Amazon has charge former National Security Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander to its board , the company disclosed in SEC filingsreleased yesterday . There areno reasonsanyone could find this alarming .
Alexander lead the incarnation of NSA that — as classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed — prosecute in rampant surveillance of citizen ’ individual phone records , email information , and internet activity . You know , hush-hush domestic spying . Theillegalkind .
“ It turn out ‘ Hey Alexa ’ is inadequate for ‘ Hey Keith Alexander , ’ ” Snowden quipped in atweetlast night .
Image: Michael Kovac (Getty Images)
While Alexander may not exert the NSA ’s mogul any more , there are reasons to be concerned that a former spymaster is get into bottom with a party that controls enormous swath of internet infrastructure . The analytics surveyor W3Techsestimatesthat Amazon Web Services is used to host close to 6 % of all websites , and byconservative estimates , a 33 % share of the swarm marketplace in total , well ahead of Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud .
Among Amazon ’s many World Wide Web host customers arehousehold names , including Netflix , Facebook , Twitter , Reddit , and Spotify . The service is so omnipresent that , when Dhruv Mehrotra , who conducts information investigations for Gizmodo , made a pluginto blocking connections to Amazon machine , it made the net as a whole “ jolly unusable . ”
It ’s not just Amazon ’s scale that ’s concerning , but the fellowship ’s design . Amazon has actively constructed neighborhoodsurveillance networksvia its Ring doorbells , feeding footage to constabulary departments throughout the US . Alexa does n’t just listen for commands butkeeps recording , sometimes when it has n’t been summoned . None of this even begins to touch on the troves of data Amazon has at its disposal via its online advertising arm , or directly from customer browsing and spending patterns .
Bezos has also been happy to cozy up to governing ( and especiallymilitary ) interest , even as other tech giantsperformativelyshy away — gaffer among themthe $ 10 billion Pentagon business deal for cloud computing help which Amazonlost outon to Microsoft last year . Jeff Bezos want that deal and is stillbattling over it , complaining that Trump ’s personal grudge against him tilted the decision . ( Oraclehas also been fighting for it up until early this calendar month . ) It ’s not cleared if Amazon believes Alexander ’s connections — either the one he maintained from his NSA day or through the cybersecurity companyIronNethe establish in 2014 , which claim work intimately with the defence and fossil fuel industries — might give the company a ramification - up in obtain this lucrative contract .
However , Amazon stressed in an email to Gizmodo that the company will be keep abreast exacting conflict of interest rules for regime contracting , imply , I gauge , that he wo n’t be necessitate in any of the above .
Amazon go on to say that they selected Alexander for his experience in a top - level military locating in charge of security , but Amazon ’s pretty unreadable on how exactly he ’ll apply that expertise . While , yes , Alexander certainly does have what we might call alone experience in the realm of cyber security , Amazon alsotold CNBCthat Alexander wo n’t recreate a role in oversee Amazon Web Services . So , what on the button is this guy ’s chore ? mayhap they ’re just being prissy and include him in their party . in all likelihood nothing to worry about .
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