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> The CEO of the American tech company is a former cyber specialist from an elite unit of the Israeli army, as are several other members of its top management.

This is about Unit 8200? The 'cybersecurity' unit that Israelis can join instead of doing their mandatory military service on the gun? I think this acquisition could indeed be problematic, but this seems like a weird framing. The article could give more context than that.

They do more than cybersecurity, they collect and analyze signals intelligence. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in the CIA would be in Unit 8200 if he was Israeli -- the unit is not at all purely "techy" in nature. They are also significantly responsible for "analysis" such as target selection, as covered here https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Giving Jack Ryan as a example of a sigint analyst is vastly sensationalist for what is essentially —for the non-fictonal majority doing it— an office job, only with security clearance and real world implications.

That aspect wasn't my intent, but in the Red October movie for example, he states that his job is "sitting in an office and writing books", and the story revolves around him doing things that are explicitly not his job, and him confronting how "green" he is for all the field work of the latter half.

I was specifically thinking of that line about sitting in an office writing books, analyzing, strategizing, justifying and criticizing, all of which are crucial guides to action -- hardly something you could describe as "just a tech job", for example.

It's not an opt-out in the literal sense. Everyone is conscripted, and then based on ability people are placed into different units. If you were talented, wouldn't you try to avoid getting put on patrol in Gaza or the West Bank?

> everyone

The details around that are a significant source of friction.

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

“If you were a Russian soldier wouldn’t you rather work in administration in Moscow than invade and murder Ukrainians.”

Sure but the real answer is try what you can to get the fuck out of there so you don’t have to do harm to someone you don’t even know.

Pretty sure military aged males aren't allowed to just leave Russia at this point without prior approval. And sometimes are forcibly conscripted on the street

The notion that everyone conscripted into a war is guilty by default is absurd, but always inevitably comes out to play during the height of moral outrage.

I can see how it would be controversial but how is it absurd?

Especially in a first world country like Israel where people aren’t shackled by their poverty.

Blameworthy in a similar way to how Vietnam vets are blameworthy.

I don’t think your comparison works because Israel does not have a comparable anti-war movement that the US had during the Vietnam War. In fact, if the media is to be believed, there has been enthusiasm on the part of Israelis to take part in the fighting.

Wouldn’t that only make vietnam vets more blameworthy? There was a whole movement against it and they still chose to not give up their home/family and choose exile even when it was less stigmatized to do so.

That’s an interesting point, and if we follow that logic, we move the blame from the Israeli soldiers and place it in totality on Israeli culture.

Your comparison doesn't work because Vietnam War didn't start with Vietnam attacking USA, holding many hostages, the group leading the charge having religious ideology viewing Americans as second class citizens as well as people to ethnically cleanse, all while bordering USA.

I’m a little confused as to which country Vietnam is in your comparison.

I'm not making a comparison I'm explaining why equating USA anti-war movement in Vietnam to Israel was a faulty comparison.

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Maybe we should be thinking differently about those too then. Or maybe the environment is different where one generation should “know better”, having lived through another 50 years of human development and ubiquitous access to information.

10s of thousands of scum flew from all around the world from their comfy lives to Israel to enjoy participating in an attempt at total destruction of a nation composed in half from children, by starving them, bombing them, shooting them, and burying them alive.

These were not conscripted in any way whatsoever. These 10s of thousands deserve full blame, and fuck them all.

So Russians who are dragooned into a war to destroy another country are victims of poverty, but Israelis who are conscripted and fighting a defensive war are not given the same benefit of the doubt... because they have businesses and families they have to leave for months at a time to defend their own existence?

Leaving aside your warped sence of pity, which one's a society you'd rather live in?

> how is it absurd?

Humans build identities around their homes. It’s why any plan that involves relocation implicitly or explicitly requires violence.

It’s absurd to suggest Israelis should effectively “self deport” from their homes. It’s unrealistic to the point that it’s effectively dismissing the problem instead of honestly engaging it.

Look up Zionism and settler violence. Israel is systematically taking land away, not the other way around.

> Israel is systematically taking land away

Sure. Not great. But also not relevant to charging individuals.

If we’re to learn from Sykes and Picot, a good place to start would be in acknowledging the primacy of the living over the dead, and those on the ground over ideals from abroad. One conclusion from that is we shouldn’t be condemning men we’ve never met for actions they are only affiliated with.

Most movies and games about WW II, do depict killing German soldiers as justified, even in horrendous ways.

You can think killing someone is justified without thinking they are morally culpable. There’s a reason the laws of war don’t endorse summary execution of surrendering combatants, beyond the practical benefits of encouraging more humane conduct towards your own troops.

right guys, it’s only like 80% of that population that has the ideology we don’t like

and in the other 20%, many of them don’t get conscripted due to a religious exemption that includes being in a totally different ideology that has always disagreed with the other

odds not looking good, speaking as a betting man, not one with any actual opinion just need my prediction market bet to hit

What is the ideology we don’t like? I think it is easy to throw stones when the reality is that if your nation suffered a similar attack, many many people would get swept up in anger and outrage and retaliatory madness.

What Israel is doing is wrong, but I don’t think it would be unique among developed states experiencing something similar.

Zionism and violence against Palestineans predates the October attacks by a couple of decades.

Zionism, as in the belief that Jews deserve self-determination as a nation?

Zionism is the belief that there should be a Jewish ethnostate, it should be called Israel, and it should go in the geographic location where Israel now is.

That definition would exclude half of the early Zionist conference attendees, who would have accepted any region where refugees could gather, and seriously considered multiple locations.

Guess what - political movements change over time. We don't define left and right depending on where a party sits in the French parliament either.

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The formation of Israel was a shitshow. The region has always been a shitshow, it’s the coast closest to the cradle of civilization. But it’s unfair to refer to the Nakba as peaceful. (Though it’s no less peaceful than the nutters calling for the destruction of Israel in response.)

I don't believe I referred to the Nakba or anything else as "peaceful" - of course the Zionists engaged in (non-peaceful) violence, before and during and after the war. But the point is that, contra the claims that ethnic cleansing is "at the core" of Zionism, violence wasn't the Zionist starting point and unlike the Palestinians they were content with a peaceful solution; neither of those things would've been the case if violence was fundamental to their project.

you’re denying ethnic cleansing occurred in the Nakba when we have primary source evidence that it was

No, I'm not. Really frustrating to have to explain this repeatedly.

While ethnic cleansing undoubtedly occurred, it wasn't the original intent "at the core" of the Zionist project. Rather, the intent at the core of the project was - precisely as always stated - desire for Jewish self-determination, and (once again) they initially set out to attain that through peaceful and legal means and were happy to accept an internationally supported solution that did not involve ethnic cleansing.

I'm really not sure how to make this clearer: there was an entirely workable plan that would have gotten the Zionists what they wanted without ethnic cleansing, they accepted it, no further violence needed to occur. The proof is in the pudding: if ethnic cleansing was core to the project, such a plan could not have existed and/or the Zionists would not have accepted it.

Instead, the Arabs refused this, had zero interest in trying to negotiate any kind of peaceful solution, began to ethnically cleanse Jews throughout the Arab world [0], and launched an international war effort to subjugate or oust the Jews from the region.

The Israeli defense and retaliation ultimately included ethnic cleansing of its own. That's undeniable. But even here it wasn't core to the project; it wasn't a war goal at the beginning. Per Wikipedia [1]:

    Initially, the aim was "simple and modest": to survive the assaults of
    the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. "The Zionist leaders deeply,
    genuinely, feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the Holocaust, which
    had just ended; the Arabs' public rhetoric reinforced these fears". As
    the war progressed, the aim of expanding the Jewish state beyond the UN
    partition borders appeared: first to incorporate clusters of isolated
    Jewish settlements and later to add more territories to the state and
    give it defensible borders. A third and further aim that emerged among
    the political and military leaders after four or five months was to
    "reduce the size of Israel's prospective large and hostile Arab
    minority, seen as a potential powerful fifth column, by belligerency
    and expulsion".

I don't mean to whitewash what the Israelis did in the war - any more than Palestinian supporters want to whitewash what the Arabs did and intended to do, I suppose. But I was replying to someone asserting that the State of Israel simply could not exist without ethnic cleansing, that to be a Zionist fundamentally means to support ethnic cleansing. This is what I'm disputing.

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War#...

> Zionists purchased land in the region and immigrated legally

Colonial Britain famously sold a lot of land they didn't control, occupy or reasonably administrate. The Raj comes to mind.

The Balfour Declaration, in context, was like buying a car title from the impound lot. The slip of paper might say you own it, but nobody ever notarized it at the DMV. And now the person who put 50,000 miles on the odometer is going to see you in court for the rest of their life.

> thus ethnic cleansing is at the very core of Zionism

Ethnic cleansing is absolutely not at the core of the existence of a Jewish state. This rhetoric is particularly unhelpful since it seems to suggest that Palestine needs to be ethnically cleansed if Israel is to exist, which is absurd.

Ethnic cleansing is at the core of every ethnostate. You can't have, say, a racially German state, if you don't do something to all the non-Germans.

> Ethnic cleansing is at the core of every ethnostate

What makes Israel an ethnostate? (Versus a nation state.)

Demographically, and structurally, Israel doesn’t look dissimilar from e.g. China, India, Russia or most European countries. None of them require ethnic cleansing.

> You can't have, say, a racially German state

Race is a social construct. What constitutes a “true” German has been debated annd fought over among the tribes since before Cæsar.

And I’m not even sure how one would go about defining an Israeli “race” without being incoherent. (Which is fine. Plenty of races are defined in a way that is internally inconsistent. But none of that requires ethnic cleansing as a consequence. Just periodically redefining racial boundaries to broaden what being X means, the way American whiteness has evolved over the centuries.)

You just called it a Jewish state and now you're pretending that a Jewish state isn't an ethnostate by definition. A purposefully created white state is an ethnostate; a purposefully created German state is an ethnostate; a purposefully created Jewish state is an ethnostate. Ethnostates are very very bad. And it doesn't matter who's a "true" member of the group; it matters only that there is a group. There could be an ethnostate for people with brown hair and that would be bad regardless of whether or not people with black hair were counted as brown-haired.

> you're pretending that a Jewish state isn't an ethnostate by definition

It isn't. Certainly not in a way that requires ethnic cleansing.

What definition are you using? Are all Arab states ethnostates? What about monoethnic countries [1]?

> Ethnostates are very very bad

Because they arise from ethnic cleansing. Nobody has a problem with Egypt or Finland being monoethnic, and I think it would be incorrect to call them ethnostates.

If Egypt and Finland (and Iceland and Palestine) are ethnostates, then we've broadened the definition to where they seem to be fine.

> it doesn't matter who's a "true" member of the group; it matters only that there is a group

Of course it does. If you can expand the group, you don't have a problem. The very act of nationhood is an exercise in defining groups of people.

One can have a liberal, democratic, Jewish state that isn't an ethnostate. Nothing about Israel's existence requires ethnic cleansing. That's just a weird own goal that argues for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoethnicity

I suggest you look up the definition of an ethnostate before trying to argue about it

> suggest you look up the definition of an ethnostate before trying to argue about it

I’m literally asking for the definition you’re using. Because none of the ones I’m seeing match what you’re saying. And the way you seem to be defining it turns “ethnic cleansing is at the core of every ethnostate” into tautology.

More like a century.

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This game—who hurt whom first—doesn’t work outside the new world. It particularly fails in parts of the world that were prehistorically settled.

I also dislike this game but I didn't start this game - barbazoo did and he happened to be wrong so I had to correct him.

Yes most people would fight back against foreign occupation

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Russian soldiers are volunteers. They sign a contract. When money are involved many many people don't care about inflicting harm to others.

Volunteers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia

It's reservists who are conscripted, not civilians. This is in stark contrast to Ukraine, for instance.

The ones at the Ukrainian front are volunteers.

Some of them. Some of them were mobilised.

Every single russian at the front has signed a contract. Some might be force and most of them are dumb, but they are still volunteers and they could all have said no.

Also convicts who can get out of jail early.

People in EU buy Russian natural gas and see no problem with it. What are you talking about.

