1. You work for AWS, probably in account management or billing operations.
2. Your "buddy" in legal tells you that a subpeona has been processed that effects an Israeli government affiliated account.
3. Your buddy is breaking work rules and the law. You don't report it, as you are required to do. You're now a party to a criminal conspiracy.
4. Instead, you arrange for a payment to be made from AWS to an account in some pre-determined amount to communicate the confidential or legally sealed information that you conspired to steal.
Let's review. You're engaging in a criminal conspiracy to share restricted, sealed legal information with a foreign government. You are doing so by fraudulently stealing/embezzling money from your employer in a predetermined amount.
If that's not clearly understandable to you as a "bad thing" and a fraudulent activity, you're overthinking, lack any sense of law and ethics, are lacking cognitive ability, are a troll, or are just a schill for whatever team you're rooting for.
> You are doing so by fraudulently stealing/embezzling money from your employer
In this scenario Amazon is contractually obligated to pay Israel (unless they determine that they can't legally). If this employee is dutifully fulfilling that obligation in compliance with any relevant company approval process or other policies, then it's certainly not theft or embezzlement.
You seem to be adding a twist of "what if this is some random employee, not the one authorized to make the payments"? In that case sure, they might be defrauding their employer, but that has very little to do with the contract that this story was about.
It's like saying "what if instead of making the authorized payment to Israel, they keep the cash for themselves, then steal some monitors and assault some colleagues"? We've come up with a hypothetical where crimes are committed, yes, but it's hard to see how Israel would be to blame or would even be relevant.
In this scheme, the government would be deprived of its legal right to obtain information about a business's customer without the consent or knowledge of said customer.
In many/most? cases, a customer can be notified and can attempt to block such information gathering, but there are also many where it's not permitted.
No, speeding and nearly every other traffic offense is just brazenly doing the thing. There’s no deception required to facilitate drunk and disorderly conduct, trespassing, dumping your sofa by the side of the road, or just walk up to someone and start beating on them.
IE criminal intent vs criminal activity, critically the criminal activity only needs to be intended not actually occur for it to be fraud. Specifying which criminal intent is applicable is reasonable but nothing I said was incorrect.
The victims are the people being deprived of their legal protections.
Not everyone agrees which information should be protected but sending information can be a form of harm. If I break into your bank, find all your financial transactions, and post it on Facebook, I have harmed you.
Courts imposing gag orders over criminal or civil matters is a critical protection, and attempting to violate those gag orders is harm. The specific victims aren’t known, but they intend for there to be victims.
The payoff for AWS is the contract itself. Ultimately, it’s Israel that benefits from this information but being paid by your employer to commit fraud in a call center counts even if you’re not getting a cut of that specific victim.
IANAL, but all criminal definitions of fraud that I am aware of require an intention to harm to a victim. It's kind of hard to argue that sending money fulfills this criteria.
The harm is not to the recipient of the funds in this case, but to the investigating authorities, who have had the secrecy of their subpoena compromised.
There is wide latitude in the criminal code to charge financial crimes. This reminds me a bit of Trump's hush money conviction. IIRC, a central issue was how the payment was categorized in his books. In this case, there would be a record of this payment to Israel in the books, but the true nature of the payment would be concealed. IANAL, but I believe that is legally problematic.
The investigating authorities aren't being defrauded though; making someone's job harder isn't fraud. Google or Amazon could be committing other crimes,[1] but not fraud.
[1] If they actually violated a gag order, which realistically they won't. In all likelihood there's language to ensure they're not forced to commit crimes. Even if that wasn't explicit, the illegality doctrine covers them anyway, and they can just ignore any provisions which would require them to commit crimes.
Possibly, depending on intent. But even if so, obstruction of justice is not fraud.
> the real crime is treason
This hypothetical crime (which I'd say is highly unlikely to occur) would definitely not be treason, which has a narrow legal definition. We're not at war with Israel.
>Possibly, depending on intent. But even if so, obstruction of justice is not fraud.
Sure, but it's a crime still. Not just something neutral.
>This hypothetical crime (which I'd say is highly unlikely to occur) would definitely not be treason, which has a narrow legal definition. We're not at war with Israel.
No, just on several on behalf of them.
Which one feels should also have been part of this "narrow legal definition".
