Google and Amazon secretly collaborating with Israel.
A joint investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian and the Israeli-Palestinian magazine Plus 972 reveals that two major American technology companies, Google and Amazon, have complied with unusually stringent controls imposed by Israel in a 2021 contract.
The $1.2 billion deal is known as Project Nimbus. Under the deal, Google and Amazon will provide Israel with advanced artificial intelligence and cloud storage services.
Israel included these controls in advance of the contract to prepare for potential legal issues, particularly regarding the use of the technology in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli Finance Ministry documents reveal two main controls: First, Google and Amazon are not allowed to restrict Israel’s use of their services, even if such use conflicts with the companies’ own terms and conditions.
Last month, for example, Microsoft cut off the Israeli military’s access to some of its cloud services because they were used to store vast amounts of intercepted Palestinian phone calls. But the Nimbus deal does not allow Google and Amazon to do so.
Second, if a foreign court orders the handover of Israeli data stored on the companies’ servers, Google and Amazon must notify Israel secretly and immediately. This effectively circumvents the companies’ legal obligation to the court and gives Israel time to respond appropriately.
A covert way to warn: the “blink” mechanism
Israel has been concerned about laws like the 2018 U.S. Cloud Act, which allows U.S. authorities to compel U.S. companies to hand over data, even if the servers are located outside the United States. European Union law also requires companies to investigate human rights abuses in their global operations.
To circumvent court confidentiality orders that prohibit companies from disclosing the request, Israel has devised a covert method called “blinking.” In this method, Google and Amazon encode the requesting country by transferring money in Israeli currency, the new shekel, to the Israeli government. These payments must be made within 24 hours of the data being delivered, and the amount is determined by the country’s international dialing code:
For the United States (code +1): 1,000 shekels (about $270)
For Italy (code +39): 3,900 shekels (about $1,050)
If the country is not specified or disclosure is prohibited, a flat fee of 100,000 shekels (about $27,000) is paid. These payments are ostensibly compensation, but in reality they are a covert signal to Israel. Legal experts consider this method highly unusual and possibly illegal.