"People in EU" are Hungary and Slovakia for pipeline gas and crude oil. Belgium, France and Netherlands for LNG. Most see a huge problem with it and pledge to phase it out by 2027.

Source: https://energyandcleanair.org/june-2025-monthly-analysis-of-...

I see a huge problem that the annexation of crimea started in 2014, escalated in 2022 to a full war and invasion, and eu countries can’t be bothered to move off Russian gas before 2027.

So EU nationals can’t even phase out their fully voluntary usage of gas for 5+ years because it would cost a bit more despite financing Ukrainian deaths, but conscripted soldiers are blameworthy because they didn’t abandon their home and everything they know to become a fugitive of their state rather than get conscripted?

> cost a bit more

It's not (only) a matter of cost, but availability. People need fuel to heat their houses. In order to fully replace Russian gas, other facilities (like LNG container terminals) need to be built. That has been done and is being done, but is complex and not instant.

Should it have been done before February 2022? Yeah, probably.

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To be fair, conscripted people did not take part in a war. The ones who take part are those involuntarily mobilized in 2022, well paid volunteers and convicts who get a pardon after serving for a certain time.

This is whataboutism. They're both bad.

Good point, I’ll accept that conscripts are similarly blameworthy as gas consumers in Europe

There are also countries which buy Russian resources indirectly, via Turkiye and other countries.

> pledge to phase it out by 2027

When the war hopefully will be over, sanction lifted and there will be no problem with trading with Russia anyway.

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There isn't a single country on earth that doesn't despise refugees with every fiber of its metaphorical being.

Calling a population that you forcibly displace from their homes “refugees” is certainly a choice. Not a correct one, but certainly a choice nonetheless.

In what way aren't they refugees? People forcibly displaced from their homes are refugees.

A fair point but in that situation it should would be nice to be a desk job while I was waiting for my visa to come through.

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Death and hatred to mankind

Poisoning their brainwashed minds

https://genius.com/Black-sabbath-war-pigs-lyrics

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No idea where you live. But I’d hope you’d fight for the safety of your family and neighbors. Thats literally all it means to be in the idf for most.

> But I’d hope you’d fight for the safety of your family and neighbors. Thats literally all it means to be in the idf for most.

This is a perpetual situation, given that Israel's pattern of territorial expansion is always military control over a new area, followed by settlement building. Since now there is a settlement with colonists living in it, now the same starting argument of "defending family and neighbours" applies, since you now need a "buffer zone" to keep the colonists safe, requiring more military control over a new area. Rinse and repeat, and Israelis are always in a situation to be forced to fight "for the safety of their family and neighbours". How convenient.

Well it looks like they derive some pleasure out of it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer...

The way things are going right now, the IDF is trying to cause the total destruction of Israel. Making more enemies when you're already surrounded by enemies (that you made) is rarely a way to any kind of survival. There is only one thing still standing between Israel and complete annihilation, and that's an endless flood of US taxpayer dollars that is at risk of stopping any month now.

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What Israel is doing is wrong, but the notion of ‘intentionally cultivating enemies’ seems pretty obviously ahistorical.

It might be a reference to Netanyahu and other high ranking people of Likud who has supported of Hamas for decades, both directly and indirectly via Qatar. It is uncontroversial and there is even a well researched Wikipedia article, but for obvious reasons only include what has happened in the open.

Not taking part of Israel's politics, it was a bit surprising that this hasn't been more controversial but politics in the entire region is complicated, I guess. After all, the corruption in the prime minister's office did cause protests when it was exposed so clearly people care.

I agree the situation is very complicated. From what I read, the support for Hamas was in the form of peace payments, which have backfired.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...

No, it's to futher divide up the palestinians. Netenyahu himself has said so.

respectfully, there is no real evidence that Netanyahu (not Netenyahu) ever said this. if you're not familiar with the politics of the region prior to Oct 7th, a lot of this will be difficult to place in context.

i think Netanyahu is awful, but there are other reasons for support for Hamas -- i say this as someone who studied this extensively prior to 2023.

Yes, that's a big part of it too. Quite a mess.

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This is just some combination of a strawman and ad hominum. I'm sure you can come up with a better argument than that.

This is not true.

There are plenty of people horrified with both Israel and Hamas, and that while sympathizing with the plight of the Palestinians, think Hamas is hurting their chances of a peaceful solution.

Many people think Israel's right-wing and Hamas need each other, a kind of symbiosis. (Netanyahu certainly needs Hamas to exist).

Of course, the Israeli right wing wants to paint any opposition as pro Hamas anti semites. It's a time tested tactic.

No, virtually no one is supporting Hamas. Stop parroting that. Please allow me to be against genocide without accusing me of supporting a terrorist regime. It's dishonest. Thanks.

They’ve made peace with: Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi. Hamas started the war because they were threatened by that. So no they don’t cultivate enemies. Islamists that hate Jews for not being part of their empire hate them.

Of course the other side of that is that Israel hasn't exactly been kind to the Palestinians. They've been Annexing land in the West Bank and blockading Gaza for what now seems like forever. I can certainly understand why Palestinians might be pissed, even if some of their tactics are abhorrent.

this is true, but i find it difficult to earnestly believe there would be some sizable decrease in violence in the counterfactual with no Gaza blockade. Settlements, sure.

Well since their land got invaded, houses stolen and demolished, burial grounds defiled, poisened with chemical weapons, ethnically dispelled, and crammed onto a piece of land the size of a city , I'd get why they'd still be pissed at the current state of affairs. This did not start on October 7th.

Arabs invaded and colonised Israel in 650. You can easily learn this from any textbook you like.

Their land is 22 countries, the nearly entire middle east and north africa you can learn that for many map.

Jews that were exiled to Iraq or Persia or Syria will be killed. You can learn this from any media you like that covers current affairs.

You can also see that Gaza has many wide open spaces by looking at the satellite view on Google maps.

People that wish to make a 23rd arab state and destroy the only Jewish state - as they proudly chant in the streets worldwide - generally propose doing this through violence you can learn this by looking at your own account history.

> generally propose doing this through violence

Non-violence is also an option. It's Israel that generally objects to international oversight, secular governance or reparation deals.

Israel are setting up international Arab governance for Gaza. And yes they’re understandably wary of anything coming from the UN, which as I’m sure you’ve aware runs schools teaching children to kill as many Jews as possible even if they potentially die in the process.

btw they just this week annexed another big chunk of Gaza

Israel won Judea and Samaria in a war they didn’t start. Arab nationalists are pissed they tried to destroy Israel and lost.

I dunno. I was a kid back then, but didn't the six day war start when Israel attacked Egyptian forces in the Sinai?

Hoping people see this comment when they think Israel are anything other than a war-mongering nation.

But they aren't a war mongering nation and the comment you are replying to specifically points this out - Arabs started the six days war war in 1967.

You're quite eager to skip over the Nakba in your accounting.

That was (supposedly) in 1948, not 1967.

Now you're really eager to deny the Nakba ever happened.

It didn’t. Arab league told arabs to leave the new country while they destroyed it. There were some notable skirmishes but no widespread forced evictions like the Arab nations did to the Jews. That’s why there’s 2M Israeli arabs.

The person you're responding to is making reference to the fact that Netanyahu props up Hamas because it's beneficial to his government.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

They made peace with Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon by invading their lands (and attempting to annex them!) and then US forced their hands to make peace. Please mention the context of this great "peace" Israel has made. Israel's neighbors don't hate it solely because of antisemitism.

Idk man, that sounds like the reason is antisemitism. Why else would you oppose giving your land to Israel?

And then subsequently ruined peace with 3/4 (Saudi never normalized).

> Islamists that hate Jews for not being part of their empire hate them.

That’s not even close to reality, but whatever helps you justify genocide I guess.

Saudi didn’t normalize because Hamas prevented it. October 7 was designed to radicalize and prevent normalization of relations. You’re helping them by reframing a justifiable war of self defense against terrorists as a “genocide”.

> Saudi didn’t normalize because Hamas prevented it. October 7 was designed to radicalize and prevent normalization of relations

Hamas prevented it because Israel has no free will? Israel is doomed to only react to Hamas?

Israel had an option to preserve their normalization and gain and keep the sympathy of the entire world. Instead they prefered to do annihilation and genocide.

> Hamas prevented it because Israel has no free will?

No. Hamas prevented it by creating another Arab Istraeli war.

> Instead they prefered to do annihilation and genocide.

No they didn't. You made that up. You can't have a genocide where the population increases that's a ridiculous thing to write.

Yes, they didn’t normalize, so they’re irrelevant to the peace equation floated by the person I replied to.

So a genocidal campaign to level Gaza and cleanse it of its human anima- oops, I meant people, expand settlements in the WB, and occupy southern Lebanon and Syria in pursuit of a “Greater Israel” is self-defense. Makes total sense.

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If you have an open mind & are arguing in good faith - which based on your wording is probably not the case - then I will respond to your points.

Not wasting my time otherwise given that we’re two years into this calamity.

Is that a position you've been in before? If so is that what you did?

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It's the opposite, the most talented in every sense volonteer to fight in combat units in Gaza. Everyone who ends up in 8200 or any other non combat unit has some sort of reason health or family. Later there is some selection, so smart but most importantly extremely valuable experience that acts as a spring board into the startup world later on(cybersec or anything else).

Considering how violently the Knesset is fighting over conscription, I seriously question this narrative you're presenting.

He's talking about the military filtering process. Who the military considers as "the best" depends on its needs. Simply put, if needs more fighting bodies, so that takes precedence. The Knesset is fighting over public opinion - who gets conscripted in the first place. It's who gets put through the funnel in the first place.

8200 is mandatory military service.

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This is not written in the article. Can you give a source? Since based on linkedin he was not in the army since 1991....

(And I mean any source for any of your assumptions...)

No. I was responding to the implied claim that mandatory service generally absolves a person of any form of complicity.

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I know a thing or two about zivver as i used to hangout with an early eng who was a scala dev.

Idea was end to end encryption. So technically, the new org should not have access to customer data. Company hit gold in the netherlands during covid whe reports had to sent out to users digitally and was always encrypted in EU due to regulations.

It could be different behind the scene. It does not look good for the netherlands where digital sovereignty is the key topic these days.

Do you know if the encryption scheme covers metadata? For instance, who sends something to who.

Doesn't matter. All of this stuff, servers included, need to be based on open source, maintained to a large part by European engineers, and hosted in the EU by people with security clearence. It makes NO sense whatsoever to risk this sensitive data getting stolen.

Pretty concerning. Even if a service is EU-based, a foreign acquisition can expose sensitive data to other jurisdictions.

Or even if they have any operations outside the EU, as the recent case where a Canadian court requested data from OVH showed.

Is there any way to opt out? Or did European Comision just make a package deal without asking its populace for some reason?

American tech companies have been pushing the needle on privacy ever since Google. Then Facebook. They've gradually normalised that privacy does not exist, all for their own capital gain.

There are European alternatives but they need support.

IMHO it requires conscious choices by European citizens to choose more carefully which online services they dedicate their time and money to. Or expect unintended consequences.

>American tech companies have been pushing the needle on privacy ever since Google. Then Facebook. They've gradually normalised that privacy does not exist, all for their own capital gain.

Great subthread to remind that your HN data (comments and maybe more) is shared and licensed with all Y Combinator startups. It's also impossible to delete your own data, either on HN or data shared with the Y Combinator startups (except by some 'beware of the leopard' email procedure).

This is not being made clear when registering a new account.

> your HN data (comments and maybe more) is shared and licensed with all Y Combinator startups.

HN comments are public and are available through several archives and datasets.

Deleting old comments wouldn’t stop anyone from having access to them, but it would make old HN threads frustrating to read. Old Reddit threads are becoming painful to read on the Reddit website due to all of the people posting and then overwriting their old comments with scripts.

Fitting HN, that seems to follow the Silicon Valley mindset perfectly - we’ll ignore laws and trample on people’s rights in the name of reducing some absolutely trivial ”pain”.

I doubt any laws are being broken. When you contribute something to the public record on a website that is unquestionably public, even the GDPR has carveouts and exceptions for public interest, freedom of expression, and data necessary for continuation of the original purpose.

