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Comment by Illniyar | Hacker News Reader

Unit 8200 is the premier software development track in the Israeli military.

Every Israeli tech company likely has multiple developers from Unit 8200 in it. Whether it's building e-commerce shops or making video games.

While 8200 definitely falls under the military intelligence wing, I don't think describing people in it as Cyber Spies is anywhere near accurate. And unless that guy was very high ranking it is a stretch to imply that's an indication that IL military intelligence is involved in the company.

That is not to say that the military isn't involved with the company - that might very well be true, just that someone being from Unit 8200 isn't an indication of it.

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Makes perfect cover though? "He was only a conscript changing printer cartridges"

People who don't live in countries with mandatory conscription for all don't really understand: everyone is connected to the military but it means nothing.

Judging an Israeli citizen on their IDF ties is like judging a US citizen on the fact that they went to public school.

It doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, such judgements are made by most people every day. Someone who was professionally formed somewhere has a higher probability of ties to them later on. Being intelligence services this might be even more true.

In today's political climate where people around the world see Israel judging (and sentencing, and carrying out the punishment) every Palestinian as terrorists, I think this wide brush of judging Israelis on their ties with the IDF is probably widely accepted as "only fair". When it comes to Unit 8200 the implications are even stronger.

But I don't get the US public school system reference. You have to start with a baseline and if you see a private Ivy League school on someone's CV and a random public school on someone else's I'm sure you'll probably make the obvious assumption about which one is better, even if sometimes the obvious is wrong.

According to google, 87% of Americans go to a state-funded school, so yes judging an American based on the fact that they could afford to be in the top 13% and go to a public school instead is legitimate. This doesn't seem to match what you're trying to say.

You’re using the British definition of “public school” here, which is a “private school” in the US. US public schools are equivalent to UK state schools, in that both are run by the state.

> everyone is connected to the military but it means nothing.

No, people who live in tiny countries with mandatory conscription don't really understand that it means that their entire country is militarized. It's not surprising that fish can't see water.

> is like judging a US citizen on the fact that they went to public school.

It's exactly like that. If public school in the US trained people to kill and spy, it would be entirely safe to assume that the US was full of killer spies. For example, if you know that US public school taught a view of world history that was distorted in particular ways, and had very little emphasis in foreign languages, it would be safe to assume that Americans have a distorted view of the world, and largely don't speak foreign languages.

I don't know, this seems basic to me.

Cover to do what? Insert malicious code and hope no one else notices? Or coerce everyone in the company to look the other way?

If an intelligence agency wants to compromise a service, they have much more discreet, powerful, and deniable ways to accomplish this.

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