Are we allowed to discuss (edit: if it's not too political?) if Kape Technologies has any connections to Israeli security services, given the nature of VPNs and given the amount of data that can be trivially collected, and:
"Being from Israel, Teddy Sagi had connections with the Israeli military intelligence sphere and was able to procure himself a real-life cyber spy [his co-founder] from the famed Unit 8200 (kinda like Israel’s version of the NSA)" [0]
Unit 8200 is the premier software development track in the Israeli military.
Every Israeli tech company likely has multiple developers from Unit 8200 in it. Whether it's building e-commerce shops or making video games.
While 8200 definitely falls under the military intelligence wing, I don't think describing people in it as Cyber Spies is anywhere near accurate. And unless that guy was very high ranking it is a stretch to imply that's an indication that IL military intelligence is involved in the company.
That is not to say that the military isn't involved with the company - that might very well be true, just that someone being from Unit 8200 isn't an indication of it.
People who don't live in countries with mandatory conscription for all don't really understand: everyone is connected to the military but it means nothing.
Judging an Israeli citizen on their IDF ties is like judging a US citizen on the fact that they went to public school.
> everyone is connected to the military but it means nothing.
No, people who live in tiny countries with mandatory conscription don't really understand that it means that their entire country is militarized. It's not surprising that fish can't see water.
> is like judging a US citizen on the fact that they went to public school.
It's exactly like that. If public school in the US trained people to kill and spy, it would be entirely safe to assume that the US was full of killer spies. For example, if you know that US public school taught a view of world history that was distorted in particular ways, and had very little emphasis in foreign languages, it would be safe to assume that Americans have a distorted view of the world, and largely don't speak foreign languages.
According to google, 87% of Americans go to a state-funded school, so yes judging an American based on the fact that they could afford to be in the top 13% and go to a public school instead is legitimate. This doesn't seem to match what you're trying to say.
You’re using the British definition of “public school” here, which is a “private school” in the US. US public schools are equivalent to UK state schools, in that both are run by the state.
It doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, such judgements are made by most people every day. Someone who was professionally formed somewhere has a higher probability of ties to them later on. Being intelligence services this might be even more true.
In today's political climate where people around the world see Israel judging (and sentencing, and carrying out the punishment) every Palestinian as terrorists, I think this wide brush of judging Israelis on their ties with the IDF is probably widely accepted as "only fair". When it comes to Unit 8200 the implications are even stronger.
But I don't get the US public school system reference. You have to start with a baseline and if you see a private Ivy League school on someone's CV and a random public school on someone else's I'm sure you'll probably make the obvious assumption about which one is better, even if sometimes the obvious is wrong.
>Teddy Sagi had connections with the Israeli military intelligence sphere
Does this mean much given that israel has mandatory military service? Unlike in the US where you have to make a conscious choice (eg. patriotism or desperation) to join the CIA/NSA/military, that's not really the case in israel. "has ties to unit 8200" might as well mean "has ties to stanford/MIT/caltech" or "has ties to big tech".
If I was running an intelligence agency and was given my choice of conscripts,
I wouldn't hand my intelligence secrets to people who resented being forced to be there; or to mouthy people I thought might blab about it after the end of their service; or to people with an anti-authority streak or at risk of a Snowden-style attack of conscience about civil liberties.
I would select for people with a deep love of their country; and a sense of loyalty that would extend well beyond the end of their service. The rest I'd send elsewhere - plenty of other units need tech folks, that drone/radio/printer isn't going to fix itself.
On the other hand, if as an aspiring software engineer I was forced to do military service and had the option to do it as part of a military cybersecurity unit, I'd pick that over running around with weapons without blinking an eye.
> I wouldn't hand my intelligence secrets to people who resented being forced to be there; or to mouthy people I thought might blab about it after the end of their service; or to people with an anti-authority streak or at risk of a Snowden-style attack of conscience about civil liberties.
Well, I know people there from all groups you mentioned. Especially the "resented being forced to be there", which is very common in all parts of the army, with people counting down the days until their 2-3 years are over. It didn't feel like the unit selected against this, choosing to accept it because of the technical skills of who they accepted.
(And yes, this is a new account. I've been on Hacker News for years, this is just for privacy reasons.)
Unit 8200 is a cyberwarfare and spy unit. They were responsible for the Lebanon pager supply chain terror attack. I definitely want to know if they are involved with any tech I'm using so I can avoid it.
I don't see how that addresses my point that enlistment is mandatory in israel. You can make similar claims about other israeli military units. If anything, given the current war in Gaza whatever the other IDF branches/units are doing are probably worse than hacking a few phones.
Unit 8200 is part of the IDF and contributing to those war crimes. I as a consumer only need to consider my own risk profile, not the politics of an entity that's committing acts I consider to be terrorism.
Linux is not operated by NSA and is open for inspection. Can you say the same about VPN services in question?
It would be naive to think Huawei is isn’t influenced by CCP, specially if it is found, by presumably someone from PLA intelligence unit by your suggestion.
this is not a helpful argument. this isn't about not using Israeli OSS software but services that feed data into the surveillance grid of quasi rogue state.
yes. they are involved in tech that you are using. they are working in apple, google, microsoft, nvidia, intel, amd, arm, qualcomm, cisco, etc that have presence in Israel and even expand it.
Talking about the breath of which Israel has compromised our technology is actually helping to make my point. They're operating a comprehensive surveillance network and have the ability to literally plant explosives in our consumer devices.
No, a better analogy would be Germany. You can't count the entirety of Israel on one hand and ~10% of 1940s Germany on the other.
But that's beside the point and still doesn't match what you said, as you considered any company with an Israeli employee to be compromised, essentially.
Do you consider companies with Chinese employees just as "compromised"? We've known of Chinese state surveillance for decades.
I don't see China as my adversary so that's not an issue for me. If anything they provide a much welcome alternative to both Israeli spy tech and US spy tech.
I avoid it whenever possible, especially when we're talking about VPNs of all things. It's funny that you mention medicine because we all use Nazi technology and medical advancements too. Having zero ethical boundaries does indeed mean you can make technological progress.
> Does this mean much given that israel has mandatory military service?
Yes. Mandatory military service is still military service. It's still following government orders at an impressionable age in a culture that deliberately inculcates a mentality of following orders even when they go against your every human instinct. It still means working for an organisation that knows its job is killing people, even if you're not the one pulling the trigger yourself. And Israeli military intelligence specifically has a long history of keeping supposedly retired civilians on as sleeper agents who infiltrate supposedly neutral companies.
(Does that mean this guy specifically is definitely one of them? Of course not. But to anyone with reason to be using a VPN at all it's probably too much of a risk)
but it goes both ways. no one can question what Jew haters are doing for fear of anti-anti-semitism. If no one is a "Jew hater" then you allow real antisemitism to foster unabated.
We don't ban people for criticizing moderation. It's common, though, for people to make grand claims about being banned for that reason, when in fact we banned them for breaking the site guidelines or otherwise abusing the site.
Since your account isn't banned, you must be talking about a different account. Why not link to it so readers can make up their own minds?
"Being from Israel, Teddy Sagi had connections with the Israeli military intelligence sphere and was able to procure himself a real-life cyber spy [his co-founder] from the famed Unit 8200 (kinda like Israel’s version of the NSA)" [0]
?
[0] https://windscribe.com/blog/what-is-kape-technologies/