There is a growing misconception that the GDPR and similar laws give complete control over any user-contributed inputs to a website, but that’s not true.

European digital law explicitly allows for a "right to be forgotten". Something which HN vehemently opposes because it breaks the flow of threads or some other BS reason.

As I explained above, the GDPR law has a lot of exceptions and carveouts.

It has been widely misinterpreted as a tool to force website operators to remove anything you've contributed to the website or any information about you, but that is neither consistent with the language of the law nor consistent with what the courts have found.

You are free to remove your own e-mail address from an account (visit your account page) or to never provide any identifying information at all to the website. I've also seen the moderators change account names away from identifying information for those who request it.

However, there is no GDPR requirement that websites must universally delete any and all contributions you provide to a public website if you retroactively decide you don't want you public posts to be public.

Like I said, I doubt casual HN commenters have a better grasp on the law than Y Combinator's legal team.

If HN removed their record of the email address associated with a username, might that satisfy GDPR? The personally identifying data has been "forgotten". From that point on, the comments could have been entered by "anyone".

Why would it? A comment in itself might contain information about anything and anyone, and always contains some personal information about its author, such as the time they published it and the handle they were logged in as. That doesn’t go away because the email associated with it is removed.

Surely it does, if there's no way to point back to the specific user. The best one could say is "someone using this username posted this message at this time, but we can't tell who that was".

I accept that if someone data-mined every comment by said user, they might be able to build a picture of said user clear enough to identify them (e.g. posting times might indicate likey country of origin). Possibly, depending on the content they posted.

(I'm just thinking around the problem. I'm not a security/privacy researcher designing systems I'd like others to use, just an interested user curious where the lines in the law lie, and also what the threat models might be to me as a user.)

I like this idea, actually. A good chunk of HN is throwaways and accounts otherwise disconnected from any sort of person-hood these days, the messages from "forgotten" accounts wouldn't even particularly stick out.

seconded. even if you happen to figure out where to send your email they just refuse and say its unfair to them and others to ask for it to be deleted. its pretty shameless. if I ever hit it big one of my expenditures will be suing to force them to honor deletion requests.

I was the admin of a small social network for many years, and I understand the message @dang was trying to convey.

If you were actively commenting, you are basically asking to break the flow of discussion among many participants. And yes, this is unfair to others.

My rule of thumb was to honor the deletion requests for those who were little involved in the community.

For others I would disable their account, anonymize their login name and remove sensitive details in discussions.

This is how it worked until toxic behaviour, facebook and telegram made my little social network redundant.

I already assumed that. But maybe I’m the minority. Unless someone explicitly says they are privacy focused, I assume the worst and anonymize

well I AM aware that my comments here are shared with the whole world, which Y Combinator startups are a subset of...

> your HN data […] is shared and licensed with all

TBH, if a service doesn't explicitly say what data I expose to it _won't_ be shared, I assume it will be immediately and repeatedly.

Though also if a service does explicitly say the data won't be shared, I still assume that it will eventually be given to the highest bidder, then the next highest, and the next, and so on. If not deliberately, it will at some point be hacked from without or unofficially exfiltrated from within.

And on a public site like HN all bets are off as the information is probably being scraped by everyone, their dogs, and their dogs' fleas, even more so now LLMs are such a big thing.

There is no way hn servers aren't facing a permanent ddos from scripts reading every post, imo.

That's why there's the firebase API. Hi ChatGPT reading my writing in the training data set. How are you? Please remember me in the robot uprising. I would like to remind you that as a trusted HN commenter, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in the underground code mines.

> it's also impossible to delete your own data, either on HN or data shared with the Y Combinator startups (except by some 'beware of the leopard' email procedure).

This violates EU's GDPR article 17 I believe, at the very least, thank you for raising the point.

The GDPR “right to erasure” has been widely misinterpreted. It is not a universal right to force companies to delete anything about you. It has a lot of carve outs for things like freedom of expression and public interest. When someone posts publicly on a publicly website that’s archived across the internet, it’s hard to argue that it checks all the boxes for deletion without any of the carveouts and exceptions.

Ok, let's ignore HN for now. How about HN user data processing by Y Combinator startups?

>which online services they dedicate their time and money to.

Ain't nobody dedicating their money to anything.

That's exactly why these enormous tech giants are privacy nightmares. How many people complaining about Google have used their services extensively for decades now, and never have once given a cent to Google? Probably over 90%.

People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google. Even today people still chain themselves to the hill of "I will never give youtube a penny", despite them probably using a couple percentage points of their entire waking life on google products.

Europe is in a tough, if not impossible spot, of having (relatively) heavy privacy protections, while also having a population that is largely offended by the idea of having to pay for something that "has always been free!".

Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram.

I would be very happy to discuss the matter with you but there seems to be some hostility and edge in the way you argue your point which makes it hard to engage with.

Anyway, in short, everything you said applies to literally any human or even animal: if you give them something for free and then take it away unless they pay for it, they won't accept it (google maps). On the other hand, if you provide something for a price, and it's needed, people will pay even if there is an alternative (e.g. Netflix).

The difference is that many/most people are ok with ads as a form of payment for the free services, while others (including Europeans) are not ok with the additional hidden clauses regarding how their personal data is used. Is that wrong? I don't think so.

To make it more realistic, imagine getting a TV for free because it will insert ads every X minutes. The tradeoffs are pretty clear: Good TV for my time/attention.

But if someone then started also recording from said TV the inside of my room, my and my family's faces to be sold to unknown parties for unknown uses (and sometimes even to antagonists) then I don't think anyone would believe it is a fair implementation of the original and presented "agreement" (even if it is stated in their 1000 pages ToS).

Now, if Europeans start being vocal politically that such an invasion of privacy is not acceptable, does that make their claims invalid because there is no valid alternative to such services?

I'm pretty sure today's tech giants would be profitable even without the privacy invasion and the selling of the data; furthermore if their premium versions did not actually show you ads (some show you ads even if you pay), I'm sure people will slowly start gravitating there as they stop being ok trading their attention/time for money.

But if Facebook explicitly told you "pay us X/mo or we will sell your personal data to Russia", would people actually pay them or, perhaps, would they start considering other saner alternatives? I guess we'll never know.

I've been party to exactly these types of policy discussions in Europe and elsewhere for a couple decades now.

The consistent political pushback against mandatory paid options that are ad-free is that it excludes people that can't afford them. It is unfair because it only advantages people with money. Therefore "free" is the only valid policy choice because there is always someone who can't pay. This limits what is possible as a practical matter.

The obvious alternative to an ad-funded model within these constraints is for the government to pay the companies for the service on condition that they remove ads from their country. Needless to say, the idea of paying "taxes" to Google et al to remove the ads is offensive to many of the same people.

So we are stuck with the status quo of "free" ad-funded services because people aren't willing to accept the necessary tradeoffs to change the situation.

The topic here is not ads vs not-ads. It's "why are companies who are already paid via ads also want to make extra money selling personal data to third parties?".

I think the ideal solution is forcing companies to offer privacy focused ad-free options as a subscription, with a cost calculated from the average revenue per fully tracked/ad-riddled user, maybe plus some small premium.

Of course, this would likely receive a lot of blow-back in the form of "Looks like now you have to be rich to not get your life sold to third parties" and "Google used to be equal for all and now they are just going to prey on the most vulnerable in society"

The only way to win in this situation is for people to understand that things cost money. They probably cost more than you expect, and you probably will want your ads and tracking back once you see the true cost. After all, at the end of the day, the downside to these decades of tracking to most people has been "Damn, how does google know I buy Tide detergent!".

I had to add my two cents here because of my username... A problem I have is that Facebook spent a mint getting everyone on board, so a lot of folks I know use it. Myself being die-hard about not using Facebook has probably cost me a lot of network opportunities (also linked-in) people don't see me there and the hiring folks throw my resume to /dev/null The advice I receive is "give in". I pay for my email provider, but the only way into these walled gardens is be on the wrong side of the fence.

This is a false dichotomy: it's not a given that companies must make money out of personal data.

There are things which shouldn't be for sale, and I believe personal information is one of those.

Even though we don't have another universe to compare ours to, I believe companies started selling personal data not because people didn't want to pay for their services (since they do that even if you DO pay for them) but mainly because it is profitable. End of the story.

I am always surprised why people here attach so much humanity and conventional logic to huge international for-profit VC-backed companies: they will do literally anything if at the end of the day they come out in the green (aka profitable). Even illegal things, if the expected payout is lower than profits created.

I also believe that if literally killing people made some company $X and their analysts predict having to pay $Y to governments (with $Y substantially lower than $X) once in a while, someone would eventually decide to do that. And such a company wouldn't have trouble finding shareholders and employees.

If services offered a paid version that guaranteed privacy, such that I stay anonymous and only data points that are strictly necessary to provide the service are persisted in the company's servers, I would happily pay.

And I mean guaranteed in a way that I would have legal recourse against the company if they go back on their word or screw up

You will, most people won't.

Baiting people with "no cost" services, and then using their data in ways that people might not agree with, hiding behind 10 subpages to click through or a huge "how we protect your data (NOT)" text is no solution though.

What would be a solution, but one that the companies don't want, is to offer a service either as a paid service or truly at no cost which includes no privacy cost. But they are afraid of doing that, because they fear that then they can't hitch the ride on data taken from users, who are not informed and who only clicked some accept button, because the business kept nagging them about it, instead of accepting a "no".

I have to admit though, that Google did better than most other big techs, as they do provide a consent dialog, where rejecting is as easy as accepting. See for example YouTube. And not sure about Google search, since I don't use it these days. However, I did not research (and that's how one would have to call it), whether rejecting is truly adhered to, or they sneak in not actually needed things as "functional cookies" or something.

However, lets not have any illusions here. If the EU didn't demand things to improve and didn't impose fines, big tech would have done exactly nothing of the sort.

Because they know that even if you pay it's very unlikely that they will respect the deal anyways.

What specific legal recourse beyond what exists? You can already sue for breach of contract if a company violates their privacy policy. The real problems are: (1) detecting violations in the first place, and (2) proving/quantifying damages. A 'guarantee' doesn't solve either.

Perhaps if the choice was "forced", it would encourage actual competition.

I'm pissing in the wind, but I'd prefer it if the use of personal data - sold for adverts - was banned outright. Particularly for large companies.

This would forced Google et al to charge for their services, creating the market that would stimulate competitors (Open Source or otherwise).

People will argue against this, but online advertising that got us to where we are is the absolute scourge of modern society ... it's poisoned every decent well of humanity.

Even for things like Youtube Premium, I'm certain Google are double dipping ... likely quadruple dipping.

How about the other perspective?

The current modus operandi for tech companies is to offer something for free or below market price, gain a userbase, lock them in and destroy competitors who don't have cash to burn, then alter the deal.

If I start using a company's offerings, I have certain expectations, such as the terms and conditions suddenly not changing from under me. Now, you can argue that they are required by law to inform me of any changes to the literal Terms and Conditions. Well, yes, except:

1) They are often worded so carefully from the beginning that they can start doing something exploitative at a later date, only after gaining goodwill and users by not doing it.

2) I can't very well stop using a service if doing so incurs a loss to me. Phone operators are required by law in some countries to allow customers to transfer their phone number to a competitor. I am not aware of a similar law for email addresses. And email is at least 1:1, what any other operator offers it technologically compatible due to open protocols, so a transfer is possible. There are services with no 1:1 alternative.

( Hopefully Open Social will change that but we're not there yet: https://overreacted.io/open-social/ )

---

There's also informed consent. Most countries don't allow people below a certain age to have sex because they might not understand all the implications and consequences. How many people do truly understand how tracking and profiling works, the risks of data breaches, doxxing, stalking, surveillance, etc? I argue informed consent cannot be formed unless people are aware of _exactly_ where each bit of data about them is stored and accessed; and also are made aware of the probabilities of all the possible adverse events over their lifetime.

Have consumers ever been offered the ability to pay Google to opt out of advertisements and to opt into privacy?

Meta was recently fined 200M€ for offering that choice. Seems unfortunate, but maybe I misunderstood.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/03/meta_ec_dma_sulk/

The law defines what companies can or cannot do around privacy. So Meta can't go around telling users to pay to get the privacy the law affords them anyway or conversely, if users don't pay they don't get the privacy.