Almost all crime requires some form of lying, at least by omission and often of the explicit sort. Fraud though, is much more narrow than "they deceived but also crimed"... and anyone saying otherwise should be so embarrassed that we never have to hear their halfwittery ever again.
Americans get legal protections for their private health data because the disclosure of such information is considered harmful.
Other countries provide legal protections for other bits of information because disclosure of that information is considered harmful to the individual, it’s that protection they are trying to breach which thus harms the person.
How is this related to the fraud discussion in this thread? Illegal disckosure of confidential information is usually handled by a separate legal framework.
Stuff is generally also fraud rather than only being fraud. We don’t know the details of what else happened so we can’t say what other crimes occurred.
Same deal as most illegal things public companies do also being SEC violations.
The same action can break multiple laws. Unlawful discharge of a firearm is a crime, but it can also kill someone and thus break a different law. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03107.htm
Here we don’t know which specific laws were broken because we lack details, but the companies definitely signed a contract agreeing to commit fraud.
Anyway, the comment I responded to had “require an intention to harm to a victim” it’s that aspect I was addressing. My point was the transmission of information itself can be harmful to someone other than the recipient of that information. So the same act fulfills both aspects of fraud (deception + criminal intent), and also breaks some other law.
The signal based on private information is what’s causing the harm not the movement of money. They could cause the same harm by encoding a signal in the timing of a money transfer, or hell using carrier pidgins.
I could send your username and password using similar methods, the medium doesn’t matter here but the signal and their attempt to hide it does.
Fraud is intentional deception + criminal intent. The deception comes from using payments as a code instead of say an encrypted channel.
No, fraud is intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly.
Who exactly here is the victim that gets it legal rights deprived or what is the gain at the expense of the victim?
The shareholders of Microsoft or Amazon are deprived of their value.
then every crime is fraud. I murder you. Your employers shareholders are deprived of a worker.
That's reductive and silly. Here's the scenario:
1. You work for AWS, probably in account management or billing operations.
2. Your "buddy" in legal tells you that a subpeona has been processed that effects an Israeli government affiliated account.
3. Your buddy is breaking work rules and the law. You don't report it, as you are required to do. You're now a party to a criminal conspiracy.
4. Instead, you arrange for a payment to be made from AWS to an account in some pre-determined amount to communicate the confidential or legally sealed information that you conspired to steal.
Let's review. You're engaging in a criminal conspiracy to share restricted, sealed legal information with a foreign government. You are doing so by fraudulently stealing/embezzling money from your employer in a predetermined amount.
If that's not clearly understandable to you as a "bad thing" and a fraudulent activity, you're overthinking, lack any sense of law and ethics, are lacking cognitive ability, are a troll, or are just a schill for whatever team you're rooting for.
> You are doing so by fraudulently stealing/embezzling money from your employer
In this scenario Amazon is contractually obligated to pay Israel (unless they determine that they can't legally). If this employee is dutifully fulfilling that obligation in compliance with any relevant company approval process or other policies, then it's certainly not theft or embezzlement.
You seem to be adding a twist of "what if this is some random employee, not the one authorized to make the payments"? In that case sure, they might be defrauding their employer, but that has very little to do with the contract that this story was about.
It's like saying "what if instead of making the authorized payment to Israel, they keep the cash for themselves, then steal some monitors and assault some colleagues"? We've come up with a hypothetical where crimes are committed, yes, but it's hard to see how Israel would be to blame or would even be relevant.
Google not Microsoft. Microsoft didn't want to implicate themselves apparently.
"everything is securities fraud"
In this scheme, the government would be deprived of its legal right to obtain information about a business's customer without the consent or knowledge of said customer.
In many/most? cases, a customer can be notified and can attempt to block such information gathering, but there are also many where it's not permitted.
then pretty much every crime is ”fraud”. You are wrong.
No, speeding and nearly every other traffic offense is just brazenly doing the thing. There’s no deception required to facilitate drunk and disorderly conduct, trespassing, dumping your sofa by the side of the road, or just walk up to someone and start beating on them.
Really most crimes don’t require deception.
IE criminal intent vs criminal activity, critically the criminal activity only needs to be intended not actually occur for it to be fraud. Specifying which criminal intent is applicable is reasonable but nothing I said was incorrect.
