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Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

625 points by jbegley 6y ago

severine 6y ago
Well, the ad was right after all...
lowdose 6y ago
Is this the first fruit Jeff is eating from his personal stay in Washington?
leptoniscool 6y ago
Amazon does have devices listening in every home. Is the concern here that hiring Keith Alexander would make it easier for government to get people's conversation data?
- tasogare 6y ago
  > Amazon does have devices listening in every home. No, they don’t. It’s a choice people make, and most aren’t buying Kindle, Echo or other near useless spying device like that.
  - person3 6y ago
    Not true, a simple Google search reveals [1 in 4 US adults have a smart speaker](https://marketingland.com/roughly-1-in-4-u-s-adults-now-owns-a-smart-speaker-according-to-new-report-273994 https://marketingland.com/roughly-1-in-4-u-s-adults-now-owns...). It _is_ a choice people make, and most don't care about privacy. Not that it matters though - phones are [already a vector](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/nsa-bug-iphone/ https://www.wired.com/2014/06/nsa-bug-iphone/) for the government to listen to you. I'm not sure this news really changes anything - the government already works with large US companies to spy on people, and then makes sure they're not allowed to disclose it to the public. Also, I think Kindle is a great product, and wouldn't consider it a useless spying device. Each to their own though.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Well, the majority still aren't buying. The initial assertion was "in every home", which is false in the majority of homes.
      - person3 6y ago
        That's correct. I just think saying "most aren't buying" gives the impression that it's not popular, when in fact it is a pretty widespread product. Not to mention Alexa being added into tons of other products such as smart thermostats, home theater speakers, etc. The number is only growing.
      - vageli 6y ago
        > Well, the majority still aren't buying. The initial assertion was "in every home", which is false in the majority of homes. Are we assuming that all the individuals who purchased the devices live completely alone? There are only 128 million households in the US. [0] [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-households-in-the-us https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-househo...
        mahkeiro 6y ago
        You cannot imply this, the stats is about US adult, many adult may also have the same speaker in their household.
        vageli 6y ago
        This is precisely the point I was trying to make.
  - 1MoreThing 6y ago
    This is why I keep one of each in my home. By having an Echo, Google Assistant, and an iPhone, I figure I'm able to give everyone access to my data, making it worth less. (</s>)
    - lmedinas 6y ago
      Imagine with so much data, US still has so many problems and don't have "Minority report" yet... go figure... sarcasm.
  - coronadisaster 6y ago
    Amazon tablets are pretty cheap... I bet many, including myself for the kids, chose them.
- throwawaynothx 6y ago
  "in every home." - only morons homes.
- schoen 6y ago
  I think I'd be more worried that he might discourage investments that could help Amazon better protect its foreign customers against U.S. and partners' espionage efforts. Or perhaps affect Amazon's procurement with non-transparent motives. Suppose these is a certain microarchitectural vulnerability in one vendor's hardware but not another's. If Amazon could be induced to buy the vulnerable hardware over the non-vulnerable hardware, that could help people who knew about the vulnerability spy on AWS customers. Or if there were a company to be rewarded or punished for its decision to cooperate or not to cooperate with some covert activity, the reward or punishment could be done through procurement decisions. Or perhaps affect Amazon's lobbying at home or abroad about privacy legislation or something. (It's not obvious to me whether the danger is particularly greater from a former DIRNSA than from someone with undisclosed connections to a spy agency. Maybe Alexander's recommendations would get extra scrutiny!)
vikramkr 6y ago
Whoever is running Amazon's PR is either really good and has determined this won't matter, or is really really incompetent. Based on how the PR for HQ2 in NYC went, I'm suspecting the latter.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Will it matter? The sheep (myself included) will still shop on Amazon.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    Its not like they have no competition- if people end up trusting walmart more than amazon we could see a shift happen. And again - HQ2. That was a huge miscalculation that resulted in actual problems for them - they're not able to get everything they want.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Damn near every Amazon retailer who isn't drop shipping also has storefronts on other major eCommerce platforms.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      What kind of problems? If it didn't affect their customers, then it's not really a problem is it? Sure, if they have to find somewhere else to house people that's just a logistics issue. Problems come when income goes down.
  - notduncansmith 6y ago
    eBay, OfferUp, Craigslist, and local stores have all offered great experiences since I stopped giving Amazon money. I haven’t had the feeling of “going without” - to the contrary, I’ve picked up a bunch of materials for our family recently and we are staying relatively sane even with a 2nd-grader in the house. I find myself waiting slightly longer for some items, but in many cases also able to get significant discounts by shopping used. Convenience is the same; I even still pick up ecommerce purchases from our apartment complex’s Amazon Hub locker (haha). Amazon is far from essential; they can be beaten handily on price, quality, and sustainability by hand-picked suppliers, and frankly in many cases I prefer the experience of buying things from humans. I went to a local hardware store the other day (I live in Los Angeles) and when shopping I asked about some pallets outside and was invited to take them, saving me easily $40 in lumber and making me feel more valued as a customer than Amazon “guaranteed [except not really and with no consequences for failure] 2-day shipping” has ever made me feel. For people who value the feeling of connection to their community and their supply chains, Amazon doesn’t make sense. For those who would prefer to disconnect from the environment and humans that supply them with what they need and want, Amazon is competitive but not unbeatable.