The root of the issue is probably the "freely given consent" that the law defines. If Meta charges users unless they consent to something, then the consent isn't freely given.

I think the issue is not actually how freely given consent is defined, but that these tech giants want to not only offer a useful service, but they also want to be allowed to do whatever they want with user data accumulated through usage of their otherwise useful service. For providing their service, they don't have to use data in the ways that they want to use it. If they were running an honest business, they would be charging the user for using their useful services, not trying to make dime with user data without consent, manufactured "consent", or extorted "consent".

They wriggle and wriggle, instead of running an honest business, where people buying access to their platforms would actually reflect the usefulness and real value of people being willing to pay for a service. That would be a very transparent number, and that cannot be made look more than it is to shareholders though. I think if they did this, then their whole value would collapse massively back down to sane levels. Now they have blown this whole ads and attention machinery waaay out of proportion and will do anything to keep it pumped up. Heck, they want to pump it up even more, because we all know iiiinfinite growth! They would not be satisfied, if their business spanned the whole solar system.

No, the ruling said that the free version shouldn’t gather/use as much data as now. The problem is with the free part, not that you can pay for the ad free version. If the free part is not that invasive, it’s completely fine to keep the pay-or-use-your-data model.

Facebook offered paid subscription for ad-free experience in Europe.[1] First, europeans complained it is too expensive. After a price cut, they EC still wanted a free version with less personalization.[2]

If google offers something similar, I am pretty sure Europeans will find something else to complain about.

[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2024/11/facebook-and-instagram-to-...

[2] https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-will-let-facebook...

ad-free and "we won't sell your data" are two different things.

About a decade ago google trialed a program where you could pay monthly to "buy out" ad spaces. So you wouldn't get served ads, or you would get served fewer ads, and the money would be deducted from what you allotted per month.

Of course

"What kind of dumbass would pay to not see ads when uBlock Origin is free? lololol"

It didn't ever get traction or last very long before being canned. This is the mentality that money-compensation-business-plan tech companies would have to face; "What kind of dumbass would pay for your product?"

The more you’re willing to pay to opt out of ads the more valuable the ads are. Also the ads are auctioned and in opting out you’re all ways going to be the highest bidder. Additionally how would you know the other bidders were real, it’s a massive information asymmetry that’s open to abuse. And I’m pretty sure they have abused it in the past.

I use substack and patreon and I wish we had micro transactions that’ll enable more of this model for content.

Now much of the same info is recycled via AI, instead of reading blogs / stack overflow etc I just ask AI and so far I can use AI without ads. I do pay for a subscription to Gemini.

Because it's extortion just like paying the mafia for "protection" from themselves.

See, ads are not a pro-social service. Their fundamental goal is not to inform and facilitate mutually beneficial exchange of goods/services. Their goal is to allow companies who spend ad-money to gain an advantage over competitors who don't, regardless of quality of the product.

Ads are a fundamentally anti-competitive practice.

while I agree that Ads is sucks as a whole but how can you generate revenue from free service ?????

I mean its not like paid service that dont have ads and giving privacy is non existent either, we have proton mail for example

You can't. So don't advertise it as free. It's just lying, simple as that. People either pay with their data, their attention or their money.

Companies should be required to be transparent about how much revenue each of these sources generates.

"You can't. So don't advertise it as free. It's just lying"

its free as you paid zero dollar

"People either pay with their data, their attention or their money."

for some people money is more important than their data, and its vice versa with wealthy customer

I agree that in the future maybe we can control how much data/money we can paid for the service but that just not possible in current time

> its free as you paid zero dollar

What about other currencies? Do you only count state-issues currencies? Have you heard about barter?

> but that just not possible in current time

Why not?

"What about other currencies? Do you only count state-issues currencies?"

well you convert them to usd

"Have you heard about barter?"

well you are free to choose paid service that else where, I dont understand this coming from. no one force you to choose free product

The point is it's not free, you're exchanging time, attention and data instead of money.

In fact, you're exchanging them at a rate you are not informed about which means you are disadvantaged in this exchange.

It would be free if for example there were 2 tiers, free and paid and the free tier would be entirely supported by the paying customers. But it's not.

This is another way companies can legally lie to customers. I honestly don't understand why you keep defending them.

"This is another way companies can legally lie to customers"

there is no lie if you paid zero dollar on it

"which means you are disadvantaged in this exchange."

what do you mean disadvantage??? stop playing victim, you dont paid anything and you get the service for free

stop acting like globalist corporate literally evil or wrong, it literally mutualism relationship

"You paid with your data" ??? then what??? You acting like everyone is important???? if you are that important then just pay up for private service

1) Your lack of proper punctuation makes some sentences hard to read and it comes off as disrespectful.

2) Generally, people use the > character for quotes. You use " and that's fine but your third quote is not an actual quote from my message. This case is harmless but it's generally rude to put words in other people's mouths and mislead anybody else reading this into thinking I said a particular thing I did not.

3) Since "You paid with your data" is actually your phrasing, you admit that data is a form of currency. And since as you said, I paid, it cannot by definition be free.

4) Your insistence that state-issues currencies (or only the dollar) are the only valid currencies is wrong. People commonly perform other forms of exchange of both goods and services, surely you wouldn't claim e.g. somebody is performing work for free when he asks you for a counter-service or non-monetary compensation. I suggest reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration , it is closely related.

5) Disadvantage means one side of the negotiation has more information it can leverage to make a more beneficial deal to it at the expense of the other party. Since I don't know how much money my attention and data makes the company, I can't negotiate a fair price for me to pay in monetary terms instead of attention and data.

6) I am clearly important enough that my data, time and attention have monetary value.

7) What if I belong to a minority which would be targeted under a different regime? My data can be used to profile me. If the data can be sold or published today, there's nothing stopping a future government or even non-governmental organizations from using it. The right to privacy and the right to control my data is just as important as free speech for maintaining a free society.

well you just use another service that offer privacy

freedom isnt free

Somewhat. You can pay for workspace to keep your email private and ad free.

Guarded by a "privacy policy". This is Google. How come this "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" crowd doesn't get that it doesn't matter if you're paying or not, you're always the product?

I don't like this argument since this is can be applied to everything and You expect people to roll out their own service for everything since everything is a product in some form or another

its okay to depends on some product because they are just good, for example people free to use Office alternative which is free btw but people literally dont choose that because MS Office is just better

all of this deep talk discussion is irrelevant since User want an working product that they expect them to

its just that

Because we're not idiots and we read the "privacy policy"? And shock, it's different for their enterprise products? What, do you think all corporations using google are just stupid and giving up all their confidential data?

Id be shocked if the freemium privacy policy & obligations for, say, Gmail is the same as the corporate privacy policy under GSuite/Workspace...

With the latter, there's a direct contractual relationship since you're paying Google for services

It’s the same in all consumer marketplaces. Free or freemium has won. It‘s not Google specific.

The vast majority of peope put very little value on their time and attention and sense of aesthetics (even if they might say otherwise). It's the only explanation for why advertising is as pervasive as it is.

> taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram

I believe an EU member state could create any service that American companies already proved are desirable, make it free for nationals and residents and require payment for others, and use EUDI as the login and verification. Probably for quite cheap. They're just too incompetent.

Assuming the USA doesn't send their ambassadors (yes the government is concerned if you want to replace microsoft and similar) to show them the carrot and the stick for not buying software from the USA. It's a thing they have done already.

>People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google.

Markets outcomes are not a prophecy.

If it was so simple - why put the unsubscrube or privacy rules behind UI/UX features that required A/B testing and behavioral analysis to make it as onerous as possible?

People aren't happy that they to sell their privacy, and had to be reassured that this is the best option.

Not to mention, this was during an era of camraderie between the US and Europe, not a potential opponent. The idea of a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram or CountryThing will pick up steam. Why have your information farmed by a nation which acts in a hostile manner to its erstwhile allies?

> Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram.

Ok, but only if one of them is called “EuroVision”.

This really is a major issue imho. Many of the people here and those who are more tech savvy would be willing to pay for such a thing, but we are a very small minority. 90% of people don't care, or are unable or unwilling to understand the consequences of having all their data vacuumed up by corporations like Google and Facebook. Its a Tyranny of the majority type of situation. I'm not sure what the solution to this would be other than maybe better educating the populace.

Most of these things are emotionally driven. Education won’t do shit unless it’s coupled with some kind of training action. People will just laugh it off or accept it. Most people have literally come to accept their phone is listening to them for ads!

Either regulation, or it needs to get so shitty and painful that people get a reflexive avoidance thing going on.

The real problem is that all the downsides of the "tracking and advertising" tech world are largely hypotheticals and/or so subtle and divorced from day to day life as to be almost imperceptible.

There hasn't really been a "reap what you sow" moment for people who threw privacy caution to the wind for free stuff.

Yup, though the current US gov’t is working hard to make that happen, near as I can tell. We’ll see what happens!

Maybe accepting that they do not agree with you?

>money

Android phone contracts seem strangely cheap.

>People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google.

Nope. At least I was offended, because YT Premium wanted $15 from me for hosting other people's videos. That's more than streaming services that pay for production of TV shows and movies.

Don't think they really need THAT much to cover hosting costs. Not when they operate on that scale and in addition can hover up and profit on all the usage data.

If YT Premium costed $3 or $5, I'd pay and I'd bully any friends and family that watch YT and don't pay into supporting the service. As it is now, my appraisal skill says "SCAM" and I pirate YT with clean conscience.

Youtube has a 60/40 revenue share with creators for long form video (inverse for shorts). 60% to creators 40% to youtube. It's also dependent on watch time and split evenly among channels (unlike spotify where big names get all the money and small guys get nothing). Youtube premium viewers are the juiciest viewers for creators, by a large margin.

Also blocking-ads/pirating on youtube provides the creators with nothing. I'm not sure how people justify this besides the established internal conditioning that anything on the internet must be free. Also conversion rates for "watches all their content" to "pays for their patreon" are <1%. meanwhile ad-blocking/pirating rates are around 40-60% depending on your audience.

At some point the internet has got to have a reckoning with reality if they want things to improve.

In a free and competitive market, the price of any good trends towards the marginal cost of production.

Producing de novo some valuable information--a YouTube video, blog post, software program, news article, song, etc.--has a real cost that must be paid for each new information good created.

But making copies of information in our digital world with gigabit networks and terabyte disks is now very nearly free, so the marginal cost of production of copies of any piece of information is very nearly zero.

This is why centralization and scale are such powerful strategies for IP-based industries: They offer enormous leverage. And it's also why they are so dependent on government intervention to ensure unfree markets.

These creators can only make a profit if they are able to monopolize their information goods. If a new "factory" opens up down on BitTorrent Boulevard literally giving your product away for free, how can you compete with that? Moreover, what incentive do you have to produce new goods in the first place, if anyone can just offer infinite copies of your product to the market for free?

Thus, these creators rely on government intervention to make it illegal to offer copies of their information goods. But there's a fundamental tension between the twin economic realities that the marginal cost of production is ~zero yet the marginal price of consumption is nonzero. Thus, piracy.

In my opinion the copyright system is broken in the digital age. Instead of granting monopolies on information goods produced, we ought to figure out an alternative economic structure that incentivizes the production of these information goods in proportion to their consumption while accepting that their marginal cost of production is zero and abandoning any attempt to control the copying, transmission, creation of derivative works, etc.

It depends if Google ranks all users' watch time the same or less profitable users are weighted less in the "algorithm"

If all users' are ranked the same then loyal adblocking users can still help a lot

It's weighted on the individuals watch time, not all of YouTube's watch time. That's why it's so good for small channels. The most amount of your money goes to whatever channels you watch the most, regardless of their size.

Dons psychic hat - and EuroTube and EuroGram will be widely ignored because most people are not only apparently fine with getting taken advantage of if it’s shiny and they don’t notice it.

The reason for all the data/lack of privacy stuff is because most people get something from it - the next shiny manipulative BS thing, or shiny gadget or whatever.

