Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 165 posts

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#21

Post by AJ007 »

nostromo wrote: post #17
WisNorCan wrote: post #6

In a company approaching a million employees, someone is doing something illegal/unethical every day. At that scale it doesn’t say anything about the culture as you are observing the outer ranges of a distribution.

That’s why you build systems that don’t allow for abuse whenever possible. And when it’s not possible, you create an audit trail. For example, I trust Google to make my individual search history difficult for employees to access, specific search results difficult to change, and confidential data difficult to access.

Google has had corrupt employee problems in the Adwords department: https://techcrunch.com/2009/04/07/shoemoney-sues-google-empl...

I trust the security and audit trail on Google's engineering side. I definitely do not in other areas of the company.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#22

Post by AndrewKemendo »

clubm8 wrote: post #14

> The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks. Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust , not just skill. When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your em…

This is counterintelligence 101. There are four traditional motivations of insider threats (MICE):

M: Money

I: Ideology

C: Coercion

E: Ego

The thinking around that is changing, but the financial motivation is still at the top of the list.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#24

Post by fcuck_actuarial »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22
clubm8 wrote: post #14

> The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks. Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust , not just skill. When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your em…

This is counterintelligence 101. There are four traditional motivations of insider threats (MICE): M: Money I: Ideology C: Coercion E: Ego The thinking around that is changing, but the financial motivation is still at the top of the list. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

I think M,I,and E (hopefully not C) could also be considered motivations for convincing someone to change jobs?

(In my experience, recruiters from a well known FAANG company like to lean HEAVILY on E. Jokes on them, because the right answer is M!)

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#25

Post by jjeaff »

nostromo wrote: post #17
WisNorCan wrote: post #6

In a company approaching a million employees, someone is doing something illegal/unethical every day. At that scale it doesn’t say anything about the culture as you are observing the outer ranges of a distribution.

That’s why you build systems that don’t allow for abuse whenever possible. And when it’s not possible, you create an audit trail. For example, I trust Google to make my individual search history difficult for employees to access, specific search results difficult to change, and confidential data difficult to access.

Do you have any reason to have that trust? Absent any evidence, I'm inclined to think that they do very little to protect my data. Had they any stringent controls in place, I feel like their PR or marketing would have communicated some of the specifics publicly.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#26

Post by AndrewKemendo »

fcuck_actuarial wrote: post #24
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is counterintelligence 101. There are four traditional motivations of insider threats (MICE): M: Money I: Ideology C: Coercion E: Ego The thinking around that is changing, but the financial motivation is still at the top of the list. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

I think M,I,and E (hopefully not C) could also be considered motivations for convincing someone to change jobs? (In my experience, recruiters from a well known FAANG company like to lean HEAVILY on E. Jokes on them, because the right answer is M!)

Coercion and Ego are almost never used because they aren't reliable and are fear based.

Money and Ideology are positive incentives, Coercion and Ego are generally painful incentives.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#27

Post by userbinator »

clubm8 wrote: post #14

> The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks. Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust , not just skill. When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your em…

Don't forget that China is ultimately a far more collectivist society, and stuff like this happens all the time. The money just provides additional motivation; people's natural tendency is to share things.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#28

Post by skybrian »

jjeaff wrote: post #25
nostromo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why you build systems that don’t allow for abuse whenever possible. And when it’s not possible, you create an audit trail. For example, I trust Google to make my individual search history difficult for employees to access, specific search results difficult to change, and confidential data difficult to access.

Do you have any reason to have that trust? Absent any evidence, I'm inclined to think that they do very little to protect my data. Had they any stringent controls in place, I feel like their PR or marketing would have communicated some of the specifics publicly.

It's oriented towards Cloud customers, but there is some information here:

https://cloud.google.com/security/overview/whitepaper#data_a...

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#29

Post by walshemj »

clubm8 wrote: post #14

> The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks. Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust , not just skill. When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your em…

And casinos have a large security staff and I suspect do better background checks than FANG companies do.

Its the same at a large uk telco I worked at only a limited amount of people had widespread access to data and where positively vetted as well.

I know one team leader who was going to have to pass DV (TS in US terms) clearance.

Post reply on HN