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

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

#231

Post by unionpivo »

zip1234 wrote: post #55
switch11 wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

There is a difference between selling your product to government and working with government.

I am pretty sure USA government buy's plenty of stuff from Chinese companies like everbody else does. Doesn't mean Chinese companies are working with it.

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

#232

Post by dwd »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #83
dwd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these 3-letter acronyms exists to further American interests - for a long time that was primarily the military/industrial complex followed by oil/gas. We're now just seeing the focus switch to supporting big tech as a priority.

It's still distressing to see those intelligence agencies further entrench themselves into fields perfectly suited for a surveillance state. Their reputation makes trusting that they won't abuse it difficult. It may suit national interest, but it bodes poorly for the public interest.

They help the companies, who help the Government in return. And the whole conspiracy is carried on via the revolving doors of influence and networks of who knows who.

Where the public suffers is that it's their tax money that funds this rather than going towards education, health, essential services, better wages, social and economic mobility - the list goes on.

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

#233

Post by fauigerzigerk »

88840-8855 wrote: post #124
gigatexal wrote: post #119

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...

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?

I find that neither pragmatic nor ethically sound.

If you're in a security alliance with countries you share values and goals with, how can you not apply different standards in terms of data sharing? And how can you not react somewhat differently to any transgressions, mistakes and imperfections?

I know Trump has made this very difficult by making his personal whims indistinguishable from the interests and commitments of his country. In my view this is a form of corruption that does massive damage to the U.S. And yes, democratic control over security services has been rather tenuous at the best of times.

But I still see many good reasons not to impose broad economic sanctions on allied democracies. And I do see good reasons to side with them against completely illegitimate regimes that use their security services to keep themselves in power without a democratic mandate.

Of course there are many grey areas and a lot of valid criticism. But asking for Europe to officially impose economic sanctions on the U.S is not a proportionate reaction to that. The economic damage would far outweigh any additional freedom or security.

If you refuse to apply a degree of pragmatism and proportionality, other countries would then have to impose economic sanctions on Germany for their use of Staatstrojaner. Essentially, all cross border trade in digital goods and services would have to end globally. That can't be a good idea.

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

#234

Post by dubbel »

moonchild wrote: post #90
granzymes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of Amazon's shares have the same number of votes.

Amazon has non-voting shares. Source: know someone who worked there. Bonuses were paid in the form of non-voting shares.

Maybe they were talking about options? You don't get voting rights by having options, you need to execute the options in order to get shares (and voting rights, in Amazons case).

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

#236

Post by deathgrips »

paganel wrote: post #161
sailfast wrote: post #71

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.

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-re...

Why on earth would it be a good idea to reveal highly classified information to the entire planet during a televised hearing?

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

#237

Post by teekert »

gigatexal wrote: post #119

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...

Amazon is like the Huawei of the US. Strong ties to the government, too big to fail, massive influence over the world. It's like the cancer of capitalism and the way it operates together with the US government is very similar to whatever we call China's model of state. No doubt they influence state decisions in very undemocratic ways. This has nothing to do with Freedom, and it's worrying that such different government models arrive at such similar modes of action. They foster centralized, undemocratic power that infringes on individual rights such a the right to privacy... Is it just he way humanity is destined to be ruled? By constant waves of power concentration followed by revolution?

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

#238

Post by unionpivo »

deathgrips wrote: post #224
esperent wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bullshit game of "which is worse" between the US and China, with both countries constantly moving the goalposts, is just tiring. Yes, China is currently worse. But with children locked up in cages and a massive prison-slavery industry, not to mention crazy NSA spying and so on, you're kidding yourself if you say the US is that far behind. You can say, as a US citizen, that all this stuff doesn't affect you much.…

The difference is that here we have the freedom to criticize and organize against it. One of the presidential candidates wants to tear down all the stuff you pointed out. I can say that the surveillance doesn't affect me because it's almost unheard of for Americans to get arrested with evidence that the NSA collected. The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. In China arresting people based on data from surveillance i…

> The difference is that here we have the freedom to criticize and organize against it.

Edit: I am mostly addressing the organize against it part. USA has far better free speech protections than China

Do you ? As an outsider it doesn't really look that way. After watching events and protest around BLM, suddenly all those rights have gotchas in them.

Watching USA protesters and Honkong protesters, and goverment respones to them, there were far more similarities than differences. (Well china was still worse, but not by as much as most USA people seem to think).

The biggest difference in USA and china at the moments is that in USA some Politicians still listen to people (if only mostly out of self interest)

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

#240

Post by deathgrips »

unionpivo wrote: post #238
deathgrips wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that here we have the freedom to criticize and organize against it. One of the presidential candidates wants to tear down all the stuff you pointed out. I can say that the surveillance doesn't affect me because it's almost unheard of for Americans to get arrested with evidence that the NSA collected. The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. In China arresting people based on data from surveillance i…

> The difference is that here we have the freedom to criticize and organize against it. Edit: I am mostly addressing the organize against it part. USA has far better free speech protections than China Do you ? As an outsider it doesn't really look that way. After watching events and protest around BLM, suddenly all those rights have gotchas in them. Watching USA protesters and Honkong protesters, and goverment respon…

If we were like China, Joe Biden would be in jail. It's a different level entirely. Also please use some judgment when seeing America through the lens of our news media. They have every incentive to exaggerate stories so they can get more clicks and sell more ads. The police brutality at the protests is bad, but it's in a different ballpark than the Hong Kong protests. Here protesters don't have a reasonable fear of getting sent to mainland China to be imprisoned for decades, gang raped by cops in jail, and murdered while cops fake your suicide.
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