aazaa 6y ago
> For those keeping score, not only does Amazon own the The Washington Post and oversees the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise, it now has on its powerful board of directors the most visible figure from the NSA who illegally spied on Americans for the better part of a decade. This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now. Man in a position to have reams of compromising intel on the current president hired by a man in an ongoing battle with the president.
- netsharc 6y ago
  I think he got hired because AWS likes government and military contracts, and he has personal phone numbers of people who make that sort of decisions. And he doesn't have them through NSA data gathering, but because he can call these people and ask if they'd like to have a steak dinner and talk about why they should choose AWS...
  - harry8 6y ago
    Maybe. And even if he doesn't have the dirt on various people with power, including a bit lower down the food-chain. The idea that he might gives him an edge in those steak dinners. It stinks no matter how you look at it. Actual criminal getting rich post crimes while Snowden who let us all know what a crook he is, is stuck in exile. The rule of law and equality before it needs to be established. "Bezos Taps Criminal To Strengthen Bid For Government Work" Is about the kindest possible spin you can put on a headline for this story, right?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
    While I agree in principle, it hasn't really worked out well for IronNet. Maybe they stabilized now, but all those relationships didn't really produce the amount of business they thought they would.
    - 6y ago
harry8 6y ago
So have Amazon got an assurance from this "gentleman" that he has stopped committing crimes now? Is his expertise for which he is being hired to help Amazon get away with committing crimes on a massive scale which he clearly has expertise? Is it reasonable to assume that Amazon, pushing their "Amazon Microphone" are embracing criminal practise and believe criminal activity is ok?
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
How can an ostensibly consumer and business targeted company company allow someone so anti-consumer on the board? Why doesn't anyone have the balls to say "this guy shouldn't be on our board because if we have someone in cahoots with the spooks on our board people will buy less dragon dildos and .223 fuel filters and the sketchy SAAS providers will use less AWS for their crap because their customers will be worried about the spooks exfiltrating their data"
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  Who's buying dragon dildos on Amazon? Well ... I just searched and it seems they are available there. I did not know that. The real question is why is an ex-NSA agent working at a place that sells dragon dildos? In all seriousness though, if Amazon can predict what consumers want, they will make more sales. An ex-NSA should have at least some experience in analyzing behavioral data and predicting what large numbers of people do.
  - totetsu 6y ago
    Maybe we'll learn to like them watching us buy them..
  - feanaro 6y ago
    In my opinion, it's highly unlikely the ex NSA chief has any kind of worthwhile expertise in "predicting what large numbers of people do". He's a director, not some kind of universal expert or superhero.
  - imglorp 6y ago
    No, no, no this is not about selling junk to people. If you thought selling cheap junk to people was profitable, wait until you see what selling mass surveillance to the government pays. Everyone that said, it's an Orwell problem to have pervasive "assistant" devices was right. Look how many billions NSA poured into scanning and indexing everyone's mails and calls in Utah. Now you have OP and a few days ago Amazon PR objected calling Echo a "microphone": all these dumbasses paid for these things and now it's really here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418854 We already know Eric Schmidt's Google is tight with the government, and look, they make home assistants also. https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/ https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close... https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
Keith Alexander was great. He was my goto example of how every PotUS puts scumbags (exclusively) in charge of IC and LEO agencies. Every president betrays us here. Every damn one.
greenyoda 6y ago
Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426389
- dang 6y ago
  Since most of that discussion is complaining about Zerohedge, maybe we'll merge the rest of the comments hither.
mangix 6y ago
Is this the same guy that lied to the crowd at defcon?
- busterarm 6y ago
  And to Congress.
kumarvvr 6y ago
There will come a time when, as a society, we will have to ditch Amazon, and come up with alternatives to regular online retail. I just hope technology and IT evolves so that online retail is decentralized.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I've moved most of my online shopping over to Walmart so I can support the little guy
  - ta8908695 6y ago
    For a brief moment a thought this was a joke, but at only ~$392 Billion market cap Walmart really is the little guy compared to amazon (1.64 Trillion)
sailfast 6y ago
Counterpoint to a number of posts already on here regarding the bad for privacy angle. Maybe not a terrible idea to have a board member with significant experience understanding the threat nation states and other larger private hacking concerns pose to one of the United States’ largest cloud providers? I understand this is all too incestuous, but I also can’t really say it’s a bad move.
- paganel 6y ago
  Keith Alexander is a well-known perjurer [1], he should be behind bars, not earning millions sitting on the board of directors of companies worth trillions. There's nothing "not bad" about this move, at least for our society seen as a whole. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-reform-fire-officials-lied https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-re...
  - harry8 6y ago
    These are merely the crimes we know about for a fact. Having been caught out like this in a position of power the right thing to do is investigate him fully. It's scarcely credible that there's are the only crimes he committed in that position of power.
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    Why on earth would it be a good idea to reveal highly classified information to the entire planet during a televised hearing?
    - unionpivo 6y ago
