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Comment by mdhb | Hacker News Reader

The big part of this story which nobody is talking about is the fact that the app is literally controlled by a bunch of “former” Israeli intelligence officers. Who now have what is arguably the worlds most valuable access out of anyone.

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I don't think it's that big: USG procures defense and intelligence tech more or less constantly from Israel. It's unlikely that Israel would threaten that relationship (and the value they extract from it in terms of favorable relations) in exchange for military intelligence that's already shared with them.

(I feel like I have to say this in every thread that insinuates something sinister about being a "former Israeli intelligence officer": the structure of Israel's military and mandatory service is such that just about everybody with technical skills serves in some kind of "intelligence" capacity. It's not a very big country. This is, of course, independent from any normative claims about Israel's government, politics, etc. -- it's what you'd expect in any small country that has mandatory military service with a significant intelligence component.)

> I don't think it's that big: USG procures defense and intelligence tech more or less constantly from Israel. It's unlikely that Israel would threaten that relationship (and the value they extract from it in terms of favorable relations) in exchange for military intelligence that's already shared with them.

Correct - they would not use that intelligence to threaten that relationship, but to maintain it. Knowing the political leanings of politicians and government officials (for example, identifying any that think that relationship is more of a cost than a benefit) is extremely valuable to that end.

The over/under there doesn't make sense: the US hasn't had a meaningfully hostile-to-Israel policy ever, so pervasively tapping some of the most sensitive USG communications would be a stunning risk to take with a very safe ally.

(It also beggars belief in the current climate -- I would be hard-pressed to name a single member of the current administration who hasn't yelled until purple in the face about their support for Israel's current government and wartime policies.)

You might think so, but they didn't face any backlash for buying politicians [1,2] and bragging about it [3], so why would they worry? You also assume that the US is a "very safe ally" naturally, and not as a consequence of means such as these.

[1] After House Speaker Mike Johnson Pushed Through Israel Aid Package, AIPAC Cash Came Flowing In - https://theintercept.com/2024/01/20/israel-aipac-house-mike-...

[2] The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/israel-lobby-and-us...

[3] More than 95% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their election last night! Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics! - https://x.com/AIPAC/status/1590362232915132417

Everyone is tapping everyone else to the extent they can get away with it - especially allies, because they can get away with it more. You don't think the NSA monitors every single bit that flows in and out of the USA?

Periodically, someone gets caught red-handed, a fuss is made, some diplomats get thrown out and replaced with other ones, and then everyone continues doing it.

They have never had a hostile-to-Israel policy and never will because of the leverage Israel has over US politicians.

There's a reason the US bought this app from Israelis, and it wasn't because of improved security or archive compliance.

For how much they like to beat the "buy American" drum, this contradicts that.

Really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

You'll note that this case caused exactly the kind of outcome I'm talking about: Pollard was an anomaly (to my knowledge, the only recorded case of a US citizen spying for a US ally) whose activities caused a massive intelligence break between US and Israel that lasted for years and probably did more damage than "good" it served for Israel's intelligence apparatus[1]. That kind of lesson is hard-learned and probably not forgotten, regardless of the fact that Pollard is a poster-boy in Israel's version of a culture war.

[1]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-spies-arent-exactly-re...

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were also US citizens spying for a US ally, at least in theory. Though the Soviet Union had stopped being an ally before they were convicted, of course.

The most "hostile to Israel" policy was under JFK, which is interesting.

Yep. In general there's been no truly "hostile to Israel" US president. The closest thing to "hostility" has been negotiating (under JFK, Carter, Bush Sr., and Obama most notably) with regards to one or more of Iran, the '67 border, WB settlements, etc. Israel has increasingly (and wrongly) considered these "meddling" under its far-right government, which is a internal change within their own politics rather than a marked change in the US's own tactics.

I’m saying this as someone who almost certainly has a lot more knowledge about intelligence and the US / Israeli relationship than you do.

