>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)
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".