
Bezos Investigation Says the Saudis Obtained His Private Data - NN88
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeff-bezos-investigation-finds-the-saudis-obtained-his-private-information
======
nlh
Putting aside the politics / personal matters here, a nerd question (this is
HN after all!):

Does anyone have a sense (even broadly) of the specific methods that were used
to intercept Bezos' texts? Did he use an iOS or Android device? Were the cell
towers attacked? Was he the victim of a good 'ol zero day piece of malware? (I
presume Bezos isn't the kind of guy to click on random email attachments on
his phone).

Just curious what universe they were playing in.

(Speculation welcome!)

~~~
zaroth
Keeping in mind that we have seen exactly zero evidence that Bezos's texts
were ever intercepted at all. Hopefully at this point we're long past taking
claims in an op-ed at face value?

~~~
peteretep
No, sorry, I don’t agree at all. I consider Gavin de Becker to be
exceptionally credible, and think any idea that “all op-eds are the same” is
beyond disingenuous.

~~~
zaroth
I don’t know anything about Gavin. Not that I particularly trust journalists
but they are supposed to be neutral third parties reporting facts.

I agree that something that I didn’t say would have been disingenuous, but I’m
not sure why you would bring it up.

I’m sure you would agree that it being an op-ed tells us primarily that this
article was not written by a neutral third party. We would not be surprised if
it makes little to no effort to present opposing views. As an op-ed it is free
to make unsupported conjectures and should probably be approached with a
higher bar of skepticism and should be expected to provide facts or evidence
to back up any of its novel claims.

In short, op-eds are not news, and should not be treated as such. Not that
“news” is particularly deserving of the distinction these days.

I said simply that we should not take op-ed claims at face value. You said you
don’t agree at all. I mean, you are perfectly free to take the claims at face
value if you like, but appeal to authority is hardly compelling and perhaps
even a bit disingenuous itself.

------
neom
"Experts with whom we consulted confirmed New York Times reports on the Saudi
capability to “collect vast amounts of previously inaccessible data from
smartphones in the air without leaving a trace—including phone calls, texts,
emails”—and confirmed that hacking was a key part of the Saudi’s “extensive
surveillance efforts that ultimately led to the killing of [Washington Post]
journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”"

~~~
m0zg
Horseshit, if I've ever seen it. Both sides used Apple Messages, which is
encrypted end to end. Not even Apple can "intercept" anything.

~~~
Phlarp
End to end encryption isn't super useful if one or both endpoints are
compromised.

~~~
m0zg
Exactly my point. If someone else other than Sanchez had access to her phone,
E2E encryption won't do shit. But to say that anyone is able to magically
"intercept" E2E encrypted communications out of thin air is total bullshit. If
I were Bezos, I'd refuse to pay for this "investigation".

~~~
Twirrim
> Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that
> the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information. As of
> today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details.

Note the words "Had access to Bezos' phone". E2E encryption means bugger all
when someone has access to one end. There's other comments in the article that
give the impression Bezos' phone was compromised.

------
mr_toad
If even half of this is true we clearly need _stronger_ encryption and
security, not back-doors and anti-encryption laws.

Democracy depends on freedom of expression, freedom of association, and
privacy - all of which are threatened by espionage and blackmail.

------
herodotus
I wonder how companies like Twitter (mentioned in the article), Google, Apple,
Microsoft and even Amazon protect themeselves from rogue employees. If I, for
example, was responsible for an OS's TCP/IP stack, I can imagine ways that I
could compromise security with a very low probability of the compromise being
detected. I hope that all companies are taking this kind of risk very
seriously.

~~~
alkibiades
not sure. seems dangerous because you don’t want a red scare with chinese
employees for instance but there has been instances already where they’ve been
caught

------
gyaniv
It was rather obvious even back then (or at least when Bezos first published
his piece) that it was the Saudis that hacked his phone, I'm not entirely sure
the significant of this message by De Becker.

