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Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon

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Speaker 1: customer because you guys paid progress, you guys paid problems.

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Speaker 1: This is megaco an investigative podcast exposing some of the

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Speaker 1: world's most unethical corporations. This series is about Amazon. I'm

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Speaker 1: Jake Hanrahan, journalists and documentary filmmaker. Megacorp is produced by

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Speaker 1: H eleven for cool Zone Media. In the last episode,

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Speaker 1: we looked at how Amazon is spying on its customers

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Speaker 1: through its home security technology. Today, though, we'll be looking

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Speaker 1: at Amazon's dealings with the actual spy agencies, specifically America's

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Speaker 1: CIA and the UK's m I five and m I six.

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Speaker 1: To understand how Amazon works with these intelligence agencies, for

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Speaker 1: we need to look into Amazon Web Services or a WUS.

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Speaker 1: AWS will feature a lot in this episode, so let's

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Speaker 1: hear what Amazon has to say about it. AWS is

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Speaker 1: the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. Millions

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Speaker 1: of customers trust AWS to power their infrastructure and applications.

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Speaker 1: Organizations of every type in size are using AWS to

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Speaker 1: lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. AWS gives

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Speaker 1: you more services and more features within those services than

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Speaker 1: any other cloud provider. This makes it faster, easier, and

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Speaker 1: more cost effective to move your existing applications to the

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Speaker 1: cloud and to build anything you can imagine, from infrastructure

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Speaker 1: technologies like compute, storage and databases to emerging technologies such

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Speaker 1: as machine learning and artificial intelligence, data lakes and analytics,

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Speaker 1: and Internet of things. Building on AWS means you can

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Speaker 1: choose the right tool for the jar. With AWS, you

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Speaker 1: can leverage the latest technologies to experiment and innovate more quickly.

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Speaker 1: We are continually accelerating our pace of innovation to invent

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Speaker 1: entirely new technologies you can use to transform your business.

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Speaker 1: Our infrastructure is built to satisfy the security standards of

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Speaker 1: the most risk sensitive organizations. To put it simply, AWS

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Speaker 1: is the world's most used cloud computing platform, the cloud

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Speaker 1: being a technology that allows users to access the same

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Speaker 1: files and applications from almost any device wherever they are.

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Speaker 1: So what does Amazon's AWS have to do with the CIA. Well,

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Speaker 1: in Amazon secured a contract to build the c I,

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Speaker 1: a six hundred million dollar cloud computing technology that would

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Speaker 1: service all seventeen of the U S Intelligence agencies. Those

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Speaker 1: agencies benefiting from Amazon's cloud technology are as follows. The

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Speaker 1: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the

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Speaker 1: National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the

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Speaker 1: Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug

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Speaker 1: Enforcement Administration, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Energy,

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Speaker 1: the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, Air

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Speaker 1: Force Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Army Military Intelligence, the Office

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Speaker 1: of Naval Intelligence, the Marine Corps Intelligence, and the Coast

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Speaker 1: Guard Intelligence. Every one of those agencies is using AWS

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Speaker 1: created services by Amazon, the same company who has had

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Speaker 1: scandal after scandal regarding the improper use of the data, video,

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Speaker 1: and sound files of millions of people across the world

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Speaker 1: that they have stored in their cloud via their home

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Speaker 1: security products the Chat. Amazon's deal with the CIA to

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Speaker 1: build them a robust cloud computing technology was first handled

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Speaker 1: in secret. When it became public, there were a few

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Speaker 1: interesting legal issues, as explained in an Atlantic article about

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Speaker 1: the deal by Frank Concole Quote. After weighing bids from

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Speaker 1: Amazon Web Services, IBM, and an unnamed third vendor, the

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Speaker 1: CIA awarded a contract to a WS worth up to

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Speaker 1: six hundred million dollars over a period of up to

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Speaker 1: ten years. IBM filed a bid protest with g a

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Speaker 1: O that the watchdog eventually upheld in June, forcing the

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Speaker 1: CIA to reopen bids to both companies for the contract.

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Speaker 1: A legal struggle between Amazon and Big Blue ensued, and

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Speaker 1: a WS filed a lawsuit against the federal government in July,

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Speaker 1: claiming the g a O sus statement was a flawed decision.