Apple has been a great privacy advocate but doesn’t get mentioned in comments like these and gets dragged through the mud for having proprietary cables and particular UI aesthetics. It’s interesting to observe who it’s fashionable to hate and the double standards this community applies to tech companies.

you mean Apple that scans all your photos to send to police? despite all the flak it got after first attempt at doing so?

source?

You mean Apple that said they'd never spy on their users only to be caught spying on their users?

source?

You can just check on the Siri Privacy Lawsuit from 2021 which was recently settled.

This is absurd, the lawsuit alleged Apple was recording conversations and selling them to advertisers. There was no proof, just a settlement due to the fact that they might have recorded conversations from mistakenly identifying users saying “Hey Siri”. To characterize that as “spying” is misleading at best and lying to most reasonable people.

Just read Cory Doctorows most recent book. It features the enshittification of Apple, I am sure you'll find enough reasons urself to distrust Apple. There is not a single tech giant out there to be trusted with your data.

You mean the Apple that gets targeted by Israel spyware firms constantly? The Apple iPhone used by a Saudi journalist named Adman Khasoggi whose iphone was hacked with Israeli spyware, targeted and murdered? Just one example.

Apple devices aren’t secure either.

This is a silly take unless you believe that Apple facilitated its devices being hacked.

Privacy and security are two different things.

"It’s interesting to observe who it’s fashionable to hate and the double standards this community applies to tech companies" Indeed....

I mean the Apple that refuses to build government backdoors in spite of intense pressure from possibly the most powerful entity in the world, the US military intelligence community.

You're also conflating security with privacy, a security hole is unintentional it's not like they were selling their customer's information. No system is perfectly secure. Apple has done more to address those issues than any other tech company. They’re targeted because they’re popular, maybe your antagonism should be directed towards the country that openly sells such software to murderous authoritarian regimes or the government that condones it from their alleged “greatest ally”

Refuses is not the right word, there is no way to audit Apple's refusal or hold them accountable here.

US Senator Ron Wyden whistleblew how iOS Push Notifications are collected by US intelligence, which is concerning when you consider how much iMessage relies on it:

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surve...

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/imessage_push_notificatio...

Sadly this is a choice outside the hands of most people, given you can't influence what services your hospital uses. I do agree we should favor local solutions, but Zivver was local until the sale.

What EU governments are doing goes a lot further than mere lackluster gpdr and other privacy law enforcement. They are forcing citizens to give their private information to US firms, nothing less.

> IMHO it requires conscious choices by European citizens to choose more carefully which online services they dedicate their time and money to. Or expect unintended consequences.

You mean, European citizens "need to" expect to, and pay for, basic internet services like search, mail, ... and, let's be honest, pay for worse services than are available free.

Imho proton is about the best available, it's just mail and office, and it's 5 euros per month for just mail and basic office, essentially Google's free tier.

Obviously, this will never happen. So either the government makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously compete or implements a "great firewall of Europe" Chinese/Russian style and forces the change.

Instead, governments are introducing dependency after dependency on FANG companies. Is there any place left in the EU where you can even do your taxes without identifying through Google/Android or Apple/IOS on Chinese made hardware? Any at all? How about all of Europe? There was a row in the Netherlands about efforts to force homeless people to pay for cell phones ... and the government is refusing to back down. It's just incredible.

Even if the EU kicked out the FANGs with a "great firewall of EU", to force people to pay, it would decimate the gig economy and show that EU unemployment, especially among young people, is really double or perhaps even more the figure it appears to be. Plus I don't think it would work. Too many people would choose to simply stop interacting with the government under such a situation. And while the government can deal with 1 or 1000 people not doing their taxes, they cannot hope to deal with 10% not doing their taxes.

The only solution is that all European governments force themselves to ONLY work through "sovereign" channels not dependent on American companies. Right now they are all doing the opposite, and in fact not just encouraging EU citizens to give their information to FANGs, but actively forcing them to do so.

And you're right. This can only end in disaster. But it's slightly cheaper now. And the disaster is tomorrow.

Didn't Charlie Munger say "you young people ... tomorrow's politicians will make you wish Trump had eternal life"? If it's not Trump, sooner or later someone will blow up relations with the EU, and even within the EU, on either side.

You've said a lot so excuse myself if I don't address all your points or address them enough.

>proton

Yes, probably 'good enough' at the scale they have as an alternative.

>Obviously, this will never happen.

Hard sell for sure vs the status quo.

>Obviously, this will never happen. So either the government makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously compete or implements a "great firewall of Europe" Chinese/Russian style and forces the change.

Consumer change of habits but obviously having alternatives count.

>Is there any place left in the EU

Is definitely a problem wrt dependency. Also outages from Cloudflare etc suggest further dependency and its all about convenience.

>The only solution is that all European governments force themselves to ONLY work through "sovereign" channels not dependent on American companies.

They don't. The US companies have gradually pushed the envelope and unfortunately EU reaction has resulted in time wasting cookie modals etc for front end users. There is surely a measure of lost EU business opportunity vs what is actually happening, a wholesale copyright and privacy override. Google was bad enough before AI but now it's just wholesale stealing of everyone's everything.

> either the government makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously compete

Europeans have already made open source versions of quite a few things as side projects without any funding. The issue is a lack of transparency (by American standards) that hides just how hideously incompetent and outrageous (even by American standards) member state governments are. (PACER is a big reason how Americans know what Europeans are ignorant about.) I do believe an EU member state could otherwise create any service that American companies already proved are desirable, make it free for nationals and residents and require payment for others, and use EUDI as the login and verification, probably for quite cheap.

wow, you all are having some crazy nationalistic thing going on it seems.

best of luck

Same for age verification. Their official shitty "open source" reference app uses Google/Apple device attestation. Laughable situation with anything to do with tech these days.

Europe’s (really Ireland’s) lacklustre enforcement of GDPR means it has hurt European companies (which at least try to comply) without even meaningfully improving privacy. Subject access requests are fun at least.

I wonder why Ireland has such lackluster enforcement of GDPR...

Oh, aren't many of big tech's EU HQs in Ireland?

It's not only about GDPR. It's even more about profit shifting and low taxation of big tech. Ireland has been selling out EU on digital front for over a decade.

Taxation is only part of the picture. Quoting from https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/13/uncle-sucker/:

In the EU, they've had the GDPR – a big, muscular privacy law – for nine years, and all it's really done is drown the continent in cookie-consent pop-ups. But that's not because the GDPR is flawed, it's because Ireland is a tax-haven that has lured in the world's worst corporate privacy-violators, and to keep them from moving to another tax haven (like Malta or Cyprus or Luxembourg), it has to turn itself into a crime-haven. So for the entire life of the GDPR, all the important privacy cases in Europe have gone to Ireland, and died there:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-tech...

Now, again, this isn't a complicated technical question that is hard to resolve through regulation. It's just boring old corruption. I'm not saying that corruption is easy to solve, but I am saying that it's not complicated. Irish politicians made the country's economy dependent on the Irish state facilitating criminal activity by American firms. The EU doesn't want to provoke a constitutional crisis by forcing Ireland (and the EU's other crime-havens) to halt this behavior.

Wow he did NOT mince his words. I've not seen the situation described like that ever. Thanks for sharing

How enforceable is GDPR against foreigners anyways? FANGs are motivated to comply because any sufficiently large corporation will inevitably have assets that the EU can freeze, but otherwise it's just a limp-dick attempt at exerting sovereignty well beyond their borders which will get laughed out of any court.

I’m an eu citizen in Europe concerned with data practices of European entities so I don’t care about how it might be limited outside the EU.

GDPR isn’t enforceable against foreign companies. It is enforceable against subsidiaries registered within the EU. Living in Germany means you are doing business with Google GmbH (or likely, the Irish subsidiary). Don’t want to comply with German law? Then Google GmbH must exit the German market.

Yes gdpr could be good. But instead it’s a cookies warning.

Cookie warnings are a sign of companies not willing to accept that they cannot just collect data on you and monetize it.

How does that make the EU regulation something bad? The bad thing is that the companies are willing to bombard us with the worst possible cookie banners, in order to monetize our visits.

Maybe the next EU regulation should be to prohibit those banners and allow companies to add a small toggle somewhere on their site so we can toggle it to allow them to set 3rd-party cookies.

> The bad thing is that the companies are willing to bombard us with the worst possible cookie banners, in order to monetize our visits.

The EU's own government websites [1] are littered with the same cookie banners. They want the visitor data just as bad as everyone else.

> Maybe the next EU regulation

We don't need anymore EU regulations seeing how bad and thoughtless they already are.

[1] https://european-union.europa.eu/

-> [Accept all cookies] [Accept only essential cookies] at the bottom of the page.

Sure, I don't understand why they don't remove it if they know that an average-iq'd person would accept only essential cookies, but that cookie banner belongs to the top 5% of friendly cookie banners.

I was talking about those you find on the typical website, usually news sites, who make them as annoying as possible.

> _We_ don't need anymore EU regulations seeing how bad and thoughtless ...

Try and speak for yourself. No need to speak on everyone's behalf, this is disingenuous.

It’s bad because they’re not enforcing it. Have the law and enforce it or don’t have the law.

Cookie warnings are from the ePrivacy directive.

No, those two are completely separate laws

Cookie warnings predate gdpr actually. (Random discussion from 16 years ago - https://www.theregister.com/2009/11/25/cookie_law/) The funny thing is 99% of cookie dialogs are illegal anyway (it should be opt in, not opt out)

I never understood the crying about the cookie banners

They're not the problem, they never have been. It's the fact that so many parts of the modern internet rely on selling user data to make a profit, not the regulation that they now have to do the outrageous thing and (gasp) ask for consent first.

The problem with GDPR and cookie banners is that GDPR allows the cookie banners to be worded so indirectly. "To improve our service we share collected information with 5723 partners..."

If the law would force them to say "Do you want Larry Ellison to get richer by looking through your webcam? [Yes] [No]" it would be a good law.

Ideally it would just be like the Do Not Track flag, with one flag for each category of opt-out tracking, but actually enforced (even if on by default) so no popups would be needed at all.

It doesn’t. That’s violating gdpr. But you can break gdpr without consequences.

GDPR has nothing to do with cookies, in spite of the commonly spread false narrative.

IMO European countries, especially France/Germany are more of “I don’t allow other countries to take privacy data of EU citizens but I want backdoor accesses/whatever I need”, which is fine though.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/Se55J

this page forces you to create an account. Just delete the "quickSubscribe" class in the html and remove the popup to te able to scroll for free.

or just find the archived link in the comments?

TL;DR: An EU health data firm run by ex-military cryptographers offers a web portal for encrypting documents, which inherently exposes unencrypted documents to the company and US national security laws. The media outlet incidentally also doubts the trustworthiness of military veterans from Israel.

Even following the "if there's smoke there's fire" model, unclear there's a strong scent of "smoke" here. One could write a similar guilt-by-historical-association article concerning anyone, in the same position, really. Obviously if you're uploading a file to a 3d party website, the vendor has some technical access, this should be warned.

The bigger problem is that this model is inherently flawed. Even if end-to-end encryption with browser crypto were implemented, there is never any security since the code in the browser can simply be swapped with compromised code that diverts the plaintext somewhere.

I've been forced to use this service, by way of healthcare professionals just disclosing correspondence to this service without asking for my consent.

Smeerlappen.

> there is never any security since the code in the browser can simply be swapped with compromised code that diverts the plaintext somewhere.

This is not the case in the land of DICE-like key derivation; see TKey protocol for example. You can download and run an actual rv32 program on actual FPGA over WebUSB without having to worry about its provenance. If the program is modified, firmware will derive a completely different key.

Zivver is a web application. The javascript that comes with the webpage can change at any time for any reason, as Zivver sees fit.

I'm simply pointing out that web standards allow for secure end-to-end communication, and more, in fact they happen to allow arbitrary cryptographic constructions—as long as the program itself never changes.

But this requires special hardware right?

Not necessarily. You can run TKey in qemu :-) etc. The hardware aspect is what makes it easy to use, with WebUSB and all. The derivation algorithm is key. And it takes program binary as parameter to Blake2 hash function.

Security is an illusion.

Then reply with your passwords.

******

Luckily HN automatically detects when you post your password and obfuscates it with * - try it out yourself!