While some of the points you make are indeed correct it actually paints an inaccurate overall picture.

For example: not widely known but 100% true, Israel is and has been for a long time classified as the highest level of counterintelligence threat to the US on par with China, Russia, Cuba and others.

I assure you, this is a big fucking deal and not something to be waved away with “everyone’s intel, don’t worry it’s probably nothing”.

I'm not saying it's not a big deal. It obviously is.

I'm saying that the fact that it's Israeli tech is not itself the biggest part of the story.

Israël have different interest than the usa.

Today they may collide in most instances, who's to say tomorrow it will still be the case. For instance when Iran gets the nuclear bomb and threaten Israel with it ?

An encrypted messaging system, used by the American government, is in my opinion even worst than the supposed Huawei 5g antenna data collection.

Huawei wouldn't have had access to secret talk between top government official, at least not decrypted.

>For instance when Iran gets the nuclear bomb and threaten Israel with it ?

I don't know if this was your intention, but it's exceedingly likely that the US would side with Israel in all circumstances if Iran threatened Israel with a nuclear weapon, no matter who is president. In fact, the threat of Iran attacking Israel was one of the key reasons† Biden refused to unilaterally stop all arms shipments to Israel.

† Source: War by Bob Woodward.

Given that Trump's foreign policy is quite alien compared to his predecessors, I don't know how valuable looking to the past is for this sort of thing. A new president, of any political bent, may follow the example and make further breaks with the past.

I agree for the most part, his foreign policy is very alien compared to Biden or any other "normal" president. When it comes to Iran and supporting Israel, though, I think he's still pretty hawkish and predictable for a Republican president (or as predictable as Trump can be). Remember during his first presidency, he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, then he imposed a bunch of tight sanctions on Iran while reinforcing ties with Israel and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital.

Part of his hawkishness toward Iran comes from the kinds of national security advisers he keeps (typically all hawkish on Iran themselves, with some exceptions like General Mark Milley), and part of it comes from his admiration for "strongman" leaders like Bibi.

The US and many other countries have been buying Israeli surveillance tools for years or decades.

I would hope that any message archiving is being done on an organization-owned server though.

> I would hope that any message archiving is being done on an organization-owned server though.

There's compelling evidence that the messages all pass through TM servers before being archived.

https://www.404media.co/the-signal-clone-the-trump-admin-use...

There's compelling evidence that the messages all pass through TM servers before being archived.

The question is where the E2E encryption goes between.

The E2E encryption is likely not even relevant, unless I'm missing something?

The builds that are distributed would likely just send the plaintext un-encrypted message separately to the archive, and I'm guessing that means it goes right to TM servers before being dispatched elsewhere.

Ah yes, it's end-to-end alright, end-to-end cleartext.

> The US and many other countries have been buying Israeli surveillance tools for years or decades.

Yes, tools like Cellebrite and zero-day exploits.

Those are tools which are used to spy on people outside of the government.

This is a tool that has data created by the government.

I know it's pretty fun to do the espionage angle with this comment.

But is this really just evidence that a mandatory draft is actually good economic policy? Having a forced networking event where a bunch of similar skilled individual meet each other seems to be producing a ton of economic value for Israel.

This isn’t a one or the other thing. You’re just bringing up an unrelated point.

? But in the US, people get the same - if not better - economic value from universities, or working together at the same companies, or being in the same spaces, or meetups, etc.

>The big part of this story which nobody is talking about is the fact that the app is literally controlled by a bunch of “former” Israeli intelligence officers. Who now have what is arguably the worlds most valuable access out of anyone.

You are just talking about the clone, NOT signal foundation and the dev team?

It's not like Israel doesn't already have the highest level of access to the administration's plans. Canada could be made the 51st state and Israel would still have more access to the Trump administrations plans. There is some sort of strong connection between the USA and Israel. What that is, I don't know.

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