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Speaker 1: In October, US Court of Federal Claims, Judge Thomas Wheeler

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Speaker 1: sided with Amazon and overturned g ao's decision to force

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Speaker 1: the CIA to read but the contrast, Big Blue went home.

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Speaker 1: A WS claimed a victory under the deal's original financial specs.

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Speaker 1: Nearly eighteen months after the procurement was first released, the

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Speaker 1: CIA and Amazon went to work end quote. Now to

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Speaker 1: give you an idea of how big this Amazon CIA

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Speaker 1: deal was, let me tell you what the c i

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Speaker 1: A Chief Information Officer, Douglas Wolfe said about it. He

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Speaker 1: called it, quote one of the most important technology procurements

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Speaker 1: in recent history. End quote. Well, you might be thinking, well,

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Speaker 1: it's the CIA simply leasing technology from Amazon. Bear in

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Speaker 1: mind that the Amazon engineers oversee all the hardware for

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Speaker 1: this CIA cloud tech. Why Well, because a w S

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Speaker 1: actually owns the hardware, and they're the ones responsible for

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Speaker 1: maintaining it. That said, let's take a look at some

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Speaker 1: of the previous security issues Amazon has had with online security,

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Speaker 1: including hearts of its a WS technology. January, hacker broke

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Speaker 1: the security of an Amazon owned online store, exposing the

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Speaker 1: information twenty four million customers. December fourteen, hackers from Anonymous

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Speaker 1: leaked thirteen thousand user names and passwords for Amazon accounts,

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Speaker 1: along with several other websites. November twenty fifteen, Amazon found

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Speaker 1: a credible security risk was forced to reset the past

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Speaker 1: words of thousands of its users. July hacker claimed to

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Speaker 1: a brief an Amazon server to obtain the personal details

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Speaker 1: of eighty thousand Kindle users. Amazon said the breach wasn't legit,

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Speaker 1: to which the hacker responded saying the server was owned

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Speaker 1: by Amazon and that the details could be used to

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Speaker 1: disable all of the leaked accounts. November eighteen, a major

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Speaker 1: data breach of customer information was announced, in which Amazon

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Speaker 1: claimed a technical issue led to customers private information accidentally

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Speaker 1: being posted online. This information included customers names and email addresses. July,

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Speaker 1: a Capital One server using Amazon's a WS was hacked

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Speaker 1: by a former Amazon employee. Information of over one million

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Speaker 1: customers was exposed, including social security numbers, bank account numbers,

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Speaker 1: credit card transaction records, and credit scores. The hacker was

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Speaker 1: allegedly an AWS systems engineer. Amazon denied any responsibility for

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Speaker 1: the attack. September, Amazon users in Japan begin to see

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Speaker 1: the order histories, purchase details, shopper names, and delivery addresses

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Speaker 1: of other Amazon customers. There were nothing to do with them.

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Speaker 1: This lasted a few days until Amazon said they'd fix

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Speaker 1: the problem without fully explaining what had happened. January twenty,

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Speaker 1: several Amazon employees were fired after it was discovered they'd

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Speaker 1: been sharing sensitive customer data with a third party. Several

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Speaker 1: customer email addresses and phone numbers were later leaked online. Again,

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Speaker 1: Amazon has never fully explained what happened with this incident. February,

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Speaker 1: a large AWS database that wasn't secured was discovered online.

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Speaker 1: It held sensitive data or millions of customers in Europe

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Speaker 1: for Amazon and for other companies. Names, addresses, emails, phone numbers,

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Speaker 1: payment histories, invoice links, and partial credit card numbers were

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Speaker 1: all left unsecured. As well as this and Amazon Marketplace

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Speaker 1: web Services authentication token was in the database. As well

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Speaker 1: as an a w S access key I D. October

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Speaker 1: twenty more Amazon employees were fired over a separate incident,

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Speaker 1: but they've been leaking Amazon customer email addresses to a

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Speaker 1: third party one line. February one third party gained access

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Speaker 1: to logitechs AWS cloud server, which contained backup files to

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Speaker 1: customer management of risk and compliance data for security matters.