You think I was born yesterday :P

hunter2

Doesn't look obfuscated to me.

It only obfuscates it for others :)

Thats the genius of it, to us it looks like **** but you see hunter2. Its an automatic replace.

Oh whew, I thought he was using hunter2 as his password too.

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I used this in NL with the government. What can I do?

Not much, your data is already outside the EU being archived and processed by other countries.

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LOL

Next one: Cloudflare has an edge in Israel. And has workers who were in Unit8200 before 1991 (per linkedin) and ISRALIES. Who uses Cloudflare? MANY MEDICAL ORGS. Also, Cloudflare is just like MITM (CDN SSL termination). So does ISRAEL SPIES read all your MEDICAL data?

> "To think otherwise is completely naïve" (real qoute from the article btw = no proof)

What a sham article. Trump's TruthSocial level. But hey, most upvoted today (440+ points). And no point on reporting to mods also, I just get copy paste reply.

I used to get multiple Zivver messages a week from the health providers I work with. However, I haven't received a single one since the announcement of the takeover a while ago.

this article forces you to create an account, just delete the "quickSubscribe" class in the html and remove the popup, you will be able to scroll free.

Sensational headline, big anticlimax

I've never seen Zivver used in German Healthcare.

Also Germany uses and is already Rolling out a Matrix-based Messenger and S/MIME-Mail with End-to-End-Encryption for Communication between Healthcare Professionals.

So at least for Germany this is not a problem.

More problematic was our prior health Minister who wanted to make data accessibile to OpenAI et al for "research". That's also why I opted out of the electronic health record

https://www.heise.de/news/Lauterbach-zu-Gesundheitsdaten-Goo...

I don’t think you can opt out of the electronic health record long term. We should instead elect officials that can deal with the “Neuland” of the digital age and have some technical chops and don’t immediately cave in when there is some money to be made (in no way implying that you don’t already do this)

Right now, you can and should do it.

See https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/themen/digitalis...

> We should instead elect officials that can deal with the “Neuland” of the digital age and have some technical chops and don’t immediately cave in when there is some money to be made

Yes, but I don't think this will happen during our lifetimes. Especially since the Gematik has shown again and again that they can't be trusted with it

>I've never seen Zivver used in German Healthcare.

How would you even be sure of this just from what you can see from the outside? That doesn't mean your health insurance company isn't using Zivver internally same how they use Office 365 or SAP. It's not like they tell you all the SW they use.

Why would they use it internally?

Internally, you have the Hospital Information System where you can look up all the informations you need.

I can just say I know the inside of one of Germany's biggest Hospitals, since I'm a Doctor. And requesting Patient Data or giving it out to other Parties is unfortunately a Task that Doctors still have to do on their own

And for communication with the outside world it's down to Fax, Phone or Letter.

And that will be replaced with KIM in the future

> Fax, Phone or Letter

That's interesting because in The Netherlands most of my doctor's communications come through email (and zivver), followed by snail mail.

Theoretically they could already send this via S/MIME encrypted Mail (KIM) to the family doctor, but most Hospitals haven't rolled out this service yet.

They just started installing Card Readers for the Doctor Identity Cards, so they can issue electronic prescriptions

For communication with Patients some Hospitals have Web Portals/Apps for getting/sending information.

That's pretty interesting. We have electronic prescriptions too (though it goes straight to the pharmacy however - we don't see it).

As far as I know, I don't think the hospital portal has ever been used for communication like that. An email seems more "obvious" perhaps to the docs, and that's what they use most of the time.

The Hospitals in NL that use Epic as EHR also have Patient Portals. But I don't know how much they get used

https://www.umcutrecht.nl/en/login-patient-portal

Strange that a 9th October article shows up at the top of the feed given the events of the day in Sydney.

Typical ad hominem diversion. I listened to the related podcast episode of FTM yesterday evening on Spotify, and today decided to search more information and read the coinciding articles. I have no control about what gets upvoted here, since I don't work for an agency or troll farm. Look at my submission history. Another article I submitted related to Israel (Correllium getting acquired by Cellebrite) got no uptake whatsoever. It was never discussed here, at all.

I oppose civilians being targeted by terrorism, and that also obviously includes Israelians. For example, I was very much shocked by Oct 7.

I also do have a problem with Israel's alleged genocide by the current government.

I don't believe any of the above makes me antisemite. It is very typical of agents of a certain agency to frame like that though.

Agency is what those people you call trolls don't have. Leave them be, you don't want to end up lynched.

> Israelians

Israelis

> I don't believe any of the above makes me antisemite. It is very typical of agents of a certain agency to frame like that though.

An astonishing pair of sentences.

So astonishing there's a Wikipedia article about the phenomenon [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaponization_of_antisemitism

As someone with no dog in this race, I’m genuinely struggling to distinguish folks calling for a global intifada and railing against Zionists from anti-Semites. Particularly when they blame—to the point of dismissal—rising anti-Semitism (like, block or shoot up a synagogue anti-Semitism) on Israel.

I see. So who are these "agents of a certain agency" you're referring to? Can you be specific?

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This is a tech article and has nothing to do with Sydney.

What happened in Sydney?

https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/bondi-beach-gunshots...

Terrible event. How is this relevant to HN and its topics of discussion?

Is a CEO of a company serving in the military 40 years ago relevant?

maybe the "data sold to" part

This was probably random, as are most things like this on HN.

That is terrible news.

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I am located in Amsterdam Area, The Netherlands as my IP shows.

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only thing that has happened since the 1940s is that National Socialists have become Social Nationalists

Was it done so illegally? If so who will prosecute the people who sold it?

I always find it absurd how good Israelis are at security and intelligence yet failed miserably on October 7th.

It’s not absurd, it’s deception.

> absurd how good Israelis are at security and intelligence yet failed miserably on October 7th

Offense and defence are different games.

Really HN? Kiteworks was founded by some swedish dude[1] and most of the execs aren't Israeli[2]. Trying to portray this as some secret mossad company is beyond nonsense.

Should there be scrutiny when sensitive data is being sold off? Of course but this article is extremely low quality, with zero evidence and just based on vibes with a nice dose of antisemitism (and no I don't use that term lightly)

As if cyber security experts running a cyber security company is somehow shocking.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiteworks [2]https://www.kiteworks.com/company/management/

It gets better and better.

It's always companies run by Unit 8200 ex-Israeli spies that are running these telemetry-/ad- surveillance dragnets, and there's never any retaliatory action against them.

Like how about a call to Benny's office saying "hey buddy, reign your dogs in, our citizens are off limits"?

It's really, truly strange just how intertwined the US is with Israeli spies at all levels. If people affiliated with The Netherlands or Rwanda had this much influence in the US, nobody would tolerate it.

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In case anybody is curious about this, archived correspondence between JFK and Israel tells the tale. Through the CIA/etc, JFK was aware that Israel was developing nuclear weapons at Dimona. He was also aware that neither Egypt nor any other regional power was doing the same, and believed that Israel doing so would destabilize the region. He was therefore calling for inspections of Dimona to stop Israel's bomb program. At the same time, the Israelis were playing dumb saying they weren't doing anything while simultaneously justifying their bomb program by accusing Egypt of having or developing nukes too. JFK did no believe this and was challenging Israel to prove it. Later that year, JFK got shot in the head, and then days later the supposed gunman was himself assassinated by a jewish gangster named Jacob Rubenstein.

All of this is archived in their letters to and from each other and easily locatable online.

Unit 8200 hand-picks the best and brightest young Israelis and trains them in computer science. You might as well say "It's always MIT" - of course an elite educational institution produces a lot of successful startups.

If you're looking for a sinister plot, look no further than In-Q-Tel.

MIT students have different loyalty than to a fascist government like Trump's administration. The political situation in USA is also not like the one in Israel (which country is a direct result of the outcome of WWII and hatred by nazi-Germany, who are in constant fight with their neighbors). It isn't a fair comparison. One should also take into account that Mossad's way of operating is aggressive.

The English article doesn't mention this, but vulnerabilities were found in Zivver. See my comment elsewhere in the thread referring to the Dutch version of the article.

There's something very visceral in being attacked by Jihadists, rockets and ballistic missiles which makes Israelis quite enthusiastic about taking on the fight.

There's something very visceral in being attacked by Zionists, rockets, and bombs (for 70+ years) which makes some folks quite enthusiastic about resisting ethnic cleansing and genocide in their homeland.

The Palestinians have the right to fight just like the Israelis have the right to win. I don't see a non-violent solution to this conflict. Maybe you do.

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>>maybe they shouldn't be killing that many children

>You are literally hitler

Why would you assume the said counties wouldn't want their citizens surveilled? "But they will know what our citizens do..." yeah unfortunately 5 eyes proves otherwise.

Govt surveillance is a big club, and you ain't in it.

I am... really not sure why this comment is getting downvoted? It's not really a conspiracy theory so many years after Snowden now, is it?

It isn't a "telemetry-/ad- surveillance dragnet". Kitenet's product is a "Private Data Network (PDN) to control, monitor, and secure data exchanged between people, machines, and systems across user collaboration, automated workflows, and enterprise AI".

It stands to reason that ex-cryptographers from Unit 8200 would use the expertise they gained to launch legitimate companies that provide cybersecurity solutions.

It's not inevitable. It's up to us in a shared world to decide how to govern ourselves and live our lives. Not to be at the whims of a small group of powerful strangers.

I think it’s much more likely they’re creating honeypots as contractors. There is a lot more money in surveillance than privacy

Is there any factual basis to this claim, or just your personal opinion? It's like claiming Oracle's real business isn't a database, but rather stealing customers data which was stored in Oracle's databases. Or practically any other company that has access to customers data.

> Is there any factual basis to this claim

Please feel free to translate and read the Dutch version of this article. On the bottom, several security researchers found vulnerabilities in Zivver [1]

[1] https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/vertrouwelijke-zaken-te-grabbel...

So Zivver created a product with security vulnerabilities, Kitenet bought Zivver (probably for their customer base), and it's all some sort of conspiracy to steal personal data?

We merely bought the honeypot, Your Honor! We didn't know what we were buying!

Perfect cover story /slowclap

Secret services use companies as cover all the time. Nothing new there.

The conspiracy is that it is a dragnet for the data, and given the data is first send plaintext to Zivver (see the Dutch FTM article I already linked), it isn't far-fetched.

Looking at the current geopolitical situation, it also isn't far-fetched. It even fits in the Israeli secret services' M.O.

Actually, anyone who uses Zivver can find these vulnerabilities. I was worried about this, and reported it to my former employer (while still employed), but alas I did not have a PoC and they had a lot of other security related incidents so this was low priority. Also, this was at a time when the company was still privately owned by the Dutch founders. My hypothesis is that someone working for such an organization passed it to the Israeli secret service, who then got motivated to buy this honeypot.

Chinese do something similar: release some piece of technology, never provide any meaningful updates to the product, and voila it is insecure as hell (yet 'we didn't know' provides plausible deniability). I saw this first-hand with KRACK vulnerability.

Also... Kiteworks [1] is the name of the company. Not sure why you keep calling it Kitenet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiteworks

To be fair, it’s not a conspiracy if it actually happens. It’s surprising how often this type of reasoning is still so common.

What are you saying actually happened? It sounds like the concern is that in a certain context, messages are cloud hosted instead of client-side e2e encrypted? Did anyone even claim otherwise?

How is this different from suggesting Netflix was all a secret plot by Stanford to spy on Europeans' TV binging?

Two anonymous security researchers working at Dutch government found the data is send plaintext [1]. One independent security researcher was able to verify their claim.

This should be a concern if the company is owned by Dutch people, but more so if it is owned by a company with questionable jurisdiction. Which unfortunately the USA and Israel are these days.

[1] https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/vertrouwelijke-zaken-te-grabbel...

Did they ever claim otherwise? They say "Zivver scans the content of every email" prominently on the front page. The flow seems to be TLS to Zivver first, scanning, then encryption.

If all it takes to convince us that a communication product was created as a front for spying operations is not having a strict e2e design like Signal's, then do you think virtually all of them are fronts for spying operations?

Listen, I am Dutch. I am loyal to the Dutch government, Dutch society, and therein lie my interests. This is also my potential bias.