Furthermore, at least the way I see it, the more important party at fault here
is AMI. I mean we can't really be surprised that a dictatorship is using their
powers against powerful and influential people (especially those that have
publicly opposed and blamed them of crimes). But we should be outraged when an
American corporation cooperates with them, and we should do what we can to
stop and punish them, both the Saudis (in whatever way we can), and more
easily, the entire AMI group, it's executives and everyone involved.

~~~
a3n
Yes, AMI deserves outrage and prison.

But big as they are, they're a tool. Saudi ordered the hit. As far as I, a
lowly democratic individual contributor, can see.

~~~
joelx
Saudi Arabia ordered the murder of an American journalist six months ago. That
journalist was attacked and cut into small pieces by a 20 man kill squad.

Now, clear evidence has come out showing that the Saudis are willing to attack
even the world’s wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos. If the founder of Amazon is in
their crosshairs, it is clear that no American is safe.

The traitor Trump is a big supporter of Saudi Arabia and is currently planning
on selling them advanced nuclear technology. Saudi Arabia is as dangerous as
Iran or North Korea or Russia – their financial backing is what made the World
Trade Centers attack possible on 9/11.

Saudi Arabia is an evil dictatorship and it must go. No American is safe.

~~~
sangnoir
Correction: Jamal Kashoggi was Saudi but had permanent residence in the US
("green card"). It was reported at the time that the US administration took
umbrage in his non-citizen status as they were reluctant to take punitive
measures

------
biggio
Why are there family run countries still in 2019?

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
You're welcome to go over there and tell them to stop it. They usually have a
lot of power and resources, and they're unwilling to give it up.

As an American, I don't want to see my fellow countrymen dying in another
pointless war, so my view is that we should generally mind our own business.

I've spoken with someone who claimed to be a monarchy proponent and they
suggested I read: "Democracy – The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics
of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order (Perspectives on Democratic
Practice)", by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. I don't know anything about the author, nor
have I read the book, but perhaps that might help provide some insight into
why some support a monarchy.

~~~
int_19h
I suggest you do look up the author, because he is rather infamous for saying
and writing stuff like this:

"In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the
purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free
(unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one's own tenant-
property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the
sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very
purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as
democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and
communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically
separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the
purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those
habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the
advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for
instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship,
homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society,
too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order."

(Yes, the man seriously calls himself a libertarian.)

------
gcb0
> advising on controversial murder cases. I’ve seen a lot. And yet, I’ve
> recently seen things that have surprised even me, such as the National
> Enquirer’s parent company, AMI, being in league with a foreign nation

I honestly don't know how to feel reading something that ranks politics above
actual state sponsored murder.

And having to accept that as the uncontested norm.

------
lawnchair_larry
The title does not match the article at all. He didn’t find anything. He found
that Saudis don’t like Bezos and that they hack phones. It’s quite a stretch
to go from that to saying they hacked the Bezos phone.

~~~
meowface
I don't think that's the case. The article makes a very specific claim:

>Further, to respect officials pursuing this case, I won’t disclose details
from our investigation. I am, however, comfortable confirming one key fact:

>Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the
Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information. As of
today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details.

He claims there is direct evidence that they accessed Bezos' phone. It may not
be true, but opting to not disclose evidence doesn't mean none exists. I also
doubt Bezos and his lawyer would make such a major accusation like that
without confidence that it's true.

~~~
zaroth
I thought "claim with high confidence" is intelligence speak for _we don 't
have a fucking clue but it's the narrative we're running with_. </s>

This is really no better than citing anonymous sources. There is a story if
and when, and not a moment before, actual evidence (with some respectably
chain of custody) is actually provided.

EDIT: The word "evidence" only appears once in the editorial, talking about an
AP article reporting that the Saudi's were sent an advanced digital copy of
the pro-MBS magazine.

Read it carefully, Gavin never equivocally states he has any _evidence_ that
the Saudi's had access to Jeff's texts. They interviewed people. They were
told by other people that the Saudi's had this capability. SA apparently
"unleashed their cyber-army on Bezos". And AMI has done [presumably highly
lucrative] work for MBS. And AMI is bad because they caught-and-killed a story
for Trump, and have done things for Trump in the past. That is all we get
here, aside from the ominous ending of Saudi Arabia controlling our media.

