{"id":24472,"date":"2014-10-29T09:11:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T17:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=24472"},"modified":"2014-10-29T09:11:24","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T17:11:24","slug":"amazon-cia-600-million-deal-facing-scrutiny-whats-the-cia-doing-on-amazons-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/29\/amazon-cia-600-million-deal-facing-scrutiny-whats-the-cia-doing-on-amazons-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon-CIA $600 Million Deal Facing Scrutiny: ‘What’s the CIA Doing on Amazon\u2019s Cloud?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Institute for Public Accuracy<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

A billboard challenging Amazon to fully disclose the terms of its $600 million contract to provide cloud computing services for the Central Intelligence Agency has been unveiled at a busy intersection near Amazon\u2019s Seattle headquarters.<\/p>\n

The billboard\u2019s launch \u2014 asking \u201cthe $600 million question: What\u2019s the CIA Doing on Amazon\u2019s Cloud?\u201d \u2014 marks the escalation of a campaign by the online activist organizations RootsAction.org<\/a> and ExposeFacts.org<\/a>. The groups are calling for accountability from Amazon in an effort to inform the public of serious privacy implications of the Amazon-CIA collaboration. (ExposeFacts.org is a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The positioning of the 48-foot-wide billboard on Amazon\u2019s doorstep at Fairview Avenue and Valley Street in Seattle follows a RootsAction petition calling for Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos to make a legally binding commitment to Amazon\u2019s commercial customers that it will not provide customer data to the CIA.<\/p>\n

Amazon is the world\u2019s largest online retailer. \u201cThe same company that stores vast quantities of customer records and even provides cloud storage services also stores the CIA\u2019s surveillance data \u2014 yet the actual terms of the Amazon-CIA agreement are secret,\u201d said Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a co-founder of RootsAction.org.<\/p>\n

\"cia-amazon-billboard\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon now averages 162 million unique visitors to its sites every month,\u201d Solomon said. \u201cThe firm\u2019s business model depends on accumulating and analyzing huge quantities of personal data. Meanwhile, the CIA depends on gathering and analyzing data to assist with surveillance as well as U.S. military interventions overseas. The circumstances are ominous.\u201d<\/p>\n

In hosting a huge computing cloud for the CIA\u2019s secrets, Amazon now has \u201ca digital place where data for mass surveillance and perpetual war are converging,\u201d he added. The CIA is responsible for numerous war-related programs including drone strikes.<\/p>\n

Marcy Wheeler \u2014 who writes widely on the legal aspects of the \u201cwar on terror\u201d and its effects on civil liberties including her \u201cRight to Know\u201d column for ExposeFacts.org \u2014 said Wednesday that Amazon should answer a number of key questions before its customers and the general public can be assured that personal information from the company\u2019s commercial operations is not finding its way into the CIA\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

For instance, she said, Bezos and Amazon should answer the question: \u201cWill there be any overlap between the physical hardware serving Amazon\u2019s commercial cloud service and what is provided to the CIA?\u201d<\/p>\n

Referring to the CIA\u2019s machinations over the still-unreleased Senate torture report, she added that Bezos should also be asked: \u201cThe CIA has admitted accessing documents made available to the Senate Intelligence Committee on shared space \u2014 what provisions have you made to prevent similar spying on Amazon\u2019s commercial customers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Wheeler also noted that according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amazon is \u201cone of the only major cloud providers that doesn\u2019t provide a transparency report of government requests.\u201d In light of Amazon\u2019s CIA contract, Bezos should be asked: \u201cDo you believe your cloud customers should have some visibility of how you respond to government requests?\u201d<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s current \u201cPrivacy Notice\u201d to customers reads: \u201cWe release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Amazon.com, our users, or others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solomon said this notice \u201chas loopholes big enough to fly a drone through.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Amazon Web Services was awarded the $600 million cloud contract last year, Amazon declared: \u201cWe look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.\u201d Industry experts have said this contract will likely open the door for Amazon to get more cloud contracts from other government spy and military agencies \u2014 hardly a reassuring prospect for the privacy of Amazon\u2019s customers.<\/p>\n

MARCY WHEELER, emptywheel at gmail.com, @emptywheel
\nWheeler writes widely about the legal aspects of the \u201cwar on terror\u201d and its effects on civil liberties. She blogs at emptywheel.net<\/a> and writes the \u201cRight to Know\u201d column for ExposeFacts.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive at gmail.com, @normansolomon
\nSolomon is the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death<\/a><\/em>. He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a co-founder of RootsAction.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Institute for Public Accuracy: A billboard challenging Amazon to fully disclose the terms of its $600 million contract to provide cloud computing services for the Central Intelligence Agency has been unveiled at a busy intersection near Amazon\u2019s Seattle headquarters. The billboard\u2019s launch \u2014 asking \u201cthe $600 million question: What\u2019s the CIA Doing on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-24472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24472"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24478,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24472\/revisions\/24478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24472"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}