5 ms·

Why Edward Snowden thinks Amazon is “morally irresponsible.”

71 points by spking 12y ago

rgbrgb 12y ago
Yes, they should do everything over HTTPS. I assure you they're moving in that direction, but they have thousands of pages and many different rendering technologies to deal with (after 20 years, some cruft and fragmentation is par for the course). However, this article insinuates that HTTPS is enough to hide from the government. HTTPS only protects data in transit. If the big internet companies are complicit in leaking user data to the government (as Snowden showed) then HTTPS isn't going to be useful in that regard.
- mkonecny 12y ago
  Renderers and other "old technologies" has nothing to do with SSL. Typically you insert a reverse proxy in between the client and server to handle SSL encryption on the fly - it is completely transparent to the server stack.
  - pdkl95 12y ago
    It could, in theory, be a problem if their HTML rendering software is generating a lot of absolute URLs that link back to the same host.
    - judk 12y ago
      A college intern could debug that problem. It's a non-issue.
      - rgbrgb 12y ago
        Not going to go into details but I'd guess you're underestimating the size of the codebase (and thus the complexity of certain site-wide changes) by at least two orders of magnitude. Imagine doing (and testing) a "simple change" for every project on Github for instance. This is the dark side of giving each of your dev teams freedom to pick their tools.
- pdkl95 12y ago
  HTTPS may be enough to hide from the trivial bulk collections, such as the infamous Folsom St. beam-splitter. If they are targeting and are willing to invest in the time/effort to MitM your HTTPS connections, they will probably find a way anyway (QUANTUM has a lot of options, etc). Now, as you say, the "cooperating agreement" trick where they just strong-arm industry with a national security letter and personal threats against the CEO to force compliance is a much bigger problem, which really needs to be addressed. ASAP. /of course, then there are the companies that are collaborators... sigh
repsilat 12y ago
> Amazon, whose founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post This warms my heart -- not just that the article doesn't take a political position, but that it was probably printed to disclaim one. That kind of defensive demonstration of journalistic integrity reminds me that there are idealistic people working inside these big-business papers. It's small news, and maybe other people are reporting on it too, but I like that I read it at the Washinton Post first.
- jonathanyc 12y ago
  This is common practice. I've seen it often in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, for example.
- javajosh 12y ago
  It remains to be seen whether Bezos will take action against WaPo for printing this piece, as it really could affect Amazon's bottom-line, along with the Integrity Staffing case, during the holiday shopping season.
  - Aloha 12y ago
    That would be incredibly foolish if he did.
    - javajosh 12y ago
      It would be morally wrong if he did, but foolish, I'm not so sure. It would depend on how he did it. First, it's not clear that such an act would ever become public knowledge. Second, even if it did, it's not clear that such an act would even generate significant repercussions given the current state of the public's general "injustice fatigue" and the overall minimal impact such an act would have. Basically, Bezos has a huge amount of latitude about if and how he reacts to this, especially if he's smart about it (and he is very smart). The larger lesson is that we must open our eyes to the fact that our society gives powerful individuals an incredible degree of latitude. We cannot let our idealism blind us to the fact that our business and political leaders wield tremendous unchecked power, especially in relatively small matters, and especially if that power is wielded with the intelligent foresight to avoid accountability.
researcher88 12y ago
The comments seem disportionately negative towards Snowden. I have rarely encountered anyone in real life that knew much about Snowden let alone had a strong conviction about him one way or the other. Maybe there's so many negative comments because people who are against something or someone are more likely to post. But it also seems like a good candidate article for certain interests to subtley influence public opinion.
- deleted 12y ago
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- deleted 12y ago
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- IvyMike 12y ago
  The comments aren't necessarily a random sample--a popular political site, blog, or twitter personality could have linked to the site, with an implied "Give 'em a piece of your mind".
cpncrunch 12y ago
Calling it "morally irresponsible" is a bit harsh. If you're living in a country where the government monitors its population to oppress dissidents, that's a bug in your government that you should fix. If people in those countries really gave a crap about democracy and freedom, they could easily do something about it (look at Hong Kong right now for some ideas, or the Velvet Revolution). The fact that China, Russia, Zimbabwe (and many other countries) are oppressing their own citizens is only happening because those citizens don't really give a crap about freedom - perhaps because they've never had it. And before anyone whines about the NSA and downvotes me, I think you really need to compare the freedom you have in the USA to some of those other countries I mentioned.
- cpncrunch 12y ago
  Oh, and I also find it a little ironic that Snowden's living in a country where you really need to protect yourself from the government. I'd prefer to live in a safe and free country and not have any encryption, rather than live in the likes of Russia and have to have everything encrypted.
  - mkramlich 12y ago
    technically speaking he's living there (Russia?) to protect himself from "our" government (USA), the one with the NSA and CIA, the latter of which our own Senate has now showed was torturing human beings not convicted of any crime.
    - cpncrunch 12y ago
      As I pointed out in my comment quite clearly, I'm perfectly aware of that, but the Russian government is a lot worse than the US government - which I also pointed out quite clearly. Strange reason to downvote me twice (whoever did it) because they didn't understand my comment, but I've come to expect that from HN so nothing surprises me.
      - 01Michael10 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
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71 points by spking 12y ago