I'm just so tired of the conspiracy theories.

Not knowing why AMI started talking to Michael Sanchez is not the same as
knowing that the Saudi's told them to talk to Sanchez.

~~~
olliepop
Ironic, because you claim without any supporting references that you "thought"
that the statement ("claim with high confidence") is intelligence speak for no
evidence, and then use this assumption to conclude that it's no better than
citing anonymous sources.

~~~
zaroth
The first sentence was sarcasm. But if you need a reference, how about Iraq
WMDs.

I'm not on the hook to prove anything. TFA provides literally zero evidence of
their claim other than to assert it strongly.

In my opinion, the most strongly asserted claims accompanied by "we can't tell
you the evidence, but we turned it over to someone else who also can't tell
you"... well, haven't we seen how that turns out enough already over the last
2 years?

My point is simply that TFA asserts a lot and backs it up with nothing but
hyperbole.

~~~
archgoon
Funny you should mention the Iraq WMDs. WMDs were cited as justification to go
to war against Iraq, a war that the Bush administration had a variety of
political, ideological, strategic and economic reasons for wanting to engage
in.

What incentives do de Becker and Bezos have that would cause them to falsely
accuse the government of Saudi Arabia? It seems that such an action would be
risky to say the least.

Of course, the potential risk doesn't mean that they _don_ ' _t_ have such
reasons (or even that their inference based on whatever data they have is
_correct_ ), but I am curious as to what you think are the likely
explanations.

~~~
zaroth
Bezos’ initial medium post seemed to me like wild conspiracy theory born of
Messiah complex.

But the incentives are massive. The world’s richest man had a huge PR problem
with stories coming out about how his wife actually was instrumental in
helping build Amazon in the early days.

Half his fortune on the line. Perhaps his controlling stake in Amazon, too?
How many Amazon shares will his ex-wife walk away with at the end of this?
Aside from the divorce which will be the most damaging event in Jeff’s life,
the PR hit is not insignificant.

If Jeff can tie AMI to illegal spying he can possibly take down the entire
company. Is revenge not a good enough motive? He is certainly not a
disinterested third party.

This is a great albatross to distract from an otherwise big story.

~~~
darkpuma
We know there was a conspiracy to murder and dismember a journalist. Your
suggestion that it's outlandish to consider a conspiracy to blackmail an owner
of a newspaper is intellectually dishonest. Frankly it's insulting.

~~~
zaroth
To propose such a strawman of my position, and then accuse me of being
“intellectually dishonest” and “insulting”. Wow.

I never said outlandish. I said people claiming Gavin said he had evidence
were incorrect, because TFA literally never claims to have evidence. Let alone
direct evidence. Let alone incontrovertible evidence.

I think it’s absolutely incumbent on the accuser to provide at least some
general description of the form and substance of _evidence_ that was obtained
to support a claim such as this. This is not asking too much from a private
citizen who apparently had unlimited funds from his boss (the richest man in
the world) to exact revenge on someone who attacked him in one of the most
financially damaging ways imaginable.

Since when does HN accept conspiracy theories with absolutely nothing to back
them up? I’ve seen the post “extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence” upvoted to the top of many discussions. Why does that not apply
here? Doubly so in a case where the accuser is so personally vested in the
outcome.

You propose that because we know conspiracy A (through tremendous amounts of
actual evidence) so therefore we must entertain a tenuously related conspiracy
theory B without any evidence?

Please don’t accuse me of being insulting and dishonest on the basis of
frankly basic skepticism of a conspiracy theory, particularly if that is the
extent of your rebuttal.

The political skirmishes of the worlds richest men don’t really concern me.
What does concern me is the posited existence of a remotely installable no-
touch root access zero day for a presumably up-to-date iPhone, and
secondarily, that it’s being weaponized by foreign government against private
US citizens — meaning it apparently doesn’t require the carrier’s cooperation
to deploy, which is what would shock me the most, because baseband exploit
would be the most obvious vector.

~~~
darkpuma
You called it a _" wild conspiracy theory"_. You're using "conspiracy theory"
as a thought terminating cliche, which is intellectual dishonesty.

> _" absolutely nothing to back [..] up [the theory]"_

More intellectual dishonesty. The Saudis had the means, the motive, the
opportunity _and the disposition, as demonstrated by their murderous
tendencies._ The House of Saud are a family of thugs who are known to conspire
to murder journalists. It's entirely rational to consider the strong
probability that they've also conspired to blackmail people.

