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
Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
111–120 of 465 posts
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#112[deleted]
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#113> 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 presiden…
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Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#114Not 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
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.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#115> 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 presiden…
>illegally spied on Americans for the better part of a decade.
A decade? Just a decade?
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding [2], the sensationalized, alarmist way the media reported this was not remotely accurate, nor would the conspiracy theory angle on this story make any practical sense.
Sorry, what's not practical about Google increasing their location accuracy for the benefit of both the consumer and the government?
The second link isn't about that, it's about Google stealing information from insecure WiFi using Street View vehicles.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government created Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo I have no evidence other than the sheer obviousness of it, but the ties still continue to this day. I have no doubt it is kept hidden from most employees due to the general political leanings of most Valley engineers. For instance, my work does a ton of work for the DoE and you hear them mentioned all the time. The DoD is also a custom…
Google bought Keyhole (now Google Maps) from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm [1] -- this was when Eric Schmidt was CEO. Maps was caught wardriving [2] with Google Streetview, linking Wifi access point names to physical locations early on. After getting caught, they settled for $13 Million last year. Now Google Maps and even location services on all Android devices uses wifi scanning and bluetooth scanning as part of loca…
Remember the Google I/O when the presentation included a mom waiting in a queue inside a park ride and maps calculated that it's enough time to have another ride and then go somewhere else?
This was the moment I got afraid of every single Android device that's already on the market, sniffing around for everything they can find.
If private people do this, they get jailed. If google does it, nobody gives a damn about it.
There is no privacy, as everybody around you is compromising it without themselves knowing.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government created Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo I have no evidence other than the sheer obviousness of it, but the ties still continue to this day. I have no doubt it is kept hidden from most employees due to the general political leanings of most Valley engineers. For instance, my work does a ton of work for the DoE and you hear them mentioned all the time. The DoD is also a custom…
Google bought Keyhole (now Google Maps) from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm [1] -- this was when Eric Schmidt was CEO. Maps was caught wardriving [2] with Google Streetview, linking Wifi access point names to physical locations early on. After getting caught, they settled for $13 Million last year. Now Google Maps and even location services on all Android devices uses wifi scanning and bluetooth scanning as part of loca…
Correction: Keyhole became Google Earth. (Fun fact: the K in KML is Keyhole.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History
Google Maps stems from an Australian company called Where2, which AFAIK was not funded by spooks.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#119Here 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...
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
This: This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now At some point we need to just say it some of the largest tech companies are basically NSA+CIA partners and we're well on our way to having Big Tech completely integrated into NSA and CIA and DoD
The government has used Big Tech forever. Oracle, Microsoft, Apple products have been used by NSA+CIA for about as long as those companies have had products. Yes, those companies sell to the government. They want to make money and the government has money.
Yep, and IBM helped nazis to run their concentration camps.
Technology is power.