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.
Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
411–420 of 465 posts
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And this guy lied to Congress about it. When? James Clapper is not one of Keith Alexander's aliases.
There are multiple liars, unfortunately: https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2013/06/07/video-di... Also http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/nsa-director-alexan...
Your second link doesn't work. The first link shows some answers from Keith Alexander, but none of them were lies. It seems the author of the first article thought that PRISM is something different from what it was revealed to be.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#413Earlier 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.
> All these 3-letter acronyms exists to further American interests That's a strangely Aristotelian view of organizations. It is as if you are suggesting that the 3-letter agencies have a fundamental essence outside of the intentions of the people who work there.
Compartmentalization allows for that. You operate with orders to accomplish X, and it is more than possible to hide why you are accomplishing X.
Typically it goes like this: lobbyist meets with policy maker, policy maker decides objectives for [a-z]{3}, [a-z]{3} undertakes missions in support of lobbyist's objectives.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#414Earlier 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…
> One of the presidential candidates wants to tear down all the stuff you pointed out. Biden is not going to change anything NSA-related, do not delude yourself and do not mistake electioneering frenzy for policy.
Under Biden's vice presidency, the NSA's collection of Americans' data reduced. Email metadata collection stopped in 2010 before the Snowden leaks, and phone metadata collection reduced after.
He seems consistent on this issue. Prior to his stint as VP, he complained about metadata collection by the GWB administration. https://youtu.be/h2qgU8kJt-0
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you’re really overestimating the ability of most small tech companies to self-host reliably and securely.
I work for a relatively small company (about 15-20 odd people) and we've got a server rack in the office. It's positioned in a very specific angle (with tape on the floor) along an AC unit because of cooling, but we self-host a lot of our stuff. It's done on a budget as well so we're kinda forced to use open source software. Weirdly enough we use Skype for work chat and Zoom for video meetings, so it feels a bit inco…
So you're one fire away from a complete company collapse, got it.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I see. Yes. In America you are free to use whatever VPN you pay for, regardless of what country it's hosted in. The NSA won't prohibit it and cannot break it if it's using the right algorithms. If they wanted to intentionally examine your network traffic, that would require a court order. If they wanted to get past your VPN encryption, that would require targeted hacking of a US citizen, which is typically handle…
How hard was it to get that room at AT&T with or without "court order" that you speak about. Do you consider secret courts to be in scope of this discussion. Then there is this That and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
No court order was necessary because AT&T consented to the NSA presence. Just like how your employer can hand over your corporate laptop to the police without needing a warrant. If you don't like it, consider dealing with another business and encrypting your traffic with a full tunnel VPN.
Yes. Secret courts are reasonable due process. Do you have an alternative method that wouldn't release damaging information?
Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades?
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very sure that you're wrong. Do you have any evidence that the NSA kidnaps and tortures people?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/10/egypt-steps-u...
So you just have the word of one activist? Sorry, that's not enough evidence for me to believe it. If the NSA wanted to unlock a random journalist's phone, they would be able to hack it.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The advertisers react to "wrong" coverage by withdrawing support Easily attributable to business decisions / climate. > the chief editor is very attuned so he assigns the right people to the right jobs before trouble starts Staff assignment as a smoking gun? That's going to be a stretch. > and the journalists so assigned naturally work quite sincerely Indeed, just people doing their jobs. Who, pray tell, is going t…
I invite you to consider Hannah Arendt's words on institutional pressures driving unethical patterns of behavior. These she referred to as "the rule of Nobody" and also "the banality of evil". In this frame, "business decisions / climate" are exactly the driving forces which perpetuate such structures and outcomes.
Business decisions and climate are also the driving forces behind literally everything a company does.
The banality of evil doesn't forgive laziness in the construction of hypotheses, unless you're Fox News.
To spell it out, what leak / disclosure would constitute proof of GP's belief? A memo from the WaPo editorial staff which says "Pursuant to Mr. Bezo's comments on X, please assign Y to story Z, so that reporting will be more favorable"?
And barring a plausible method of provability / falsifiability, we're in "just asking the question" rumor territory with regards to the original assertions of malice. Which, personally, seems below the level of discourse I expect from HN.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very sure that you're wrong. Do you have any evidence that the NSA kidnaps and tortures people?
There are other 3 letter agencies and 3rd country jails for that and That and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix I would not be hard to convince me that NSA inputs can place a person on these.
When you find a way for a country to exist with 0 enemies, please let us all know.
Re: Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors
#420Earlier 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…
But the FBI has been trained to hide the source of information, probably because it is illegal in many cases (maybe comes from NSA)... they call it parallel construction but it probably should be called something much worst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
So in the end they only convict people based on legally permissible evidence that shows they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? How horrible.