Yes, they should do everything over HTTPS. I assure you they're moving in that direction, but they have thousands of pages and many different rendering technologies to deal with (after 20 years, some cruft and fragmentation is par for the course). However, this article insinuates that HTTPS is enough to hide from the government. HTTPS only protects data in transit. If the big internet companies are complicit in leaking user data to the government (as Snowden showed) then HTTPS isn't going to be useful in that regard.

mkonecny 12y ago
Renderers and other "old technologies" has nothing to do with SSL. Typically you insert a reverse proxy in between the client and server to handle SSL encryption on the fly - it is completely transparent to the server stack.
- pdkl95 12y ago
  It could, in theory, be a problem if their HTML rendering software is generating a lot of absolute URLs that link back to the same host.
  - judk 12y ago
    A college intern could debug that problem. It's a non-issue.
    - rgbrgb 12y ago
      Not going to go into details but I'd guess you're underestimating the size of the codebase (and thus the complexity of certain site-wide changes) by at least two orders of magnitude. Imagine doing (and testing) a "simple change" for every project on Github for instance. This is the dark side of giving each of your dev teams freedom to pick their tools.
pdkl95 12y ago
HTTPS may be enough to hide from the trivial bulk collections, such as the infamous Folsom St. beam-splitter. If they are targeting and are willing to invest in the time/effort to MitM your HTTPS connections, they will probably find a way anyway (QUANTUM has a lot of options, etc). Now, as you say, the "cooperating agreement" trick where they just strong-arm industry with a national security letter and personal threats against the CEO to force compliance is a much bigger problem, which really needs to be addressed. ASAP. /of course, then there are the companies that are collaborators... sigh

repsilat 12y ago

> Amazon, whose founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post This warms my heart -- not just that the article doesn't take a political position, but that it was probably printed to disclaim one. That kind of defensive demonstration of journalistic integrity reminds me that there are idealistic people working inside these big-business papers. It's small news, and maybe other people are reporting on it too, but I like that I read it at the Washinton Post first.

jonathanyc 12y ago
This is common practice. I've seen it often in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, for example.
javajosh 12y ago
It remains to be seen whether Bezos will take action against WaPo for printing this piece, as it really could affect Amazon's bottom-line, along with the Integrity Staffing case, during the holiday shopping season.
- Aloha 12y ago
  That would be incredibly foolish if he did.
  - javajosh 12y ago
    It would be morally wrong if he did, but foolish, I'm not so sure. It would depend on how he did it. First, it's not clear that such an act would ever become public knowledge. Second, even if it did, it's not clear that such an act would even generate significant repercussions given the current state of the public's general "injustice fatigue" and the overall minimal impact such an act would have. Basically, Bezos has a huge amount of latitude about if and how he reacts to this, especially if he's smart about it (and he is very smart). The larger lesson is that we must open our eyes to the fact that our society gives powerful individuals an incredible degree of latitude. We cannot let our idealism blind us to the fact that our business and political leaders wield tremendous unchecked power, especially in relatively small matters, and especially if that power is wielded with the intelligent foresight to avoid accountability.

researcher88 12y ago

The comments seem disportionately negative towards Snowden. I have rarely encountered anyone in real life that knew much about Snowden let alone had a strong conviction about him one way or the other. Maybe there's so many negative comments because people who are against something or someone are more likely to post. But it also seems like a good candidate article for certain interests to subtley influence public opinion.

deleted 12y ago
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deleted 12y ago
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IvyMike 12y ago
The comments aren't necessarily a random sample--a popular political site, blog, or twitter personality could have linked to the site, with an implied "Give 'em a piece of your mind".

cpncrunch 12y ago

Calling it "morally irresponsible" is a bit harsh. If you're living in a country where the government monitors its population to oppress dissidents, that's a bug in your government that you should fix. If people in those countries really gave a crap about democracy and freedom, they could easily do something about it (look at Hong Kong right now for some ideas, or the Velvet Revolution). The fact that China, Russia, Zimbabwe (and many other countries) are oppressing their own citizens is only happening because those citizens don't really give a crap about freedom - perhaps because they've never had it. And before anyone whines about the NSA and downvotes me, I think you really need to compare the freedom you have in the USA to some of those other countries I mentioned.

cpncrunch 12y ago
Oh, and I also find it a little ironic that Snowden's living in a country where you really need to protect yourself from the government. I'd prefer to live in a safe and free country and not have any encryption, rather than live in the likes of Russia and have to have everything encrypted.
- mkramlich 12y ago
  technically speaking he's living there (Russia?) to protect himself from "our" government (USA), the one with the NSA and CIA, the latter of which our own Senate has now showed was torturing human beings not convicted of any crime.
  - cpncrunch 12y ago
    As I pointed out in my comment quite clearly, I'm perfectly aware of that, but the Russian government is a lot worse than the US government - which I also pointed out quite clearly. Strange reason to downvote me twice (whoever did it) because they didn't understand my comment, but I've come to expect that from HN so nothing surprises me.
    - 01Michael10 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

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