      > reveal highly classified information to the entire planet during a televised hearing? I mean he could just said that he cant't answer that question because its't highly classified and this hearing is televised to entire planet, instead of lying
      - deathgrips 6y ago
peterkelly 6y ago
This is a big "fuck you, we can do whatever we want" message to everyone using AWS who cares about customer privacy.
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  Cloud computing is not really where it's at when you care about privacy.
newscracker 6y ago
Will we see a “Drop Amazon” site (and social media campaign) on the lines of “Drop Dropbox” [1] now? Or is Amazon too big and too entrenched that it’s almost a lost cause? [2] [1]: https://www.drop-dropbox.com/ https://www.drop-dropbox.com/ [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-tech-giants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-t...
- ffpip 6y ago
  Dropbox's founder said he would add end to end encryption as an option for the privacy geeks. Sadly, more than 13 years later, it still has not been implemented. Looks like it never will be. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889
  - akerro 6y ago
    I think you can use duplicati for it https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/
    - ffpip 6y ago
      Yes. I can also use Cryptomator, Boxcrpytor , 7zip but that's not the point. They should atleast provide an option
  - myartsev 6y ago
    Impatiently waiting for ProtonDrive to come out!
- dandare 6y ago
  I remember this campaign, it influenced me to not buy a paid service from Dropbox. (I know I am just a drop in the sea.)
noja 6y ago
Don't mention that microphone.
afrojack123 6y ago
Does this mean cloud companies are telecom companies?
adamsiem 6y ago
Not installing any Alexa’s in my new house. They suck anyway. Literally no practical use cases after 3 years other than being surveiled upon. Oh, and “what’s the weather on the other side of this sheet of glass I’m standing looking through? “ Lol
- cheeze 6y ago
  Lots of people use them to turn on lights or listen to music. Maybe not your workflow but IMO you sound a little silly strawmanning like that. I don't own Alexas either, but it's obvious why 'normal folk' would like the convenience.
  - lmedinas 6y ago
    People can also use the Assistant on their phones like Siri or Google Assistant which does basically the same.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    These use cases sound a bit like using a chainsaw to trim your beard.
- fluffything 6y ago
  > Oh, and “what’s the weather on the other side of this sheet of glass I’m standing looking through? “ Lol Lol that's me. I also use it to set timers while cooking, and play music (I think the sound of Alexa is quite good). But that's basically it. A wireless speaker that can set timers / arams, and maybe control music, would allow me to replace Alexa. Is there something like this ?
- kilroy123 6y ago
  I'll never understand why people are ok installing recording devices in their home from a giant ad company or retail conglomerate. Granted I do walk around with a smartphone.
- schoen 6y ago
  I don't think cloud service linked smart speakers are a wise idea, but I visited a family (before COVID, when you could still visit a family) that was making tremendous use of it: playing music, setting alarms, looking up recipes, ordering stuff from Amazon, and I think looking up reference material and doing arithmetic. Three generations of family members had all clearly made it a nearly unconscious habit. So I don't think this technology can be dismissed as useless to everyone.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gigatexal 6y ago
Here in Germany I used to work for a company that swore off Amazon and other US cloud vendors because of things like this: the relationships between them and the government are too tight. They didn’t want German user data being compromised. It could have been FUD to do things on premises or what not but it seemed to make sense at the time and now with this...
- 88840-8855 6y ago
  Are you sure you didnt spell "China cloud" and "Huawei" wrong? /s Just because we (Germans, Europeans) are culturally closer to Americans and share certain values does not mean that we should have a double standard on our external affairs. We are kicking out Huawei. When will we kick out Amazon, Google, Apple and Cisco?
  - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    There needs to be EU based options before any of them could be replaced.
    - PeterStuer 6y ago
      As always, if there ever threatened to emerge one it will be bought by a US company with free petrodollar.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Though I completely agree that the double standard is ridiculous, the reasoning behind it likely involves the complicated arrangement between Germany and the US military. China doesn't still have 30,000 troops "occupying" Germany.
    - puszczyk 6y ago
      How are they occupying Germany? When was the last time they’ve intervened or even threatened to intervene? Don’t blow it out of proportion.
mocar 6y ago
There's no former in NSA
therealdraco 6y ago
Get real the founder of ycombinator is a fucking loser small b dick power bottom. I know, I’m English, with a twist. How’s my wordsmith sheen of brilliance glory and bream? You plebs on hacker news, you ain’t gotta shot Viva Nicaragua Libre! Abajo con el imperio Yankee. All English men are gay, I’m a scouser, I know for a damn fact. How many British billionaires on Forbes? Let it go, you had your chance. Into a canal to beat all canals, bigger than Hughes, Twain, and Van Derbilt combined
lanevorockz 6y ago
WEIRD !
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
raxxorrax 6y ago
Alexander is responsible for mass surveillance and will probably extend that to Amazons workers. Not really a boon for Amazons image.
martinlaz 6y ago
Snowden: It turns out "Hey Alexa" is short for "Hey Keith Alexander." Yes, the Keith Alexander personally responsible for the unlawful mass surveillance programs that caused a global scandal. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) host ~6% of all websites. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1303829551999602688 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1303829551999602688
eecc 6y ago
After all the clamor about Huawei, arguing about effectively surrendering national telecom infrastructures to the PRC Army, here we are. Surrendering essential logistical infrastructure, essential internet infrastructure and the Kindle dataset (useful for political profiling) to the US Intelligence. So, are there sanctions on the table for the US? /s
- tempodox 6y ago