~~~
zaroth
It is _incontrovertibly_ nothing more than a wild conspiracy theory at this
point;

\- A remote access no-hands zero day iPhone rootkit.

\- An international plot to expose an _affair_

\- A plot potentially involving the President of the United States in cahoots
with the National Enquirer to expose the richest man in the world

\- A blackmail attempt to cover it all up

\- Perfectly executed parallel construction to account for the source of the
photos

Last week the President was accused of clandestinely exploiting the
intelligence apparatus of the United States to steal Bezos' photos. Now that
we _know_ (the only actual evidence that we've seen -- in this case statements
from the brother himself and AMI) that the photos were provided by the
brother, a new theory emerges that this was merely parallel construction after
the affair was exposed through spying by the Saudis.

To reach that conclusion, you would have to (1) have evidence that the Saudi's
contacted AMI to give them the lead, (2) have evidence of the zero-day on the
iPhone, and (3) be able to link some sort of network activity back to Saudi
Arabia carrying the exfiltrated data. ('AMI was tipped off', 'by the Saudi's,
'after they spied on Bezos by exploiting his phone' are three separate facts
which each need supporting evidence).

Instead... You use the words "means", "motive", "opportunity" in a colloquial
which is at odds with their meaning in a court of law. "I think this guy
doesn't like that guy" is true of an untold number of people in Bezos' orbit,
including his ex-wife.

"I think this guy can remote root international iPhones at the click of a
mouse" is not _means " \- it's utter speculation. _Anyone* who knew Bezos was
having an affair with Sanchez would be in the exact same position to approach
the brother and ask for kompromat.

I don't know what you are claiming is the evidence of "opportunity" in this
case?

I certainly don't support Saudi Arabia, and I'm looking forward to the day
where there's no one left to buy their oil and they sink back into the desert.
It is absolute fact that Saudi Arabia has murdered and blackmailed in pursuit
of their political goals.

But you have literally nothing but a cute story and a blog post of a guy who
said trust me because I have high confidence that they hacked Bezos' phone to
give AMI the lead on his affair other than "Saudi Arabia bad".

You have not come even remotely close to substantiating any sort of claim,
other than to basically say that it's not impossible that it was them. I
actually agree that it's not _impossible_ that agents of Saudi Arabia remotely
accessed Bezos' iPhone using a no-hands zero day to root his iPhone, discover
the affair, and then call someone at AMI to tell them to track down the girl's
brother to get a copy of the texts. It's not _impossible_ but there's also no
evidence that any of us has seen it actually happened. I think that's pretty
much the definition of a conspiracy theory right there! The correct response,
IMO, is absolute skepticism, and to wait for _evidence_ to be presented.

Or at the very least, a general description of the sort of evidence which
_allegedly_ has been found?

And I really think you should cut it out with the ad hominem. There's nothing
dishonest about my skepticism, and I am not insulting you, just your utter
lack of an cohesive argument.

------
jondubois
It's surprising that someone as wealthy and famous as Jeff Bezos would be
storing such photos on his phone.

I already kind of treat my phone as though it's public domain. The amount of
software which runs on most devices today is unfathomable. Keeping your
devices completely secure seems almost impossible.

~~~
comboy
What do you suggest CEOs of big companies should use to communicate with other
people? They need phones and laptops. If you trust it with company data why
wouldn't you trust it with your private data? It's nice to separate the two
but that's besides the point.

~~~
jjeaff
You need technology to conduct business. Just like many people need to drive,
even though it is rather dangerous to drive or ride in a car.