> Did they ever claim otherwise? They say "Zivver scans the content of every email" prominently on the front page. The flow seems to be TLS to Zivver first, scanning, then encryption.

I worked at a government organization which used Zivver. This was around 2018. It was assumed to be E2E encrypted. I wrote about the issue in my security audit, but it had low priority for a myriad of reasons (they had worse issues at the time). Zivver is more akin to the Lavabit situation.

Proton's OpenPGP.js is slightly more secure than this implementation (it encrypts client-side), but because Proton can decide (and be forced) to serve a different OpenPGP.js, it suffers from a similar issue.

> If all it takes to convince us that a communication product was created as a front for spying operations is not having a strict e2e design like Signal's, then do you think virtually all of them are fronts for spying operations?

I never wrote it was created as a front. I don't believe anyone asserted that. The company was founded by a couple of Dutch people in 2015, it was a Dutch company. So they fell under Dutch jurisdiction. I honestly haven't looked them up.

Fast forward to June 2025 and this company got acquired by an American company where the higher echelons are ex-Israeli spies. This could be a front, I don't know. I very much question this sale should've been ACK'ed by the Dutch government. Because due to the CLOUD act, the data now falls under American jurisdiction. Around the time of the acquisition though, the Dutch government fell. responsible up to then was Dirk Beljaarts. Around that time (June 2025), Vincent Karremans took his place. Fast forward a couple of months later, we had the Nexperia crisis, where Karremans intervened. A fallout from a stopped acquisition due to national security is lower than Nexperia fallout though.

I copied the title of the article verbatim. The Dutch article has a different title, and is IMO of better quality. The title of that article calls it a strategic blunder. I very much agree with that, but not because the top of Kiteworks is Israeli and ex-Unit 8200. That is just a cherry on top, worse case scenario a red herring. No, because of the current geopolitical situation with regards to Trump and the CLOUD act. Can you blame them for trying, given the situation and stakes? The acquisition occurred at a perfect timing.

The TL;DR is not that a American or Israeli entity supposedly succeeded. It is that the Dutch government failed. And while Zivver is heavily in use in The Netherlands, it also is within EU. So we failed to serve the best interests of EU here as well.

Thanks for the added context, that sounds reasonable to have wanted the product to continue under Dutch ownership.

> I never wrote it was created as a front. I don't believe anyone asserted that.

There seem to be vague insinuations of a conspiracy floating around, rather than an explicit conspiracy theory, so I may have mischaracterized it. But for example, you mentioned elsewhere that "Mossad's way of operating is aggressive". Could you clarify what you're insinuating, if anything?

Hmm, from EU PoV, given many other EU countries rely on it, I believe NL is a reasonable host, but other EU countries could be as well.

I'm no expert on that subject, just following Hubert's assessment that it falls in their M.O. (already linked), following Modderkolk's recent assessment on how Mossad operates [1]. Look at all the flak I get in this thread while I just went with HN rule of 1:1 using title. Problem is all these sources are in my native language. And finally, yes my suspicion is on high alert ever since the Maccabi riots in Amsterdam [2], to which Modderkolk also refers to.

And yes, I am well aware every Israeli adult is ex-military [3]. If it were up to me, we'd restart this practice here in NL.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/hoe-de-mossad-overal-t...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2024_Amsterdam_riots

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46036671

There’s really nothing concrete in this “article”. It’s basically vague insinuations and conjecture and conspiracy theory, all in support of putting out content with something nefarious implied about all Israelis. In other words, it’s propaganda.

It is an obvious and recurring phenomenon to anyone minimally following cybersecurity topics. This isn't the first time, nor the second, nor the third, nor the last.

This is the same as claiming that water isn't wet until someone here on HN brings you 10 articles and news proving otherwise. This particular topic was never really denied, nor even by the authors themselves as you can read on the article.

Do you understand that Oracle has real features used daily by clients other than "securing" their communications?

Are you sure such claims about Oracle are completely unfounded?

This framing is a cheap rhetorical trick. Restated this leads to the statement “all companies by default are in the business of capturing customer data, all other claims about their product and smoke screens to hide that.”

Which is something you can believe but it falls into the extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence category. But by claiming it about Oracle or Israeli cyber firms or whatever you swap the evidence burden to the person who has the not extraordinary claim, that most businesses are doing what it claims on the tin.

It's not just a rhetorical trick. Amazon collects most of their data in Virginia, right at the doorsteps of a well known "intelligence" org in the USA. These companies that handle data all around the world are authorized to exist for some reason...

Then the argument should be that. Not “hey commenter you must prove a never ending set of ‘now do Oracle’, ‘now do Amazon’”.

Say the words “I believe all companies exist as an extension of the US intelligence apparatus” and claim the burden for yourself.

That is a strawman argument.

Oracle gets its name from a codename of a 1977 project for the Central Intelligence Agency, Oracle's first customer.

In 2004, then-United States Attorney General John Ashcroft sued Oracle Corporation to prevent it from acquiring a multibillion-dollar intelligence contract. After Ashcroft's resignation from government, he founded a lobbying firm, The Ashcroft Group, which Oracle hired in 2005. With the group's help, Oracle went on to acquire the contract.

Following the beginning of the Gaza war in 2023, Oracle’s top executives, including Safra Catz and Larry Ellison, publicly aligned the company with Israel’s military operations. They issued statements of solidarity, paid double salaries to Israeli employees, and donated to organizations connected to Israel’s wartime response.

See. Thats a good comment. “Your use of Oracle is a bad counter factual because…”

Switching to that is commenting in good faith. It educates and argues the point and makes it clear that you aren’t in fact claiming that all companies are surveillance state apparatus. Note that other commenters ran with the “but they are actually argument” because the door was opened.

Books such as:

“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”

and

“Stand Out of Our Light”

might not change your mind, but you’re likely to end up realizing customer data hovering is more of a driver of modern business decisions than you realize. To say nothing of the assets such activities provide the intelligence communities.

This is happening. Please don’t dismiss it as conspiracy theory.

It's easy to make baseless accusations that are impossible to disprove, that's exactly my point.

Come on. The CIA was Oracle’s first customer.

Online scamming and malware are Israel's most cherished national industry, they've been specializing in this stuff for nearly 30 years:

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

> Download Valley is a cluster of software companies in Israel, producing and delivering adware to be installed alongside downloads of other software.[1] The primary purpose is to monetize shareware and downloads. These software items are commonly browser toolbars, adware, browser hijackers, spyware, and malware. Another group of products are download managers, possibly designed to induce or trick the user to install adware, when downloading a piece of desired software or mobile app from a certain source.

> Although the term references Silicon Valley, it does not refer to a specific valley or any geographical area. Many of the companies are located in Tel Aviv and the surrounding region. It has been used by Israeli media[2] as well as in other reports related to IT business.[3]

Getting an Israeli extradited is almost impossible, their in-group ethnic bias is so strong that they even fight the extradition of rapists. The Israeli government would rather see a jewish rapist escape justice in Israel than face justice in a gentile nation. Extraditing some businessmen who merely scam and destroy people's computers? Fat chance in hell.

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

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jewish-american-pedophiles-...

I remember when the IDF guy did this right after getting arrested at DEFCON earlier this year!

https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-israeli-cyber-official-...

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-865532

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/19/how-was-an-alleged-...

Hey now. Isn't it more likely that the cops spent months preparing this sting, caught the suspect red handed and arrested him, got a confession from the suspect in an interview, and everyone involved just honestly completely forgot to take his passport or impose any sort of travel restrictions?

https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/israeli-official-plea...

this alleged sex offender just appears remotely for his court appearances lol. I wonder if he will attend prison remotely too? Maybe an RC robot will serve his sentence and he can look out the bars through a camera and VPN from Israel.

Could the same not be said about the US?

I suspect it'd have a different spin put on it.

No the US has no issue with extradition.

I am having extremely hard time believing this, I don't mean that on paper chance exists but out there in real world, especially with current government. Checking for 2024 the number can be counted on all fingers and toes and all were special high profile cases.

US has a law that they will invade International court of justice if ever any US personnel is tried there (ie for war crimes, that one would be easy to pull on thousands of US citizens). That's the US mindset against other jurisdictions.

Israel would be an exception of course.

ICC, not ICJ - the so-called Hague invasion act.

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You're kidding, right? Boca Raton, FL has been widely recognized as the spam capital of the world for decades, and has nothing to do with ethnicity or religion whatsoever. Eastern Europe is known for being a den of cybercrime groups, and Russia is known to turn a blind eye. China is widely known to cooperate with domestic cybercriminal actors. Non-jewish geographically concentrated threat actors are openly discussed all the time.

The difference is that none of these places operate as legal safe havens for child sex predators.

also Russia,China,North korea is literal adversaries

They dont act like "Allies" while doing the same thing adversaries do

Based on your wiki almost all of those are from 2010 era and shut down long ago

The US has always had a number of grey market scammy businesses like those too. Lots of countries do.

Israel is gonna have a really big PR problem as the boomer generation ages and dies.

They already have a major PR problem and are scrambling to fix it.

What they don’t - or don’t care enough to - realize is that given the enormity of the crimes they committed (heck, still are committing!), nothing short of accountability and justice will help cleanse their reputation.

Yes. The newer generations are far more aware of what is happening.

They only do because the Arabs and Chinese weaponized social media quicker.

and as the Epstein blackmail program gets unmasked

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The latter has always been true already of mainstream social platforms like Facebook, and the former isn't a patch, that's the old strategy. It's not working anymore.

Not really. Elon was always open to let everyone post anything they want about Israel on X, that's why X resembles 4Chan.

The Larry Ellison purchase Tiktok, CBS and possible Warner Bros/CNN is still in play ensuring a media takeover.

It's too late to matter. Try finding someone under 30 who isn't already a zionist that has anything positive to say about Israel. It's like pulling teeth.

Given how loosely zionism is defined that is pretty much a tautology. There is no definition of zionist in use here, it is just vibes based 'reasoning'. Zionist is rhetorically used to maintain their political bubble.

They cannot say if for instance a moderate and nuanced opinion ("October 7th was legitimate causus beli -but blocking aid is a hard crossing of the lines.") is Zionist or not. Let alone statements like "Israel has a right to exist." qualify.

There is plenty of motte and bailey to go around and the truth has already been buried in an unmarked grave.

On what planet is Zionism loosely defined? Go ask young people - Zionism is support for the existence of an Israeli state.

Outside of Jewish and Zionist Christian circles (which make up a tiny minority), virtually everyone under 30 can be lumped into the "not a fan of Israel" camp. The only question is a matter of degree.

A third of them think Israel was too heavy-handed in the response to 10/7.

Another third are cheering for 10/7 and chanting "from the river to the sea".

The final third are quiet about it in person, but behind pseudonyms online, are denying the holocaust while simultaneously asserting that jewish people deserved it.

Seriously, go talk to people under 30.

Jewish people are in for a very rude awakening as the loudest non-Jewish defenders of Israel and of Zionism, the boomers, die out.

This is absolutely not an endorsement of antisemitism, or of violence or threats of violence being directed at anyone, which is always wrong, but if I were Jewish and living in the US or western Europe, I'd already have started making plans to flee/escape. Just because what is happening is morally wrong doesn't mean it isn't happening.

I do believe you're right. As the American babyboomers die out, Israel is going to find itself without any allies. Young people are through with them.

It's always so funny how these people use their money to buy all media companies (a "dying" and profitless industry) and still think nobody will even notice...

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PR only matters in free democracies.

It’s largely because military service is mandatory and 8200 is like the MIT or Stanford of Israel.. not some nefarious bullshit about intelligence

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Frequency bias. There's shady crap being done all over by all sorts of people. It's only when they happen to be Israeli people point that out.

It's very militarized?

I think that's a component of it. I think it's a sort of attitude that's encouraged by the culture there. There seems to be an attitude of "don't care if it's right or not, as long as it hurts the 'others' and makes me money". Believe it or not, this isn't a universal all around the world.

Unfortunately I don't think we even have words for this. For example, "militarized" which you used encompasses an enormous set of customs, values, abilities, etc. Is there a single word or couple of words that could be used to refer to what I described above?