  > Surrendering essential logistical infrastructure, ... When all that happened, you can bet it wasn't as publicly visible as Alexander joining their board.
shomyo 6y ago
"Imagine my shock"
richardARPANET 6y ago
Nice cushy free do-nothing job, I wonder what he did to deserve that :)
nabla9 6y ago
Alexander has shown the ability to make false statements using carefully hedged words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_B._Alexander#Statements_to_the_public_regarding_NSA_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_B._Alexander#Statements_...
HugoDaniel 6y ago
Will they start to build proper consumer profiles now and stop recommending the same thing I've just bought over and over ?
baxtr 6y ago
Oh damn. This shows again, that you can do crazy shady things and still get super high paying jobs later...
- xyst 6y ago
  Reminds me of Operation Paperclip in the United States. After WWII ended and in amidst a “space race” with Russia, German scientists and other high ranking officials were recruited and placed into well paid positions within the government - most notably NASA. Records of any war crimes they may have committed during WWII were wiped away/ignored. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
louwrentius 6y ago
There is this joke in the series 'Person of Interest' where it's stated that Social Media was specifically invented for the purpose of data harvesting by the 'NSA'. I think it's the same for cloud computing.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
This is normal for most companies, they love to add former Generals, politicians and other connected people to their board. It helps with foreign countries, government contracts, investigations in USA and all.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
All those countries that migrated their national data into AWS with assurances data was not within arms length of the US Spying Apparatus are slowly waking up to the fact that their data is in fact within arms length of the US Spying Apparatus.
temptemptemp111 6y ago
Funny how fewer people can shout "conspiracy theorist" now that they're all muzzled.
ihadtosayit 6y ago
Just wait till you find out who was behind Pokemon go,... You know that camera enabled app that every snotty kid used 6 hours each day a few years back...
wrkronmiller 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics) Amazon likes government contracts. Amazon probably wants this guy on-board to help them get more contracts.
- SamuelAdams 6y ago
  Well yeah. Government contracts have insane margins for virtually all private sector companies that can get their hands on them. I used to work at a manufacturing company that made car parts and military equipment. The military contracts had margins that were easily 2-3 times what the car parts made. And they required the same amount of labor, work, and time.
k2enemy 6y ago
I was already uncomfortable about using an Eero router and wifi and this just pushes it over the edge.
taftster 6y ago
I understand the general sentiment here, and don't disagree. But I think ultimately this is about dollars. There is a LOT of money in the government defense sector. AWS is in an excellent position to capture a lot of that money, but their primary competitor in this space, Microsoft, has been preventing a complete domination and monopoly by Amazon. With Alexander on the board, this will ultimately lead to different/better insights for how Amazon positions itself in this government sector. Alexander can bring a ton of value, just with his contacts and networking alone, let alone the insight into how security and data operations work in the intelligence community. Ultimately, this isn't a step towards more government surveillance. The government can't coerce Amazon any more with Alexander on the board or not; the rules are still the same. This is fundamentally about Amazon's desire to get in on the lucrative big dollar contracts that would otherwise end up going to traditional defense contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop.
- doukdouk 6y ago
  > Ultimately, this isn't a step towards more government surveillance. Architect of (illegal) government surveillance gets influential role in a major Internet company. I do not expect him to strongly criticize Amazon's privacy violations or questionable data collection. I fully expect him to be supportive of Amazon initiatives that will make for an easier government surveillance (even if only for improving their chances at getting government contracts). Of course the US government cannot coerce Amazon any more with Alexander on board. Yet having powerful, government surveillance supporting, well versed in building systems of government surveillance, individuals on the board will surely have a very different impact than having a privacy rights activists on the board.
  - ryanisnan 6y ago
    Totally this. It's highly unlikely Alexander will encourage overtly illegal practices within Amazon, but he will have full knowledge of the "gray" areas ripe for exploitation, and will utilize them to the best of his abilities.
- qppo 6y ago
  Amazon won't be pushed into supporting more government surveillance, they will be paid to do it. That's one purpose of these lucrative contracts that traditional defense contractors can't fulfill.
leahey 6y ago
This kind of revolving door stuff has been going on for as long as there has been government and private industry. It's just as scary as ever, but no more. The good news/bad news reality is Alexander is looking for a big payday after years in government service -- not assist the government is using Amazon for its own surveillance purposes, or assist Amazon in becoming better at surveillance.
poxwole 6y ago
Wow. I mean, at this point even Conspiracy Theorists are like, "Bro!"
squibbles 6y ago
It is about money. High-level government employees used to retire and work for contractors that sold directly to the organizations the government retirees came from. That is called a revolving door and occurred with both military and civilian employees. The practice of the revolving door is recognized widely as unethical. To avoid concerns about ethics, many high-level government employees retire and join either investment groups or boards of directors. This puts them once removed from the money chain, but still allows them to line their pockets by leveraging the power they accrued while working for the government.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Less conspiratorial thought: Amazon does business to secure pentagon/etc. information. It is useful to have someone on the board who thinks about nation-state level cyber threats in this context.