The victims are the people being deprived of their legal protections.
Not everyone agrees which information should be protected but sending information can be a form of harm. If I break into your bank, find all your financial transactions, and post it on Facebook, I have harmed you.
Courts imposing gag orders over criminal or civil matters is a critical protection, and attempting to violate those gag orders is harm. The specific victims aren’t known, but they intend for there to be victims.
so which intent of benefit at the cost of which victim do you claim that Aws had when they committed the crime?
The payoff for AWS is the contract itself. Ultimately, it’s Israel that benefits from this information but being paid by your employer to commit fraud in a call center counts even if you’re not getting a cut of that specific victim.
IANAL, but all criminal definitions of fraud that I am aware of require an intention to harm to a victim. It's kind of hard to argue that sending money fulfills this criteria.
The harm is not to the recipient of the funds in this case, but to the investigating authorities, who have had the secrecy of their subpoena compromised.
There is wide latitude in the criminal code to charge financial crimes. This reminds me a bit of Trump's hush money conviction. IIRC, a central issue was how the payment was categorized in his books. In this case, there would be a record of this payment to Israel in the books, but the true nature of the payment would be concealed. IANAL, but I believe that is legally problematic.
The investigating authorities aren't being defrauded though; making someone's job harder isn't fraud. Google or Amazon could be committing other crimes,[1] but not fraud.
[1] If they actually violated a gag order, which realistically they won't. In all likelihood there's language to ensure they're not forced to commit crimes. Even if that wasn't explicit, the illegality doctrine covers them anyway, and they can just ignore any provisions which would require them to commit crimes.
>The investigating authorities aren't being defrauded though; making someone's job harder isn't fraud.
It can very well be, and it's called obstruction of justice.
Though in this case, the real crime is treason. Those companies collaborate with a foreign government against their own.
> obstruction of justice
Possibly, depending on intent. But even if so, obstruction of justice is not fraud.
> the real crime is treason
This hypothetical crime (which I'd say is highly unlikely to occur) would definitely not be treason, which has a narrow legal definition. We're not at war with Israel.
>Possibly, depending on intent. But even if so, obstruction of justice is not fraud.
Sure, but it's a crime still. Not just something neutral.
>This hypothetical crime (which I'd say is highly unlikely to occur) would definitely not be treason, which has a narrow legal definition. We're not at war with Israel.
No, just on several on behalf of them.
Which one feels should also have been part of this "narrow legal definition".
This is a bizarre reddit-brained legal theory.
Almost all crime requires some form of lying, at least by omission and often of the explicit sort. Fraud though, is much more narrow than "they deceived but also crimed"... and anyone saying otherwise should be so embarrassed that we never have to hear their halfwittery ever again.
Americans get legal protections for their private health data because the disclosure of such information is considered harmful.
Other countries provide legal protections for other bits of information because disclosure of that information is considered harmful to the individual, it’s that protection they are trying to breach which thus harms the person.
How is this related to the fraud discussion in this thread? Illegal disckosure of confidential information is usually handled by a separate legal framework.
Stuff is generally also fraud rather than only being fraud. We don’t know the details of what else happened so we can’t say what other crimes occurred.
Same deal as most illegal things public companies do also being SEC violations.
The other person is saying that disclosure of health data in violation of HIPAA wouldn't be fraud. It would be a HIPAA violation, not fraud.
The same action can break multiple laws. Unlawful discharge of a firearm is a crime, but it can also kill someone and thus break a different law. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03107.htm
Here we don’t know which specific laws were broken because we lack details, but the companies definitely signed a contract agreeing to commit fraud.
Anyway, the comment I responded to had “require an intention to harm to a victim” it’s that aspect I was addressing. My point was the transmission of information itself can be harmful to someone other than the recipient of that information. So the same act fulfills both aspects of fraud (deception + criminal intent), and also breaks some other law.
It depends on the context. I’ve gathered evidence to support prosecution of an individual disclosing PHI who was doing so to facilitate criminal acts.
But this is a signaling system, not a meaningful transfer of money.
The signal based on private information is what’s causing the harm not the movement of money. They could cause the same harm by encoding a signal in the timing of a money transfer, or hell using carrier pidgins.
I could send your username and password using similar methods, the medium doesn’t matter here but the signal and their attempt to hide it does.