There are very few reasons to take and store naked photos of yourself on your
phone. So I submit that it's usually a bad idea to do so.

~~~
maehwasu
As someone who frequently takes and stores such photos, I would argue that
mutual arousal between partners is an extremely strong human drive/need.

"I like things that make me feel good" is generally considered a very, very
satisfactory reason by 99.999% of the population.

This is getting close to saying "Sexual intercourse is very dangerous. Outside
of reproduction, there are very few reasons to have sexual intercourse, so I
submit that it's usually a bad idea to do so."

~~~
jjeaff
>mutual arousal

I think there are probably better, safer ways to do that then taking and
sending photos. Unless the thing that gets you worked up is the very likely
danger that these photos are being collected and stored somewhere for others
to see and or use against you.

------
consultSKI
Would a VPN have prevented this?

------
meowface
(removed, see below)

~~~
amingilani
HN has a way of self correcting. Come back in a few hours and most of the bad
comments should be killed by down votes.

Sometimes when a thread or story is killed, though, the comments survive and
multiply because the broader community can't moderate them.

~~~
meowface
True, good point. I've seen that before. I'll come back later.

Also, to be clear, disagreement and skepticism about what's written in the
article is a healthy and good thing. But the disagreement should take into
account the full content of the article, since many counter-arguments here
were specifically discussed in it.

------
devoply
And now the US wants to give M. Bone Saw nuclear tech. What could possibly go
wrong?

~~~
scottie_m
Probably not much, as I suspect the Israelis will keep a _very_ close eye on
the project and intervene if/as needed. They have a more realistic long-term
view of the region IMO, and are capable of handling these issues effectively,
if not quietly or gracefully.

~~~
bilbo0s
Wait? What?

Are you seriously suggesting that in lieu of cutting the problem off at the
source by _NOT_ giving a dangerous man like MBS nuclear weapons, we should
rely on other nations in the region to clean up the mess?

~~~
scottie_m
No, that isn’t at all what I’m saying, and you can tell that’s the case
because it bears literally no relation to what I did say.

~~~
peteradio
You say "no problem, Israelis deal with it ... probably."

~~~
scottie_m
In response to _What could possibly go wrong?_.

That has nothing to do with whether or not it’s a good idea, just that I
believe very little can go wrong I’m the context of Mossad oversight. I’m
certainly not endorsing the deal.

~~~
nl
_That has nothing to do with whether or not it’s a good idea, just that I
believe very little can go wrong I’m the context of Mossad oversight_

This is the most eye-opening naive piece of rhetoric I've ever read on HN.

Mossad couldn't stop Iran from developing nuclear technology, only delay it.
And that was with every country in the world agreeing to sanctions.

There is no chance they can stop the Saudis, especially since the Saudi's
probably already have a technology transfer agreement with Pakistan.

------
xmly
What is the motivation of Saudis?

------
jammygit
Why is it news when a billionaires privacy is invaded, but not ours?

------
zaroth
> _You know him as Jeff Bezos; I know him as my client of 22 years. ... To
> understand where this story goes, some background is needed._

Eyeroll. Why is Gavin writing this? In the Daily Beast? The narrative voice
sets off immediate alarm bells, reading like a Tom Clancy novel;

> _What was unusual, very unusual, was how hard AMI people worked to publicly
> reveal their source’s identity._

It really isn't all that unusual, when you feed a salacious story to a
conspiracy-theory-mad media which is frothing at the mouth to bring down Trump
by any means possible, and then claim the President cooked it up as political
revenge. When the FBI has a non-prosecution agreement with you that any
misdeed could throw you under a microscope... It would have surprised me more
if AMI insisted on absolute secrecy of their source. This is classic "makes
you look guilty either way" rubbish.