625 points by jbegley 6y ago

severine 6y ago

Well, the ad was right after all...

lowdose 6y ago

Is this the first fruit Jeff is eating from his personal stay in Washington?

leptoniscool 6y ago

Amazon does have devices listening in every home. Is the concern here that hiring Keith Alexander would make it easier for government to get people's conversation data?

tasogare 6y ago
> Amazon does have devices listening in every home. No, they don’t. It’s a choice people make, and most aren’t buying Kindle, Echo or other near useless spying device like that.
- person3 6y ago
  Not true, a simple Google search reveals [1 in 4 US adults have a smart speaker](https://marketingland.com/roughly-1-in-4-u-s-adults-now-owns-a-smart-speaker-according-to-new-report-273994 https://marketingland.com/roughly-1-in-4-u-s-adults-now-owns...). It _is_ a choice people make, and most don't care about privacy. Not that it matters though - phones are [already a vector](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/nsa-bug-iphone/ https://www.wired.com/2014/06/nsa-bug-iphone/) for the government to listen to you. I'm not sure this news really changes anything - the government already works with large US companies to spy on people, and then makes sure they're not allowed to disclose it to the public. Also, I think Kindle is a great product, and wouldn't consider it a useless spying device. Each to their own though.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Well, the majority still aren't buying. The initial assertion was "in every home", which is false in the majority of homes.
    - person3 6y ago
      That's correct. I just think saying "most aren't buying" gives the impression that it's not popular, when in fact it is a pretty widespread product. Not to mention Alexa being added into tons of other products such as smart thermostats, home theater speakers, etc. The number is only growing.
    - vageli 6y ago
      > Well, the majority still aren't buying. The initial assertion was "in every home", which is false in the majority of homes. Are we assuming that all the individuals who purchased the devices live completely alone? There are only 128 million households in the US. [0] [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-households-in-the-us https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-househo...
      - mahkeiro 6y ago
        You cannot imply this, the stats is about US adult, many adult may also have the same speaker in their household.
        vageli 6y ago
        This is precisely the point I was trying to make.
- 1MoreThing 6y ago
  This is why I keep one of each in my home. By having an Echo, Google Assistant, and an iPhone, I figure I'm able to give everyone access to my data, making it worth less. (</s>)
  - lmedinas 6y ago
    Imagine with so much data, US still has so many problems and don't have "Minority report" yet... go figure... sarcasm.
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  Amazon tablets are pretty cheap... I bet many, including myself for the kids, chose them.
throwawaynothx 6y ago
"in every home." - only morons homes.
schoen 6y ago
I think I'd be more worried that he might discourage investments that could help Amazon better protect its foreign customers against U.S. and partners' espionage efforts. Or perhaps affect Amazon's procurement with non-transparent motives. Suppose these is a certain microarchitectural vulnerability in one vendor's hardware but not another's. If Amazon could be induced to buy the vulnerable hardware over the non-vulnerable hardware, that could help people who knew about the vulnerability spy on AWS customers. Or if there were a company to be rewarded or punished for its decision to cooperate or not to cooperate with some covert activity, the reward or punishment could be done through procurement decisions. Or perhaps affect Amazon's lobbying at home or abroad about privacy legislation or something. (It's not obvious to me whether the danger is particularly greater from a former DIRNSA than from someone with undisclosed connections to a spy agency. Maybe Alexander's recommendations would get extra scrutiny!)

vikramkr 6y ago

Whoever is running Amazon's PR is either really good and has determined this won't matter, or is really really incompetent. Based on how the PR for HQ2 in NYC went, I'm suspecting the latter.

netsharc 6y ago
Will it matter? The sheep (myself included) will still shop on Amazon.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Its not like they have no competition- if people end up trusting walmart more than amazon we could see a shift happen. And again - HQ2. That was a huge miscalculation that resulted in actual problems for them - they're not able to get everything they want.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Damn near every Amazon retailer who isn't drop shipping also has storefronts on other major eCommerce platforms.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    What kind of problems? If it didn't affect their customers, then it's not really a problem is it? Sure, if they have to find somewhere else to house people that's just a logistics issue. Problems come when income goes down.
- notduncansmith 6y ago
  eBay, OfferUp, Craigslist, and local stores have all offered great experiences since I stopped giving Amazon money. I haven’t had the feeling of “going without” - to the contrary, I’ve picked up a bunch of materials for our family recently and we are staying relatively sane even with a 2nd-grader in the house. I find myself waiting slightly longer for some items, but in many cases also able to get significant discounts by shopping used. Convenience is the same; I even still pick up ecommerce purchases from our apartment complex’s Amazon Hub locker (haha). Amazon is far from essential; they can be beaten handily on price, quality, and sustainability by hand-picked suppliers, and frankly in many cases I prefer the experience of buying things from humans. I went to a local hardware store the other day (I live in Los Angeles) and when shopping I asked about some pallets outside and was invited to take them, saving me easily $40 in lumber and making me feel more valued as a customer than Amazon “guaranteed [except not really and with no consequences for failure] 2-day shipping” has ever made me feel. For people who value the feeling of connection to their community and their supply chains, Amazon doesn’t make sense. For those who would prefer to disconnect from the environment and humans that supply them with what they need and want, Amazon is competitive but not unbeatable.

