Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret 'wink' to sidestep legal orders

Posted by skilled 10/29/2025

Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret 'wink' to sidestep legal orders(www.theguardian.com)

963 points | 437 commentspage 2

DeathArrow 10/31/2025|

>Microsoft, which provides a range of cloud services to Israel’s military and public sector, bid for the Nimbus contract but was beaten by its rivals. According to sources familiar with negotiations, Microsoft’s bid suffered as it refused to accept some of Israel’s demands.

So Microsoft is now more ethical than Google and Amazon? What times we live in!

nova22033 10/30/2025||

If the US government asked Google and amazon for data using specific legal authorities and the companies tipped off the Israeli government, there's a chance they may have broken the law....

JumpCrisscross 10/30/2025||

> there's a chance they may have broken the law

There is certainty they broke the law. Both federally and, in all likelihood, in most states.

worik 10/30/2025||

The agreement breaks the law

AlanYx 10/30/2025||

Setting aside the legalities of the "wink" payments, I'm fascinated to know what is the purpose of the country-specific granularity? At most Israel would learn that some order was being sought in country X, but they wouldn't receive knowledge of the particular class of data being targeted.

I wonder if there's a national security aspect here, in that knowing the country would prompt some form of country-specific espionage (signals intelligence, local agents on the inside at these service providers, etc.) to discover what the targeted data might be.

avidiax 10/30/2025||

Obviously, they must think it's a feature of some value.

Knowing the country allows an immediate diplomatic protest, threats to withdraw business, and investigation.

The payment is to be within 24 hours, which means that they can act quickly to stop the processing of the data, prevent conclusions from being drawn, etc.

If the signaled country were the US, I would expect a bunch of senators to be immediately called and pressured to look into and perhaps stop the investigation.

AlanYx 10/31/2025|||

Interesting take. It's also possible that it functions as a checksum of sorts for their intelligence operations to identify gaps. e.g., If intelligence has knowledge of X requests from country Y, but they're getting X+5 "winks" about country Y, then it's an indicator of where they need to step up their intelligence efforts.

sniggler 10/31/2025|||

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cess11 10/31/2025||

Here's the corresponding article in +972.

https://www.972mag.com/project-nimbus-contract-google-amazon...

This is a good opportunity to make money from helping corporations migrate off these services and onto alternatives with better data protection regulations and weaker ties to the zionist atrocity factory.

shevy-java 10/30/2025||

Israel and the USA already coordinate, so I doubt this story. Other countries should stop selling data of their citizens to these two countries.

Analemma_ 10/30/2025||

They coordinate, but coordination doesn't mean totally aligned behavior and interests which never diverge, nor that they don't try to spy on each other. Multiple people in the United States have been been caught and convicted of spying for Israel and are serving lengthy prison sentences because of it; Israeli lobbying efforts have tried to get their sentences commuted, so far without success. That's not what you would see if "coordination" went as far as your post implied.

Seattle3503 10/30/2025||

I wouldn't be surprised if this is all a part of the "game" of spycraft. Israel probably expects the US spy agencies would get wind of this agreement. "I see you watching me."

lenerdenator 10/30/2025||

That's basically how all governments work.

If you don't want your data in the hands of someone with access to the state's monopoly on violence, you're best off getting rid of all internet access in your life.

culanuchachamim 10/31/2025||

One thing I don't understand. Israel probably have huge amount of data in Google and Amazon. What is the gain from telling Israel that there is a country that issue an order about some of their data. What data? What's the order about? Etc, many crucial details are missing for Israel be able to do something....

cakealert 10/31/2025||

This is almost certainly just for show (as in, they would have no reliance on it and not expect it to ever be triggered).

They will have agents both known and unknown operating at those companies. A company cannot as a policy set out to violate the law (if it's smart). It would be trivial for individuals to have covert channels set up.

zaoui_amine 10/30/2025||

That's wild. Sounds like a sketchy legal loophole for big tech.

xbar 10/30/2025||

"The idea that we would evade our legal obligations to the US government as a US company, or in any other country, is categorically wrong,"

I can imagine that this Alphabet General Counsel-approved language could be challenged in court.

Havoc 10/30/2025|

Surprised that Israel didn't just decide to go it alone and build their own infra given the multiple reservations they clearly had. They have a vibrant tech ecosystem so could presumably pull it off

pcthrowaway 10/30/2025||

Something worth noting is that when they call a significant number of reserves to IDF, their industries suffer.

Most SWEs are still 20-40-something men, which would be the same demographic being called to service (I realize women also serve in the IDF, but combat positions are generally reserved for men).

So it's possible that Israel can't rely on their own private tech industry being unaffected during high-engagement periods.

I think the government does have plenty of its own infra (and military tech sectors would be unaffected by calling in reserves), but given the size of the country (and also considering its Palestinian second-class citizens who make up 20% of the Israeli population may not be trusted to work on more sensitive portions of its infrastructure) they're probably not able to manage every part of the stack. Probably only China and the U.S. can do this.

Havoc 10/30/2025||

I work with people that have been called up for service there and don't think it's as disruptive to a country's data-center building ability as you suggest.

vorpalhex 10/30/2025||

I imagine the concern becomes survivability. Israeli's really like their multiple levels of backups, and having a data copy out of the reach of enemy arms seems high priority.

Iran attacking US-East-1 would certainly be unusual.

noir_lord 10/30/2025||

They could likely work around that, multiple locations in-country and an off site encrypted backup out of country.

More likely is it was "aid" from the US which usually comes with stipulations about what/where they can spend it - common with weapons/military kit, wouldn't be surprised if they did something similar with cloud services.

vorpalhex 10/30/2025||

Hundreds of missiles get colaunched making up multi-thousand missile waves. A 200 drone wave is "small".

And any offsite that is "Israel's gov offsite" is an easy target even if in Cyprus or NYC.

Comingling with a bunch of bulk commercial hosts is very safe from a threat modeling perspective (in this case).

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