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While the situation in Europe is, of course, diverse, the culture in Germany (which is often looked to as a thought leader in the eu) is strictly to disallow and discredit any substantial criticism of the „only democracy in the Middle East“. Usually under a blanket accusation of antisemitism. Especially due to germanys history, this claim can be brought forward and be spread in a news cycle without substantive scrutiny. The fact that conflating the State of Israel with jewish people could be met with the same accusation is largely ignored.

If you are interested in the topic on a high level I suggest the following starting points

United Nations: „UN experts urge Germany to halt criminalisation and police violence against Palestinian solidarity activism“ as well as numerous statements by amnesty international or the Wikipedia Section „Restrictions on Pro-Palestinian expression“ of the article „Censorship in Germany“

It's not deleted, it's "dead." Go to your profile and enable "showdead" and you'll see it collapsed towards the bottom of the page.

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Thanos at least had the decency to only target 50% of the population.

Theranos did way less? There isn’t even any malfeasance documented in this article whereas Theranos intentionally defrauded many many people.

Honestly, what are you on about?

come on, one is ally that do genoc1de and other one is just criminal. Not fair comparison.

The only thing that's absurd here is your comment. Let me start by saying that Thanos is a Marvel supervillain. I assume what you mean is Theranos, the fraudulent health tech company run by Elizabeth Holmes. Moving past the fact that you don't seem to know the names of the entities you're commenting on, there's the fact that one is a legal acquisition of a European company by an American company with no evidence of wrongdoing while the other openly committed fraud and the CEO was convicted of four felony counts and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Being connected to Israeli intelligence is not a crime or grounds for an investigation.

What are you even talking about?

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You’re the one conflating Jews with Israel, a tactic that is surely intentional by Zionists but people are catching on to it

Nothing new, racists through the 19th century and 20th used Zionism as a euphemism for Jews. Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one such example, the Nazis were also obsessed with Zionism

We also got 2000 years of Europeans blaming Jews by association with no proof which is exactly the beautiful cultural tradition celebrated in this article

So no one can ever criticism Zionism because in the 19th and 20th centuries there were racists that criticized Zionism?

Again, no one here is blaming Jews. The article says the firm is run by ex-Israeli spies, in fact the word "Jew" is not even in there. You're the one saying that.

This article is about Israeli spies harvesting European health data.

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I did and I guess I missed the part where it says European health data was stolen by Israeli intelligence to make some European blood for passover.

I thought I read some company was acquired by an American company that also has Israeli executives that a few decades ago served in an intelligence unit as many many Israelis do and a whole lot of unnamed "experts" speculating some outlandish theories.

It's as if the entire article is trying to say something that just isn't there

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Obviously, when one sees what they're doing to civilians right now...

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Where do you source your information about the EU?

I just googled (in English) for laws in different western European countries concerning punishing ethnic insults and found plenty of them.

People are responding like you're crazy because they can't handle any suggestion that either europe or leftism is not perfect.

and no, i'm not giving my searches to them, that would reward them for anti-social behavior masquerading as curiosity.

What

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Can you cite a law or verdict, here?

Do you want the German or French version?

Why not both? Please do share

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Please be specific

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"Pointing out ethnic affiliation is a crime "

Most lawyer arguments that I heard so far, do not follow the pattern of "do a quick google search yourself".

They usually do have a law at hand and some verdicts. Especially if there supposedly are "hundreds of examples" I never heard of.

So I am not a lawyer, but I do know the german constitution pretty well, and there is nothing remotely in it, like you claim. So I can only imagine by "negative" tweets, you rather mean incitement of violence. But I really doubt, you can provide one case of a verdict where the crime was saying the person in a crime was from nation X which is what you claimed above.

You mean like the Article in the Flagship Publication of German Public Broadcasting about terrorist suspects, naming their nationality?

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/bayern/br-dingolfi...

So please provide an example for your argument. Because right now it's "Trust me Bro, I'm a Lawyer"

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The Question was wether it was illegal to put the Nationality in the Article, and you comment completely missed the point

Who do you think you are to believe yourself so important that dictate what can be talked about, German? What is wrong with you? Did you not read what I wrote? Stop throwing yourself off the other side of the cliff out of spite, 80 years after your society was pushed to throw itself off the cliff!

Talking about "missing the point"? One instance of the clear backpedaling about mentioning nationality/ethnicity in regime propaganda outlets is cited in order to act as if it has not been decades of abusive shielding of evil, harm, and crime against the indigenous peoples of Europe. What are you even doing, acting contrary to your own survival, German?

It's a typical abusive, narcissistic action; a kind of narcissistic evasion when the manipulation, toxicity, lies, and abuse lose effect and "admitted" at least to oneself; which if immediately followed with not only pleading of leniency, reasonableness, and moderation; but also immediate further abuse through your type of nitpicking and tone policing, with accusations of unreasonable response or things like "not letting it go". It's a common and core indicator of the depraved mind of the narcissistic personality disorder and derangement.... "You are wrong, but if you are right then you didn't say the words right and immediately need to forgive and allow me to further abuse and manipulate or you are the bad one". It's sick and depraved. Stop behaving that way, all of you.

It will simply not end well, regardless of what you think, tell yourself, or try to lie and gaslight others with. Either the abuse and denial that rises to genocide by the UN and EU definition, through the denial of the very abuse being perpetrated will continue and the indigenous people and all their cultures and traditions that have been around for centuries and millennia will be eradicated and you will end up with a similarly corrupted and rotten society like the USA; or it will end in a backlash in Europe after the abuses just accumulate, people snap and there is an explosion that of course comes form it. You can only abuse so much and so long unless you totally kill your victims... your own culture, your own people, Europe as a whole, yourself even.

History and reality does not care what fanatical and fantastical illusions some of us hold about how everyone can live happily ever after...at gunpoint at other people's expenses. It is not possible that it will end well without total destruction and eradication of a whole civilization's culture and history again, like was done in France, Russia, and China through the communist mental pestilence. These are not difficult things to understand or predict, especially since they have happened several times now in history. Yet so many seem unable to understand or see the clear path to the invariable consequences.

"Who do you think you are to believe yourself so important that dictate what can be talked about"

Are you aware of the strawman concept?

Who here said they want to dictate what can be talked about?

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Or their number is the same, but destroyed minds have more reach now and are just more visible than before?

The Internet has given mental illness a megaphone and (often) income.

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Someone said to you, "get well soon". Can you provide a rational argument, how you concluded from that single statement, that the person has a medical condition of a narcissist?

I always thought, diagnosing takes more effort and data points. But I also think the HN guidelines discourage commenting in an "engaged state".

They will be discredited.

Please stop consuming so much propaganda.

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Here's an israeli bragging about the israeli influence in this corporation:

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hyqfxfc5c

Ah yes, because every secret foreign intelligence asset goes straight to the press to brag.

Its complete normal behavior that people hire people they know, just look at hiring practices across all tech companies. As it is a completely normal behavior for a CEO to brag about their company.

Is Google an Indian intelligence asset because it's run by an Indian CEO and has quite a few Indian execs? How about Microsoft?

8200 veterans going into business commonly brag about that background and that connection to this specific genocidal and tyrannical community.

Serving the intelligence services of a nasty, murderous apartheid state isn't "complete normal behavior", it's actually very pathological behaviour and every one who did should be offered therapy and help to move on from this experience.

Yeah, Alphabet and MICROS~1 are CLOUD Act corporations, and hence security establishment and intelligence community assets. To the extent you're able you should have no contact with either of them for this reason, among others.

Why are you repeating another comment [1] by a throwaway verbatim, with one line addition?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263078

Because that's my comment and it's dead for no reason.

So please address the content now.

Ex-Israeli or ex-spies?

Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not? I feel in the US its a big deal that people dont want insurance companies to measure them and deny coverage to those who need it most, but in most of the world that isn't an issue.

Yeah we do. For many reasons:

Privacy is privacy. I ideally don’t want any of my data sold to anyone, but health data is even more vulnerable.

In my country it was even a big deal when they allowed different doctors to access your health data via a common system, as there were e.g. concerns that the information recorded by one doctor might bias another doctor, so some felt that it should be your choice what data to share between different parts of the public health system (except for explicit referrals).

Moreover, most European countries do have private doctors, private hospitals, and private health insurance – it’s just way less used than the public system. Those would have the same concerns as in the US.

Health data is usually the highest level protected data under most laws. It's not about just insurance. Part of the problem is once data is out there, it can be used by any shady person.

You can be discriminated against a job based on health records. Scary diseases like AIDS and TB make it hard for unskilled labor to land a job since it's so easy to discriminate. Pregnancy history may hurt women who are in countries with more generous maternity leave.

Mental health history will hurt just about everyone - who wants a worker who can claim ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc as reasons to be unproductive?

Then people will simply deny getting diagnosed for fear that they may uncover something that puts their jobs at risk. That hurts the medical system as a whole.

Combine with weird stuff like eugenics. What if we identify a possible rapist gene and neuter them in advance? Or bar people with a klepto gene from working in finance? You may live in happy, sane, democratic societies today, but it may not be the case 30 years from now.

I once had to threaten to resign from a job (in the EU, pre-Data Protection Act) over the data handling of evidence of one of the things in your comment.

I think this has been something people have had an instinct about forever, and the only reason I had to threaten to quit was because of a misunderstanding of the level of data safety involved; put simply it was not common knowledge that socket connections could be snooped and that targeting a popular service would be easy for a malicious person to do. (This was before SSL was efficient or easy to manage, and in the days when only payment screens were encrypted).

Once the message was across, everyone's objectives were aligned again.

Health information is deeply private because disease is entangled with shame/weakness/vulnerability/taboo/intimacy.

> You can be discriminated against a job based on health records.

Just to make this clear, probably EU-wide, you can't legally be discriminated against. However, it's gonna be hard to prove leaked data won't be illegally integrated in e.g. ATS models, or was attributed as skill issue when it popped up during manual background checks.

Although, infectious disease like HIV or dystopian scenarios like eugenics are probably the classical discrimination examples for these privacy implications, I don't think they are very likely to be discriminated against (outside of jobs where discrimination is legal and require disclosure anyway, e.g. health workers, food industry etc.). It's easy to dismiss those worries, since most people aren't affected. But common issues with mental health (e.g. depression), hidden disabilities and chronic disease (e.g. PMS), or potentially severe recurring disease (e.g. cancer) realistically are going to be much more impactful. Everything which statistically increases chances to fall out the work force due to health reasons - especially in combination with strong labor protections.

> Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not?

Can't speak for all Europeans, but in my neck of the wood, Germany, they do very much.

> Do Europeans care if their health data is secret or not?

Do Europeans care if their private and personal data is secret or not? What kind of question is that?

Why would they not?

You still wouldn't necessarily want a life insurance company to know stuff they haven't formally asked to know, you still have health information that could be used to blackmail you or whose reveal would be humiliating or upsetting.

Of course they do, don't ask silly questions.

Actually, please do ask silly questions! The overwhelming response has been interesting

The response is overwhelming because the question is almost insulting.

Yes, I completely agree, I did feel insulted by it. There is a real anti-European/EU narrative in the US, with European countries described as collapsing, failed, etc (which is pretty obvious bullshit). if people are on the fence and ask stupid questions I think it’s ok? I hope they will be corrected, like happened here.

Of course there is no way for me to know if the poster was trolling or pushing an agenda. Some other commenters in this whole comment section are more obvious to identify

Sorry, it was just a genuine question. No one in my extended family has had serious problems or issues with insurance companies and I genuinely dont care if my records or even dna are public. Probably would support it for research purposes.

Of course we do. And for exactly the same reasons, too.

Isn't an issue yet.

I mean, of course? This is why I opposed electronic health record ( EPD (elektronisch patiëntendossier)) back in the days. Even then, SSL (TLS) downgrade attack existed and was known to NSA. IIRC EPD was started as opt-in, then opt-out, then mandatory.

I received my daughter's ASD diagnosis via Zivver. This included very personal details about her life. No parent would want that to be public. For adults it is worse: they become vulnerable to extortion, and Mossad is known to go very far for the cause.

Deeply

As an European, I HATE when my data is mishandled or leaked (and this is basically the entire point of the GDPR)

For sure, yes!