Are Israel’s spies stealing your data?
'Israeli spies go on to pursue questionable careers upon leaving the military.
Two cyber warfare and data collection companies that have recently been put under scrutiny were founded by graduates of the Israeli military’s Unit 8200, a high-tech spy branch responsible for the training of some of the country’s top technology experts and leading cyberwarfare efforts.
Israeli tech company Onavo, owned by Facebook, and Israeli cyber warfare company NSO Group were both founded by unit veterans.
This demonstrates how expertise developed in the unit can and has been used to create commercial tech platforms that put consumer security at risk.
What does the military unit do?
Unit 8200 is widely seen as Israel’s equivalent to the National Security Agency in the United States.
Its members are young, usually between 18 and 21, and are chosen for their math, science and problem-solving talents.
Those working within the unit help the development of surveillance tech, hacking, encryption and decoding techniques. They also gather internal and foreign signals and are responsible for cyber-policing and monitoring civilians.
Unit 8200 also plays a significant role in the systematic discrimination against Palestinians.
In 2014, 43 reservists affiliated with Unit 8200 revealed details of surveillance methods used to pry on the most intimate private data of innocent Palestinians, including material of a sexual and financial nature.
“The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence. While there are severe limitations on the surveillance of Israeli citizens, the Palestinians are not afforded this protection,” the soldiers wrote in a letter published by The Guardian.
Despite the widespread media coverage this received, the monitoring of Palestinians by Unit 8200 continues.
The Palestinian campaign group 7amleh outlined in a report released in December 2018 how the unit intercepts Palestinian communication networks and injects them with text messages and phone calls.
Stealing data
Unit 8200 veterans are dominating Israel’s technological scene. Technology is key to Israel’s economy and has enjoyed fast growth in recent times.
Former unit soldiers have gone on to found notable tech companies, including Palo Alto Networks and Check Point Software Technologies. These companies specialize in areas of security such as surveillance, voice recording and cybersecurity.
Another such group is the Facebook-owned Onavo.
The company was founded in 2010 by Unit 8200 graduates Guy Rosen and Roi Tiger, and acquired by Facebookin October 2013.
Facebook marketed the Onavo virtual private network (VPN) app as a privacy tool to keep users’ data secure and protect it from potentially compromising websites by encrypting and re-routing their data through a remote server.
Consumers were kept largely in the dark about the ways it would violate their privacy and help influence Facebook’s marketing and product strategies.
However, the Onavo VPN app was shut down last year after it emerged that Facebook was paying teenagers and adults to download the app and provide “nearly limitless” access to their data, according to the publication Tech Crunch.
After Apple banned the app for being in breach of its guidelines, Facebook exploited a loophole that would allow people to circumvent the App Store and download the app directly.'
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