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If a bank were to seize your money, you'd notice, because you wouldn't have that money anymore. And it would be very well documented, leaving a clear paper trai

If a bank were to seize your money, you'd notice, because you wouldn't have that money anymore. And it would be very well documented, leaving a clear paper trail to a criminal conviction and a civil suit. If your bodyguard did you physical harm, you'd notice, because your knees would hurt. And there would be ample evidence for a criminal case. If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit. It's the difference between breaking into a Walmart with a ski mask and assault rifle and stealing a bunch of blu rays vs recording the HDMI out from whatever device you stream Netflix from. They're not the same thing at all, either in terms of harm done, applicable criminal law, or ability to build a compelling civil lawsuit.

darkerside 7y ago
You're right that they are different, but maybe not as different as you think they are. > If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit. If Amazon were doing this and profiting from it, that would essentially be a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the leadership of the company. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? I tend to think conspiracy theories are rarely true. Would it be caught? I believe it would likely be caught. Companies get things done by having meetings, informing their hierarchy, and following executive decisions. In what meeting do you imagine this being discussed? Who floats this idea, and who signs off on it? I just don't see it happening. And if it does, I expect whistleblowers to put a stop to it.
- nieve 7y ago
  Criminal conspiracies by corporate execs are not all uncommon in the history of business and presuming that you can't possibly run into one because you personally haven't is taking an unnecessary risk. One thing due diligence is supposed to look for is criminal behavior. This is not because they never find it.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    Criminal conspiracies by corporate execs are not all uncommon in the history of business Actually, they are quite uncommon, which is why they make headlines when discovered. I'm not taking a side here, just pointing out a fallacy.
    - tomt2323 7y ago
      This is even more fallacious- the only thing that unsourced opinion proves is that certain types of criminal conspiracies that are uncovered are deemed sensational enough to sell news services. It says nothing about the commonality of successfully covert conspiracies nor about the frequency of uncovered ones that are hard for the general public to understand/care about.
      - lowdose 7y ago
        It is time to shut the computer, take a deep breath and see if you can do a long walk outside. Bezos is making the most money of everyone living. Many of the scandals happen when the founder is retired or dead.
    - salawat 7y ago
      Lets see.. Boeing: See 737 MAX, other 737 boondoggle like the vertical stabilizer reversal back in 94'ish. Monsanto, hell, what chemical hasn't hid information they damn well shouldn't: Dicamba, roundup.. Take your pick. The stellar behavior of this corporate citizen taints cements the stereotype of an entire industry. https://thecounter.org/dicamba-trial-monsanto-basf-pesticide-drift/ https://thecounter.org/dicamba-trial-monsanto-basf-pesticide... https://www.phillyvoice.com/new-york-times-dupont-hid-decades-chemical-pollution/ https://www.phillyvoice.com/new-york-times-dupont-hid-decade... Special mention goes to a certain German pharma company who brought you Thalidomide: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnenthal_GmbH https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnenthal_GmbH The lovely folks at Insys: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/health/insys-trial-verdict-kapoor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/health/insys-trial-verdic... Believe there was a fraudulent implant thing a bit ago... Where'd I put that? https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/health/2014/07/09/southern-california-doctors-lawsuits-implants-spine-surgery/12408611/ https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/health/2014/07/09/south... Someone beat me to Dieselgate. Arthur Anderson LLP. PG&E deliberately skimped on maintenance, leading to fires in California, and if I recall natural gas lines overpressuring in Massachusets? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_gas_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_gas_explosions Excuse me, the natural gas one was Columbia Gas. Big Tobacco... Nestle I think getting caught using child labor in their supply chain at one point. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/sep/02/child-labour-on-nestle-farms-chocolate-giants-problems-continue https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals... Oh what else can I think of off the top of my head? Uhhh... That's all I can think of for right now. I mean we can hit the history books or case law to get a solid count I suppose, but to be frank, once a company hits a certain revenue point, it is pretty much guaranteed they've had to do something to get dirty/avoid getting outed as dirty. So it really isn't that unusual. Throw in stuff that happened back before the rise of the Unions of the last century, and since their decline, and you also end up with so.e decent stories of workforce abuse. Though admittedly there's slant depending on who is telling it. Like the Pinkertons as a matter of fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28detective_agency%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28detective_agency%... Or the original incarnation of Equifax, who were tasked with vetting prospective executive promotees. Just because it'sorganized doesn't mean it's doing anyone any favors.
- noizejoy 7y ago
  I used to think a lot more like you and then Dieselgate[0] happened. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
- akoncius 7y ago
  as sibling comment author mentioned, look at dieselgate. it was huge conspiracy against emissikns regulations and they did it relatively well for multiple years. and it’s not like it’s simple hack in software. this solution required manufacturing additional special purpoce devices, adjusting assembly line, engineering and so on. definitely it must have some design stages, testing, actual implementaion done. main thing here is that in big corps you can divide big (evil) task into smaller steps which could be defined as non-evil in isolation, and nobody in actual implementation people crowd would understand big picture.
ethbro 7y ago
> If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit. For a thought exercise, let's play this out. Amazon copies data running through VMs (or grabs it from storage). Let's assume it isn't on hardware certified for capital-letter processing [1], most of which require regular third party audits. So they have your illegally-obtained data [2], which presumably they want to use to make money. Except they can't leave any record of its source, in any documented form. This includes server logs, data transfers, emails about data, meeting minutes about data. So they create some isolated network, run by a third party contractor, that transfers encrypted data from the taps to a store, then decrypts. All of which brings us to the most difficult part. Who does... what with it? The source data itself is radioactive. Who knows when "pricing strategy for company X" or obvious equivalent might pop up in the stream? So you... what? Exclusively touch it via algorithm that outputs only aggregate information? How do you possibly code and maintain that pipeline, sight unseen? All while risking an incredibly profitable business. Or, you know, you just operate as an honest IaaS provider and make $10B in revenue / quarter with a 25% growth rate... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/programs/ https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/programs/ [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511 (?)
- dv_dt 7y ago
  I thought Amazon was already organizationally constructed in very small functional units which each are encouraged to export their units "interface" in an formal way. Is the source data traceable if it becomes anonymized product sales samples exported to apis that mix into a pile of legit data and all fed into some sales analysis engine? The unit could be the "open sales modeling unit" that just supplies one data feed among thousands.
- xtreme 7y ago
  Sometimes you can learn a lot from the metadata without actually looking into the actual data stream. For example, if B&H was hosted on AWS, Amazon could deduce the effectiveness of their holiday sale tactics by looking at the overall page traffic, DB writes, etc. These metrics are already recorded by Amazon for billing purposes and someone stealing a glance at them would likely leave zero evidence.
airstrike 7y ago
> breaking into a Walmart with a ski mask and assault rifle and stealing a bunch of blu rays vs recording I'm ready to watch that movie

