThanos at least had the decency to only target 50% of the population.
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- kingleopold 10mo agocome on, one is ally that do genoc1de and other one is just criminal. Not fair comparison.
- whimsicalism 10mo agoTheranos did way less? There isn’t even any malfeasance documented in this article whereas Theranos intentionally defrauded many many people. Honestly, what are you on about?
- IAmGraydon 10mo agoThe only thing that's absurd here is your comment. Let me start by saying that Thanos is a Marvel supervillain. I assume what you mean is Theranos, the fraudulent health tech company run by Elizabeth Holmes. Moving past the fact that you don't seem to know the names of the entities you're commenting on, there's the fact that one is a legal acquisition of a European company by an American company with no evidence of wrongdoing while the other openly committed fraud and the CEO was convicted of four felony counts and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Being connected to Israeli intelligence is not a crime or grounds for an investigation. What are you even talking about?
- p0w3n3d 10mo agoEx-Israeli or ex-spies?
- engineerhead 10mo agoPretty concerning. Even if a service is EU-based, a foreign acquisition can expose sensitive data to other jurisdictions.
- fmajid 10mo agoOr even if they have any operations outside the EU, as the recent case where a Canadian court requested data from OVH showed.
- ricardo81 10mo agoAmerican tech companies have been pushing the needle on privacy ever since Google. Then Facebook. They've gradually normalised that privacy does not exist, all for their own capital gain. There are European alternatives but they need support. IMHO it requires conscious choices by European citizens to choose more carefully which online services they dedicate their time and money to. Or expect unintended consequences.
- markus_zhang 10mo agoIMO European countries, especially France/Germany are more of “I don’t allow other countries to take privacy data of EU citizens but I want backdoor accesses/whatever I need”, which is fine though.
- CalRobert 10mo agoEurope’s (really Ireland’s) lacklustre enforcement of GDPR means it has hurt European companies (which at least try to comply) without even meaningfully improving privacy. Subject access requests are fun at least.
- mnky9800n 10mo agoYes gdpr could be good. But instead it’s a cookies warning.
- moi2388 10mo agoNo, those two are completely separate laws
- qwertox 10mo agoCookie warnings are a sign of companies not willing to accept that they cannot just collect data on you and monetize it. How does that make the EU regulation something bad? The bad thing is that the companies are willing to bombard us with the worst possible cookie banners, in order to monetize our visits. Maybe the next EU regulation should be to prohibit those banners and allow companies to add a small toggle somewhere on their site so we can toggle it to allow them to set 3rd-party cookies.
- flanked-evergl 10mo agoWas it done so illegally? If so who will prosecute the people who sold it?
- dogma1138 10mo ago[flagged]
- ekjhgkejhgk 10mo ago[flagged]
- esafak 10mo agoIt's very militarized?
- ekjhgkejhgk 10mo agoI think that's a component of it. I think it's a sort of attitude that's encouraged by the culture there. There seems to be an attitude of "don't care if it's right or not, as long as it hurts the 'others' and makes me money". Believe it or not, this isn't a universal all around the world. Unfortunately I don't think we even have words for this. For example, "militarized" which you used encompasses an enormous set of customs, values, abilities, etc. Is there a single word or couple of words that could be used to refer to what I described above?
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- underdeserver 10mo agoFrequency bias. There's shady crap being done all over by all sorts of people. It's only when they happen to be Israeli people point that out.
- inshard 10mo agoStrange that a 9th October article shows up at the top of the feed given the events of the day in Sydney.
- beAbU 10mo agoWhat happened in Sydney?
- underdeserver 10mo agohttps://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/bondi-beach-gunshots-reported-12-14-25 https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/bondi-beach-gunshots...
- beAbU 10mo agoTerrible event. How is this relevant to HN and its topics of discussion?
- mupuff1234 10mo agoIs a CEO of a company serving in the military 40 years ago relevant?
- bar000n 10mo agomaybe the "data sold to" part
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- mupuff1234 10mo ago[flagged]
- cess11 10mo agoHere's an israeli bragging about the israeli influence in this corporation: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hyqfxfc5c https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hyqfxfc5c
- mupuff1234 10mo agoAh yes, because every secret foreign intelligence asset goes straight to the press to brag. Its complete normal behavior that people hire people they know, just look at hiring practices across all tech companies. As it is a completely normal behavior for a CEO to brag about their company. Is Google an Indian intelligence asset because it's run by an Indian CEO and has quite a few Indian execs? How about Microsoft?
- cess11 10mo ago8200 veterans going into business commonly brag about that background and that connection to this specific genocidal and tyrannical community. Serving the intelligence services of a nasty, murderous apartheid state isn't "complete normal behavior", it's actually very pathological behaviour and every one who did should be offered therapy and help to move on from this experience. Yeah, Alphabet and MICROS~1 are CLOUD Act corporations, and hence security establishment and intelligence community assets. To the extent you're able you should have no contact with either of them for this reason, among others.
- Fnoord 10mo agoWhy are you repeating another comment [1] by a throwaway verbatim, with one line addition? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263078
- mupuff1234 10mo ago
- breppp 10mo ago[flagged]
- an0malous 10mo agoYou’re the one conflating Jews with Israel, a tactic that is surely intentional by Zionists but people are catching on to it
- breppp 10mo agoNothing new, racists through the 19th century and 20th used Zionism as a euphemism for Jews. Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one such example, the Nazis were also obsessed with Zionism We also got 2000 years of Europeans blaming Jews by association with no proof which is exactly the beautiful cultural tradition celebrated in this article
- an0malous 10mo agoSo no one can ever criticism Zionism because in the 19th and 20th centuries there were racists that criticized Zionism? Again, no one here is blaming Jews. The article says the firm is run by ex-Israeli spies, in fact the word "Jew" is not even in there. You're the one saying that.
- sporkxrocket 10mo agoThis article is about Israeli spies harvesting European health data.
- breppp 10mo ago[flagged]
- sporkxrocket 10mo ago[flagged]
- Krasnol 10mo agoArchive link: https://archive.ph/Se55J https://archive.ph/Se55J
- altoid 10mo agothis article forces you to create an account, just delete the "quickSubscribe" class in the html and remove the popup, you will be able to scroll free.
- altoid 10mo agothis page forces you to create an account. Just delete the "quickSubscribe" class in the html and remove the popup to te able to scroll for free.
- nikoomilana 10mo agoor just find the archived link in the comments?
- nullorempty 10mo ago[flagged]
- chaosbolt 10mo agoObviously, when one sees what they're doing to civilians right now...
- screenothethird 10mo ago[dead]
- epolanski 10mo agoI always find it absurd how good Israelis are at security and intelligence yet failed miserably on October 7th.
- jules-jules 10mo agoIt’s not absurd, it’s deception.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> absurd how good Israelis are at security and intelligence yet failed miserably on October 7th Offense and defence are different games.
- storus 10mo agoIs there any way to opt out? Or did European Comision just make a package deal without asking its populace for some reason?
- fithisux 10mo agoIt gets better and better.
- Protostome 10mo agoSensational headline, big anticlimax