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Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations?

If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain things for spying, so ... just have Israel spy on our populace and since we basically fund them and let them spy on us anyway, just make sure their database is open to us?

Where else is there 1) the talent and 2) the relative degree of trust?

There are a lot of stories from my childhood (of debatable ranking on the conspiracy scale) of the dirty pool and awful unconstitutional behavior by the CIA and other agencies.

It is my vague impression that the increased information awareness from the web tempered the bad behavior for a couple decades, but I think the old habits will start reappearing in "cyberspace" once they gain sufficient deniability, and people's live reach a level of "mortal" dependence on it.

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>If the CIA isn't allowed to do certain things for spying, so ... just have Israel spy on our populace

You basically described various "X eyes" programs. Western intelligence services are completely out of control.

My country (Denmark) was involved in a similar program with the NSA:

>Danish intelligence (FE) also helped the US agency to spy on the Danish foreign and finance ministries as well as a Danish weapons manufacturer. The FE also cooperated with the NSA on spying operations against the US government itself.

https://www.dw.com/en/danish-secret-service-helped-us-spy-on...

Highest Nobel prize per capita. Has an advanced military intelligence arm and released soldiers are great employees for the IT security sector. These two combined create a strong cyber security presence.

Regardless, I don't know what regulations you refer to when the US and China lead the charge on actively spying on the entire world. The US drags down with it many western countries. Which is how the "5 eyes" was created. And no one bats an eyelash.

After the US was exposed for what the NSA did against its allies, no one was persecuted and the Senate was powerless to do anything. All inquires were met with "classified". So, at best, the propaganda over there convinced one person that there are regulations restraining military intelligence and the CIA.

Also they have (or had) a very high technology export tax; this has the tendency to concentrate certain kinds of development entirely within Israel.

So it's not just that they have a high level of expertise; there is a strong economic disincentive for firms to move tech business out of Israel.

tech firms actually add presence in israel but ip is usually owned by other entities, outside of israel.

usually the biggest problem with ip in israel, it's in case that there was investment into company/development by chief scientist. it comes with a lot of strings attached and requires payoff to transfer ip outside of state

> Highest Nobel prize per capita

Israel is #11 [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...

Interesting list. I think you can ignore the first 2 or 3 as places that have one 1 or 2 winners and have a small population skew it.

However that doesn’t move Israel up much.

The Scandinavian countries are looking good as per usual.

>Where else is there 1) the talent and 2) the relative degree of trust?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gch...

>When GCHQ does supply the US with valuable intelligence, the agency boasts about it. In one review, GCHQ boasted that it had supplied "unique contributions" to the NSA during its investigation of the American citizen responsible for an attempted car bomb attack in Times Square, New York City, in 2010.

>No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

> Is Israel THE go-to haven for security firm and three-letter agencies to arbitrage/bypass surveillance regulations?

No, why bother going all the way to Israel? They just do it in the US. When have regulations ever made a difference to surveillance?

Perhaps. But perhaps news outlets are singling out Israel for whatever reason. So i feel quite uncertain.

I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel.

I always try and work with the assumption that the media is lying to me. Mainly by omission. These things are owned by private people and/or are run by people with agendas. There has to be limits to their trustworthiness. I salt every news story that gets served up to me.

>I have the exact opposite observations. Criticising Israel is a big no-no and most media won't cover anything bad about Israel.

There is plenty of criticism of Israel by The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters etc.

It's not the media's fault that the Democratic and Republican party are so pro-Israel.

Criticizing Israel is a big no-no when it comes to certain issues, but I’m not sure it’s the case here. In this case they seem to be an easy foil to place the blame upon, when other governments are either doing the same thing or are collaborating with Israel to export the development.

What are the other countries that aren't being covered?

For example, Ethiopia literally drone-striked a refugee camp last month and there was almost no media coverage. Compared with the wall to wall breathless coverage of the Gaza conflict last year.

You're right, we could really use some more coverage of how terrible Israel treats Ethiopians too. [1][2]

[1] https://forward.com/culture/481124/with-no-land-ethuopian-je...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056

You can always cherry pick news items to depict Israel as bad or as good as you want to. But remember, reality is more complex than what's on the news. While there are some terrible mistakes, Israel's treatment of Ethiopian Jews is definitely not terrible.

>While there are some terrible mistakes, Israel's treatment of Ethiopian Jews is definitely not terrible.

Our definition of 'not terrible' surely must be different.

I first became aware of the issues this community faces when the news broke last decade about the government sterilizing immigrant Ethiopian women without their knowledge or consent. A matter of record: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ethiopians-fool...

How about the time when Israel rescued some 14,000 people of this community in 36 hours from Addis Ababa just before rebel forces arrived at the city?

Israel made some great things for this community and it made some awful things as well.

My point is that if you get your information only from the news than you are bound to get a biased picture of reality.

>How about the time when Israel rescued some 14,000 people of this community in 36 hours from Addis Ababa just before rebel forces arrived at the city?

It was convienent for the regime to do this back then and they left those people to rot as second class citizens. Now that a cold war situation isn't applicable, where is Israel to airlift those in recent conflicts? What support do they get when they arrive? Stop playing out tired old stories from many decades ago, the past is the past, let's get current and see where the work is going?

>My point is that if you get your information only from the news than you are bound to get a biased picture of reality.

You have done nothing to show me that my assessment on this is wrong. Instead you've chosen this dishonest form of argument and been vague this entire time.

Tell us a story then from the ground? You've got a short post history on HN and since this seems to have struck a nerve for you, I'm quite certain you can tell us what good your country is doing for these people. I linked a colonial state news source, an American Jewish news source, and an Israeli news source. You've kept it to vague smears, I'm curious and I want to hear the opposing mindset. So far you've given me nothing of substance, I'm disappointed.

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