darkerside 7y ago

You're right that they are different, but maybe not as different as you think they are. > If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit. If Amazon were doing this and profiting from it, that would essentially be a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the leadership of the company. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? I tend to think conspiracy theories are rarely true. Would it be caught? I believe it would likely be caught. Companies get things done by having meetings, informing their hierarchy, and following executive decisions. In what meeting do you imagine this being discussed? Who floats this idea, and who signs off on it? I just don't see it happening. And if it does, I expect whistleblowers to put a stop to it.

nieve 7y ago
Criminal conspiracies by corporate execs are not all uncommon in the history of business and presuming that you can't possibly run into one because you personally haven't is taking an unnecessary risk. One thing due diligence is supposed to look for is criminal behavior. This is not because they never find it.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Criminal conspiracies by corporate execs are not all uncommon in the history of business Actually, they are quite uncommon, which is why they make headlines when discovered. I'm not taking a side here, just pointing out a fallacy.
  - tomt2323 7y ago
    This is even more fallacious- the only thing that unsourced opinion proves is that certain types of criminal conspiracies that are uncovered are deemed sensational enough to sell news services. It says nothing about the commonality of successfully covert conspiracies nor about the frequency of uncovered ones that are hard for the general public to understand/care about.
    - lowdose 7y ago
      It is time to shut the computer, take a deep breath and see if you can do a long walk outside. Bezos is making the most money of everyone living. Many of the scandals happen when the founder is retired or dead.
  - salawat 7y ago
    Lets see.. Boeing: See 737 MAX, other 737 boondoggle like the vertical stabilizer reversal back in 94'ish. Monsanto, hell, what chemical hasn't hid information they damn well shouldn't: Dicamba, roundup.. Take your pick. The stellar behavior of this corporate citizen taints cements the stereotype of an entire industry. https://thecounter.org/dicamba-trial-monsanto-basf-pesticide-drift/ https://thecounter.org/dicamba-trial-monsanto-basf-pesticide... https://www.phillyvoice.com/new-york-times-dupont-hid-decades-chemical-pollution/ https://www.phillyvoice.com/new-york-times-dupont-hid-decade... Special mention goes to a certain German pharma company who brought you Thalidomide: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnenthal_GmbH https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnenthal_GmbH The lovely folks at Insys: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/health/insys-trial-verdict-kapoor.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/health/insys-trial-verdic... Believe there was a fraudulent implant thing a bit ago... Where'd I put that? https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/health/2014/07/09/southern-california-doctors-lawsuits-implants-spine-surgery/12408611/ https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/health/2014/07/09/south... Someone beat me to Dieselgate. Arthur Anderson LLP. PG&E deliberately skimped on maintenance, leading to fires in California, and if I recall natural gas lines overpressuring in Massachusets? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_gas_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_gas_explosions Excuse me, the natural gas one was Columbia Gas. Big Tobacco... Nestle I think getting caught using child labor in their supply chain at one point. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/sep/02/child-labour-on-nestle-farms-chocolate-giants-problems-continue https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals... Oh what else can I think of off the top of my head? Uhhh... That's all I can think of for right now. I mean we can hit the history books or case law to get a solid count I suppose, but to be frank, once a company hits a certain revenue point, it is pretty much guaranteed they've had to do something to get dirty/avoid getting outed as dirty. So it really isn't that unusual. Throw in stuff that happened back before the rise of the Unions of the last century, and since their decline, and you also end up with so.e decent stories of workforce abuse. Though admittedly there's slant depending on who is telling it. Like the Pinkertons as a matter of fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28detective_agency%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28detective_agency%... Or the original incarnation of Equifax, who were tasked with vetting prospective executive promotees. Just because it'sorganized doesn't mean it's doing anyone any favors.
noizejoy 7y ago
I used to think a lot more like you and then Dieselgate[0] happened. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
akoncius 7y ago
as sibling comment author mentioned, look at dieselgate. it was huge conspiracy against emissikns regulations and they did it relatively well for multiple years. and it’s not like it’s simple hack in software. this solution required manufacturing additional special purpoce devices, adjusting assembly line, engineering and so on. definitely it must have some design stages, testing, actual implementaion done. main thing here is that in big corps you can divide big (evil) task into smaller steps which could be defined as non-evil in isolation, and nobody in actual implementation people crowd would understand big picture.

ethbro 7y ago

> If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit. For a thought exercise, let's play this out. Amazon copies data running through VMs (or grabs it from storage). Let's assume it isn't on hardware certified for capital-letter processing [1], most of which require regular third party audits. So they have your illegally-obtained data [2], which presumably they want to use to make money. Except they can't leave any record of its source, in any documented form. This includes server logs, data transfers, emails about data, meeting minutes about data. So they create some isolated network, run by a third party contractor, that transfers encrypted data from the taps to a store, then decrypts. All of which brings us to the most difficult part. Who does... what with it? The source data itself is radioactive. Who knows when "pricing strategy for company X" or obvious equivalent might pop up in the stream? So you... what? Exclusively touch it via algorithm that outputs only aggregate information? How do you possibly code and maintain that pipeline, sight unseen? All while risking an incredibly profitable business. Or, you know, you just operate as an honest IaaS provider and make $10B in revenue / quarter with a 25% growth rate... [1] https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/programs/ https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/programs/ [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511 (?)

dv_dt 7y ago
I thought Amazon was already organizationally constructed in very small functional units which each are encouraged to export their units "interface" in an formal way. Is the source data traceable if it becomes anonymized product sales samples exported to apis that mix into a pile of legit data and all fed into some sales analysis engine? The unit could be the "open sales modeling unit" that just supplies one data feed among thousands.
xtreme 7y ago
Sometimes you can learn a lot from the metadata without actually looking into the actual data stream. For example, if B&H was hosted on AWS, Amazon could deduce the effectiveness of their holiday sale tactics by looking at the overall page traffic, DB writes, etc. These metrics are already recorded by Amazon for billing purposes and someone stealing a glance at them would likely leave zero evidence.

airstrike 7y ago

> breaking into a Walmart with a ski mask and assault rifle and stealing a bunch of blu rays vs recording I'm ready to watch that movie