🌍 Google and Amazon at War With Israel

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💻 When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer – the Israeli government – had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of an arrangement that would become known as the “winking mechanism”.

🕵️ The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world, was born out of Israel’s concerns that data it moves into the global corporations’ cloud platforms could end up in the hands of foreign law enforcement authorities.

📂 Like other big tech companies, Google and Amazon’s cloud businesses routinely comply with requests from police, prosecutors and security services to hand over customer data to assist investigations.

🤫 This process is often cloaked in secrecy. The companies are frequently gagged from alerting the affected customer their information has been turned over.

⚖️ This is either because the law enforcement agency has the power to demand this or a court has ordered them to stay silent.

🇮🇱 For Israel, losing control of its data to authorities overseas was a significant concern. So to deal with the threat, officials created a secret warning system: the companies must send signals hidden in payments to the Israeli government, tipping it off when it has disclosed Israeli data to foreign courts or investigators.

🔐 The strict controls include measures that prohibit the US companies from restricting how an array of Israeli government agencies, security services and military units use their cloud services.

📝 According to the deal’s terms, the companies cannot suspend or withdraw Israel’s access to its technology, even if it’s found to have violated their terms of service.

⚠️ Israeli officials inserted the controls to counter a series of anticipated threats. They feared Google or Amazon might bow to employee or shareholder pressure and withdraw Israel’s access to its products and services if linked to human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.

🏢 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.

🕰️ As with Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s cloud businesses have faced scrutiny in recent years over the role of their technology – and the Nimbus contract in particular – in Israel’s two-year war on Gaza.

#google #amazon #intelligence #services #nimbus #microsoft

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📜 However, according to the Israeli government documents detailing the controls inserted into the Nimbus agreement, officials concluded they had extracted important concessions from Google and Amazon after the companies agreed to adapt internal processes and “subordinate” their standard contractual terms in favour of Israel’s demands.

💸 Leaked documents from Israel’s finance ministry, which include a finalised version of the Nimbus agreement, suggest the secret code would take the form of payments – referred to as “special compensation” – made by the companies to the Israeli government.

📑 Israeli officials appear to have acknowledged this, documents suggest. Their demands about how Google and Amazon respond to a US-issued order “might collide” with US law, they noted, and the companies would have to make a choice between “violating the contract or violating their legal obligations”.

📭 Neither Google nor Amazon responded to the Guardian’s questions about whether they had used the secret code since the Nimbus contract came into effect.

🚫 Israeli officials also feared a scenario in which its access to the cloud providers’ technology could be blocked or restricted.

⚙️ In particular, officials worried that activists and rights groups could place pressure on Google and Amazon, or seek court orders in several European countries, to force them to terminate or limit their business with Israel if their technology were linked to human rights violations.

📡 Provided Israel does not infringe on copyright or resell the companies’ technology, “the government is permitted to make use of any service that is permitted by Israeli law”, according to a finance ministry analysis of the deal.

📘 Both companies’ standard “acceptable use” policies state their cloud platforms should not be used to violate the legal rights of others, nor should they be used to engage in or encourage activities that cause “serious harm” to people.

🧠 However, according to an Israeli official familiar with the Nimbus project, there can be “no restrictions” on the kind of information moved into Google and Amazon’s cloud platforms, including military and intelligence data.

☁️ The terms of the deal seen by the Guardian state that Israel is “entitled to migrate to the cloud or generate in the cloud any content data they wish”.

🔍 Last month, when Microsoft cut off Israeli access to some cloud and artificial intelligence services, it did so after confirming reporting by the Guardian and its partners, +972 and Local Call, that the military had stored a vast trove of intercepted Palestinian calls in the company’s Azure cloud platform.

🕊️ Notifying the Israeli military of its decision, Microsoft said that using Azure in this way violated its terms of service and it was “not in the business of facilitating the mass surveillance of civilians”.

#google #amazon #intelligence #services #nimbus #microsoft

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