Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

Post by bogomipz » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

blakesterz wrote: post #11

bogomipz wrote: post #4

>"In some cases, Amazon uses pseudonyms to obscure its presence. For example, at its IAD77 data center, the document states that “Amazon is known as ‘Vandalay Industries’ on badges and all correspondence with building manager”." This made me laugh. Vandalay Industries is a reference to a very funny Seinfeld episode. Someone at AWS has a good sense of humor: http://seinfeld.wikia.com/wiki/Vandelay_Industries

Seems like using ‘Vandalay Industries’ is a terrible idea. Doesn't everyone* know that anything called ‘Vandalay Industries’ is an obvious fake? * Maybe anyone over a certain age? Do people under... I dunno, 40? 30?... watch much Seinfeld? Seems like TV shows are largely generational things... I'm aware of MASH and Dick Van Dyke, but I wouldn't get the semi obscure jokes from those shows since they were on when I was…

Post by cafard » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

QuinnyPig wrote: post #65

morpheuskafka wrote: post #6

How come WikiLeaks is distributing this? I don't see any meaningful connection to government transparency or even corporate transparency... this has nothing to do with abuse of power, it is completely normal and rightful for a company to keep its infrastructure locations secret. Some of this could be found through public records, etc. and that fine to post, but internal operating procedures are not. Sure, it's fun to…

I'm not sure why Russian intelligence cares about AWS datacenter locations. This has largely been an "open secret" for a long time. If you want to know where an AWS datacenter is, ask local taxi drivers and pizza delivery folks. These things are huge, and very hard to hide.

Post by jlarocco » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

morpheuskafka wrote: post #6

How come WikiLeaks is distributing this? I don't see any meaningful connection to government transparency or even corporate transparency... this has nothing to do with abuse of power, it is completely normal and rightful for a company to keep its infrastructure locations secret. Some of this could be found through public records, etc. and that fine to post, but internal operating procedures are not. Sure, it's fun to…

Post by sitkack » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

ksajadi wrote: post #78

nabla9 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is making local governments to compete against each others for data center locations, so it's in the public interest to know the locations. For example, you can compare at the location, electricity cost, infrastructure, tax schemes and tax revenue etc. in local level and see how important they are for Amazon and maybe even estimate the benefit of having Amazon. The location of Amazon data centers is not hidden…

Then shouldn’t they publish the documents showing those giveaways instead which surely makes more sense, doesn’t put AWS customers at potential risk and holds local governments accountable? The simple thing is to put anything you get your hands on online under the opaque umbrella of public interest. The responsible thing to do is to run with it, find the local governments in those areas and file requests for the reco…

Post by irrational » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

morpheuskafka wrote: post #6

How come WikiLeaks is distributing this? I don't see any meaningful connection to government transparency or even corporate transparency... this has nothing to do with abuse of power, it is completely normal and rightful for a company to keep its infrastructure locations secret. Some of this could be found through public records, etc. and that fine to post, but internal operating procedures are not. Sure, it's fun to…