aazaa 6y ago

> For those keeping score, not only does Amazon own the The Washington Post and oversees the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise, it now has on its powerful board of directors the most visible figure from the NSA who illegally spied on Americans for the better part of a decade. This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now. Man in a position to have reams of compromising intel on the current president hired by a man in an ongoing battle with the president.

netsharc 6y ago
I think he got hired because AWS likes government and military contracts, and he has personal phone numbers of people who make that sort of decisions. And he doesn't have them through NSA data gathering, but because he can call these people and ask if they'd like to have a steak dinner and talk about why they should choose AWS...
- harry8 6y ago
  Maybe. And even if he doesn't have the dirt on various people with power, including a bit lower down the food-chain. The idea that he might gives him an edge in those steak dinners. It stinks no matter how you look at it. Actual criminal getting rich post crimes while Snowden who let us all know what a crook he is, is stuck in exile. The rule of law and equality before it needs to be established. "Bezos Taps Criminal To Strengthen Bid For Government Work" Is about the kindest possible spin you can put on a headline for this story, right?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ganoushoreilly 6y ago
  While I agree in principle, it hasn't really worked out well for IronNet. Maybe they stabilized now, but all those relationships didn't really produce the amount of business they thought they would.
  - 6y ago

harry8 6y ago

So have Amazon got an assurance from this "gentleman" that he has stopped committing crimes now? Is his expertise for which he is being hired to help Amazon get away with committing crimes on a massive scale which he clearly has expertise? Is it reasonable to assume that Amazon, pushing their "Amazon Microphone" are embracing criminal practise and believe criminal activity is ok?

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

How can an ostensibly consumer and business targeted company company allow someone so anti-consumer on the board? Why doesn't anyone have the balls to say "this guy shouldn't be on our board because if we have someone in cahoots with the spooks on our board people will buy less dragon dildos and .223 fuel filters and the sketchy SAAS providers will use less AWS for their crap because their customers will be worried about the spooks exfiltrating their data"

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
Who's buying dragon dildos on Amazon? Well ... I just searched and it seems they are available there. I did not know that. The real question is why is an ex-NSA agent working at a place that sells dragon dildos? In all seriousness though, if Amazon can predict what consumers want, they will make more sales. An ex-NSA should have at least some experience in analyzing behavioral data and predicting what large numbers of people do.
- totetsu 6y ago
  Maybe we'll learn to like them watching us buy them..
- feanaro 6y ago
  In my opinion, it's highly unlikely the ex NSA chief has any kind of worthwhile expertise in "predicting what large numbers of people do". He's a director, not some kind of universal expert or superhero.
- imglorp 6y ago
  No, no, no this is not about selling junk to people. If you thought selling cheap junk to people was profitable, wait until you see what selling mass surveillance to the government pays. Everyone that said, it's an Orwell problem to have pervasive "assistant" devices was right. Look how many billions NSA poured into scanning and indexing everyone's mails and calls in Utah. Now you have OP and a few days ago Amazon PR objected calling Echo a "microphone": all these dumbasses paid for these things and now it's really here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418854 We already know Eric Schmidt's Google is tight with the government, and look, they make home assistants also. https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/ https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close... https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

Keith Alexander was great. He was my goto example of how every PotUS puts scumbags (exclusively) in charge of IC and LEO agencies. Every president betrays us here. Every damn one.

greenyoda 6y ago

Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426389

dang 6y ago
Since most of that discussion is complaining about Zerohedge, maybe we'll merge the rest of the comments hither.

mangix 6y ago

Is this the same guy that lied to the crowd at defcon?

busterarm 6y ago
And to Congress.

kumarvvr 6y ago

There will come a time when, as a society, we will have to ditch Amazon, and come up with alternatives to regular online retail. I just hope technology and IT evolves so that online retail is decentralized.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
I've moved most of my online shopping over to Walmart so I can support the little guy
- ta8908695 6y ago
  For a brief moment a thought this was a joke, but at only ~$392 Billion market cap Walmart really is the little guy compared to amazon (1.64 Trillion)

sailfast 6y ago

Counterpoint to a number of posts already on here regarding the bad for privacy angle. Maybe not a terrible idea to have a board member with significant experience understanding the threat nation states and other larger private hacking concerns pose to one of the United States’ largest cloud providers? I understand this is all too incestuous, but I also can’t really say it’s a bad move.

paganel 6y ago
Keith Alexander is a well-known perjurer [1], he should be behind bars, not earning millions sitting on the board of directors of companies worth trillions. There's nothing "not bad" about this move, at least for our society seen as a whole. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-reform-fire-officials-lied https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-re...
- harry8 6y ago
  These are merely the crimes we know about for a fact. Having been caught out like this in a position of power the right thing to do is investigate him fully. It's scarcely credible that there's are the only crimes he committed in that position of power.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  Why on earth would it be a good idea to reveal highly classified information to the entire planet during a televised hearing?
  - unionpivo 6y ago
    > reveal highly classified information to the entire planet during a televised hearing? I mean he could just said that he cant't answer that question because its't highly classified and this hearing is televised to entire planet, instead of lying
    - deathgrips 6y ago

peterkelly 6y ago

This is a big "fuck you, we can do whatever we want" message to everyone using AWS who cares about customer privacy.