The world's richest man got caught doing something that could literally cost
him half his fortune in the ensuing divorce. I certainly wouldn't want to be
on the wrong side of that particular counter-strike.

~~~
largbae
Interesting questions, why is he writing this, and why here? A few guesses:

1) Bezos had made claims in his original post that AMI and the Saudis were in
league on the Bezos attack. That got walked back a little in this post when he
admitted that (paraphrasing): it is unclear how much AMI knew, but it was
still totally the Saudis. Maybe there won't be any evidence coming to back
that up other than the AMI lawyers' strange request.

2) Bezos had given some of the credit for these claims to de Becker before,
but now the weight of any truth or not is squarely on GdB.

3) Setting the record straight(?) that Michael Sanchez was not vile but rather
a semi-victim of a larger plot might be helpful to Jeff the human in love.

Why The Beast? Well as you can now see every news wire picked it up within
hours, so maybe they're just conveniently easy to use as the first publishing
spot.

------
m0zg
There was nothing to "intercept" I think. Sanchez's brother copied them and
forwarded them to The Enquirer in exchange for a decent sized bag of cash.

~~~
bronco21016
Apparently not conspiracy theory enough.

From my reading this is exactly what happened. Reported by AP News, CNN, Fox
News, and The Verge.

~~~
mikeyouse
If you read the linked article, it's clear that somebody told the enquirer to
approach the brother-in-law to buy the photos —— somebody already knew that
Bezos and his mistress were exchanging inappropriate texts before the brother-
in-law. Bezos’s investigators claim to have forwarded evidence to the US
government that shows the Saudis were behind it. We’ll see what happens given
how close this administration is to MBS.

This is just privatized parallel construction weaponized against a critic of
the Saudi government.

~~~
bronco21016
Let me start with saying that in no way do I think the Saudis are not
nefarious or clear of any guilt in this case.

However, the original post asked how the digital material was obtained. The
post, and many others, imply some technical wizardry was used to obtain said
info. Who is to say the Saudis did not employ traditional human intelligence
to learn that the brother had access to the ‘dirt’?

My point is simply: just because the Saudis knew which stone to turn over does
not mean they used some technical prowess to turn over said stone.

[edit] clarify my stone turning over analogy.

~~~
mikeyouse
De Becker (who is as credible as technical investigators get) said that his
investigators along with outside experts developed evidence that showed that
the Saudis had access to Bezos's phone. He turned this evidence over to
Federal investigators.

Without knowing more, it's hard to say exactly what happened, but there is
plenty of evidence of the Saudis, along with other repressive regimes,
spending huge sums of money buying and weaponizing zero-days to target
critics. So they had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to target
him..

------
onetimemanytime
I read it...or so I think. No details on how hacking was done, method, time
etc. They hate Bezos (obvious,) they have capabilities to spy on phones, and
they do retaliate /blackmail, but a phishing message sent or a spyware would
have sealed the proof.

~~~
bwb
He turned over details to gov, more will be coming I would imagine.

------
raiyu
Am I the only one that feels this is a bit far fetched? Perhaps because it is
light on technical details, or more so, what the point of the article is. If
Jeff Bezos paid for the investigation given how publicly he came out with his
first statement, why would he not be the one issuing the follow up?

And if he did pay this person what is the point of this coming out here, and
on the daily beast.

Just doesn’t quite add up for me.

~~~
aljones
You are skeptical that Bezos would delegate publicly describing the results of
the investigation to the person he publicly hired to investigate?

------
simonblack
I don't know what he's so concerned about. He knows as well as the the rest of
us that "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about."

------
jstanley
This is great, but I take issue with the phrase "the Saudis".

There are about 33 million Saudis. I doubt most of them had anything to do
with this, and I think it's important to maintain a mental distinction between
the government of a country and its people.

~~~
ignoramous
Sorry for being pendantic but Al-Saud or 'the Saudis' are literally the ruling
family:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud)

The 32m+ citizens are called 'Saudi Arabians'... calling them 'Saudis' is,
erm, informal at best, lazy at worst?

~~~
raverbashing
Well Americans like to call themselves "Americans" even if that technically
refers to all of the inhabitants of the American Continent (from North,
Central and South America), so...

~~~
arcticfox
> Well Americans like to call themselves "Americans" even if that technically
> refers to all of the inhabitants of the American Continent (from North,
> Central and South America), so...

 _Technically_ , they're overwhelmingly correct, and your definition is in
fact the uncommon one. For example, see the primary definition for both
adjective and noun usages in the Oxford Dictionary of British & World English
(not even US English).

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american)