coronadisaster 6y ago
Cloud computing is not really where it's at when you care about privacy.

newscracker 6y ago

Will we see a “Drop Amazon” site (and social media campaign) on the lines of “Drop Dropbox” [1] now? Or is Amazon too big and too entrenched that it’s almost a lost cause? [2] [1]: https://www.drop-dropbox.com/ https://www.drop-dropbox.com/ [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-tech-giants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-t...

ffpip 6y ago
Dropbox's founder said he would add end to end encryption as an option for the privacy geeks. Sadly, more than 13 years later, it still has not been implemented. Looks like it never will be. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889
- akerro 6y ago
  I think you can use duplicati for it https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/
  - ffpip 6y ago
    Yes. I can also use Cryptomator, Boxcrpytor , 7zip but that's not the point. They should atleast provide an option
- myartsev 6y ago
  Impatiently waiting for ProtonDrive to come out!
dandare 6y ago
I remember this campaign, it influenced me to not buy a paid service from Dropbox. (I know I am just a drop in the sea.)

noja 6y ago

Don't mention that microphone.

afrojack123 6y ago

Does this mean cloud companies are telecom companies?

adamsiem 6y ago

Not installing any Alexa’s in my new house. They suck anyway. Literally no practical use cases after 3 years other than being surveiled upon. Oh, and “what’s the weather on the other side of this sheet of glass I’m standing looking through? “ Lol

cheeze 6y ago
Lots of people use them to turn on lights or listen to music. Maybe not your workflow but IMO you sound a little silly strawmanning like that. I don't own Alexas either, but it's obvious why 'normal folk' would like the convenience.
- lmedinas 6y ago
  People can also use the Assistant on their phones like Siri or Google Assistant which does basically the same.
- feanaro 6y ago
  These use cases sound a bit like using a chainsaw to trim your beard.
fluffything 6y ago
> Oh, and “what’s the weather on the other side of this sheet of glass I’m standing looking through? “ Lol Lol that's me. I also use it to set timers while cooking, and play music (I think the sound of Alexa is quite good). But that's basically it. A wireless speaker that can set timers / arams, and maybe control music, would allow me to replace Alexa. Is there something like this ?
kilroy123 6y ago
I'll never understand why people are ok installing recording devices in their home from a giant ad company or retail conglomerate. Granted I do walk around with a smartphone.
schoen 6y ago
I don't think cloud service linked smart speakers are a wise idea, but I visited a family (before COVID, when you could still visit a family) that was making tremendous use of it: playing music, setting alarms, looking up recipes, ordering stuff from Amazon, and I think looking up reference material and doing arithmetic. Three generations of family members had all clearly made it a nearly unconscious habit. So I don't think this technology can be dismissed as useless to everyone.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gigatexal 6y ago

Here in Germany I used to work for a company that swore off Amazon and other US cloud vendors because of things like this: the relationships between them and the government are too tight. They didn’t want German user data being compromised. It could have been FUD to do things on premises or what not but it seemed to make sense at the time and now with this...

88840-8855 6y ago
Are you sure you didnt spell "China cloud" and "Huawei" wrong? /s Just because we (Germans, Europeans) are culturally closer to Americans and share certain values does not mean that we should have a double standard on our external affairs. We are kicking out Huawei. When will we kick out Amazon, Google, Apple and Cisco?
- tick_tock_tick 6y ago
  There needs to be EU based options before any of them could be replaced.
  - PeterStuer 6y ago
    As always, if there ever threatened to emerge one it will be bought by a US company with free petrodollar.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Though I completely agree that the double standard is ridiculous, the reasoning behind it likely involves the complicated arrangement between Germany and the US military. China doesn't still have 30,000 troops "occupying" Germany.
  - puszczyk 6y ago
    How are they occupying Germany? When was the last time they’ve intervened or even threatened to intervene? Don’t blow it out of proportion.

mocar 6y ago

There's no former in NSA

therealdraco 6y ago

Get real the founder of ycombinator is a fucking loser small b dick power bottom. I know, I’m English, with a twist. How’s my wordsmith sheen of brilliance glory and bream? You plebs on hacker news, you ain’t gotta shot Viva Nicaragua Libre! Abajo con el imperio Yankee. All English men are gay, I’m a scouser, I know for a damn fact. How many British billionaires on Forbes? Let it go, you had your chance. Into a canal to beat all canals, bigger than Hughes, Twain, and Van Derbilt combined

lanevorockz 6y ago

WEIRD !

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

raxxorrax 6y ago

Alexander is responsible for mass surveillance and will probably extend that to Amazons workers. Not really a boon for Amazons image.

martinlaz 6y ago

Snowden: It turns out "Hey Alexa" is short for "Hey Keith Alexander." Yes, the Keith Alexander personally responsible for the unlawful mass surveillance programs that caused a global scandal. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) host ~6% of all websites. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1303829551999602688 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1303829551999602688

eecc 6y ago

After all the clamor about Huawei, arguing about effectively surrendering national telecom infrastructures to the PRC Army, here we are. Surrendering essential logistical infrastructure, essential internet infrastructure and the Kindle dataset (useful for political profiling) to the US Intelligence. So, are there sanctions on the table for the US? /s

tempodox 6y ago
> Surrendering essential logistical infrastructure, ... When all that happened, you can bet it wasn't as publicly visible as Alexander joining their board.

shomyo 6y ago

"Imagine my shock"

richardARPANET 6y ago

Nice cushy free do-nothing job, I wonder what he did to deserve that :)

nabla9 6y ago

Alexander has shown the ability to make false statements using carefully hedged words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_B._Alexander#Statements_to_the_public_regarding_NSA_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_B._Alexander#Statements_...

HugoDaniel 6y ago

Will they start to build proper consumer profiles now and stop recommending the same thing I've just bought over and over ?

baxtr 6y ago

Oh damn. This shows again, that you can do crazy shady things and still get super high paying jobs later...

xyst 6y ago
Reminds me of Operation Paperclip in the United States. After WWII ended and in amidst a “space race” with Russia, German scientists and other high ranking officials were recruited and placed into well paid positions within the government - most notably NASA. Records of any war crimes they may have committed during WWII were wiped away/ignored. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

louwrentius 6y ago

There is this joke in the series 'Person of Interest' where it's stated that Social Media was specifically invented for the purpose of data harvesting by the 'NSA'. I think it's the same for cloud computing.

onetimemanytime 6y ago

This is normal for most companies, they love to add former Generals, politicians and other connected people to their board. It helps with foreign countries, government contracts, investigations in USA and all.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

All those countries that migrated their national data into AWS with assurances data was not within arms length of the US Spying Apparatus are slowly waking up to the fact that their data is in fact within arms length of the US Spying Apparatus.

temptemptemp111 6y ago

Funny how fewer people can shout "conspiracy theorist" now that they're all muzzled.

ihadtosayit 6y ago

Just wait till you find out who was behind Pokemon go,... You know that camera enabled app that every snotty kid used 6 hours each day a few years back...

wrkronmiller 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics) Amazon likes government contracts. Amazon probably wants this guy on-board to help them get more contracts.

SamuelAdams 6y ago
Well yeah. Government contracts have insane margins for virtually all private sector companies that can get their hands on them. I used to work at a manufacturing company that made car parts and military equipment. The military contracts had margins that were easily 2-3 times what the car parts made. And they required the same amount of labor, work, and time.

k2enemy 6y ago

I was already uncomfortable about using an Eero router and wifi and this just pushes it over the edge.

taftster 6y ago

I understand the general sentiment here, and don't disagree. But I think ultimately this is about dollars. There is a LOT of money in the government defense sector. AWS is in an excellent position to capture a lot of that money, but their primary competitor in this space, Microsoft, has been preventing a complete domination and monopoly by Amazon. With Alexander on the board, this will ultimately lead to different/better insights for how Amazon positions itself in this government sector. Alexander can bring a ton of value, just with his contacts and networking alone, let alone the insight into how security and data operations work in the intelligence community. Ultimately, this isn't a step towards more government surveillance. The government can't coerce Amazon any more with Alexander on the board or not; the rules are still the same. This is fundamentally about Amazon's desire to get in on the lucrative big dollar contracts that would otherwise end up going to traditional defense contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop.

doukdouk 6y ago
> Ultimately, this isn't a step towards more government surveillance. Architect of (illegal) government surveillance gets influential role in a major Internet company. I do not expect him to strongly criticize Amazon's privacy violations or questionable data collection. I fully expect him to be supportive of Amazon initiatives that will make for an easier government surveillance (even if only for improving their chances at getting government contracts). Of course the US government cannot coerce Amazon any more with Alexander on board. Yet having powerful, government surveillance supporting, well versed in building systems of government surveillance, individuals on the board will surely have a very different impact than having a privacy rights activists on the board.
- ryanisnan 6y ago
  Totally this. It's highly unlikely Alexander will encourage overtly illegal practices within Amazon, but he will have full knowledge of the "gray" areas ripe for exploitation, and will utilize them to the best of his abilities.
qppo 6y ago
Amazon won't be pushed into supporting more government surveillance, they will be paid to do it. That's one purpose of these lucrative contracts that traditional defense contractors can't fulfill.

leahey 6y ago

This kind of revolving door stuff has been going on for as long as there has been government and private industry. It's just as scary as ever, but no more. The good news/bad news reality is Alexander is looking for a big payday after years in government service -- not assist the government is using Amazon for its own surveillance purposes, or assist Amazon in becoming better at surveillance.

poxwole 6y ago

Wow. I mean, at this point even Conspiracy Theorists are like, "Bro!"

squibbles 6y ago

It is about money. High-level government employees used to retire and work for contractors that sold directly to the organizations the government retirees came from. That is called a revolving door and occurred with both military and civilian employees. The practice of the revolving door is recognized widely as unethical. To avoid concerns about ethics, many high-level government employees retire and join either investment groups or boards of directors. This puts them once removed from the money chain, but still allows them to line their pockets by leveraging the power they accrued while working for the government.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Less conspiratorial thought: Amazon does business to secure pentagon/etc. information. It is useful to have someone on the board who thinks about nation-state level cyber threats in this context.