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Speaker 1: October one hacker posted one d and twenty eight gigabytes

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Speaker 1: of leaked files from Amazon's Twitch streaming service to a

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Speaker 1: four Chan message board. The files included Twitches source code,

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Speaker 1: earnings numbers for streamers, and much more. For the job. Now,

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Speaker 1: I know there was a long list, but it was

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Speaker 1: worth going into detail when you consider it's all related

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Speaker 1: to the company that ran a six hundred million dollar

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Speaker 1: cloud text service for the c I, a arguably the

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Speaker 1: most active intelligence agency on Earth. Now, if you're wondering

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Speaker 1: where I'm going with this, things might become clearer when

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Speaker 1: we take a look at some of the ways in

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Speaker 1: which the CIA themselves have spied on people across the world.

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Speaker 1: This project mocking Bird in nineteen sixty three, for example,

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Speaker 1: Mockingbird was a c I a wire tapping operation initiated

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Speaker 1: by then President John F. Kennedy, the CIA secretly listened

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Speaker 1: into the phone conversations of journalists to uncover their sources.

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Speaker 1: Then there's the time in nineteen sixty nine when the

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Speaker 1: CIA wire tapped anti war activists who were opposed to

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Speaker 1: the conflict in Vietnam. Frankly, there are many examples of

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Speaker 1: US intelligence agencies spying on its own citizens. One of

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Speaker 1: the most notorious was exposed by whistleblower Edwards Snowden, who

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Speaker 1: showed through stolen documents that the n s A was

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Speaker 1: spying on millions of Americans. Privacy is what gives you

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Speaker 1: the ability to share with the world who you are

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Speaker 1: on your own terms. Privacy is the fountain head of

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Speaker 1: all others. Front of speech doesn't have a lot of

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Speaker 1: meaning if you can't have a quiet space, a space

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Speaker 1: within yourself, within your mind, within the community of your

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Speaker 1: friends with you to decide what it is that you

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Speaker 1: actually want to say. Without privacy, you don't have anything

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Speaker 1: for yourself. Arguing that you don't care about privacy because

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Speaker 1: you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you

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Speaker 1: don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you believe that the n s a, the CIA

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Speaker 1: and all the others have moved past all that and

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Speaker 1: would never do it again. Then I guess sleep easy. However,

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Speaker 1: I think it's worth considering that the next wave of

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Speaker 1: technology will probably be used by intelligence agencies the same

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Speaker 1: way or the others were. What we do know is this, Amazon,

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Speaker 1: a gigantic global company that pretty much openly has no

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Speaker 1: scruples when it comes to abusing its workers and spying

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Speaker 1: on its customers, has contracts were of the CIA to

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Speaker 1: run a cloud network for the data of all seventeen

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Speaker 1: of its intelligence agencies, agencies that also have no scruples

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Speaker 1: on spying on people and harvesting data to serve its

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Speaker 1: own purposes. But don't worry, I'm not about to go

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Speaker 1: all conspiracy theorists on you. But honestly, it is no

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Speaker 1: secret that the lines between big tech government agencies and

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Speaker 1: mega corporations are becoming increasingly blurred. Facebook and Twitter's constant

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Speaker 1: compliance with both totalitarian regimes and global intelligence agencies has

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Speaker 1: proved this time and again. As we can see, Amazon

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Speaker 1: is certainly no stranger to this game either. In less

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Speaker 1: than thirty years since it was founded, Amazon went from

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Speaker 1: a company that sells cheap books to one that builds

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Speaker 1: cloud storage databases for the CIA and willingly gives the

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Speaker 1: US police access to its customers home security networks during

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Speaker 1: civil rights protests. When you put all of this into context,

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Speaker 1: I think personally that it starts to feel like we're

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Speaker 1: already running full pel into a grim corporate dystopia. But

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Speaker 1: that's me. I'm quite cynical now, Americans, don't worry. It's

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Speaker 1: not just you lot that have Amazon team and not

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Speaker 1: with your intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, the same thing is happening

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Speaker 1: in my country in the UK. Last year in one

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Speaker 1: it was revealed in the British media that the country's

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Speaker 1: three main intelligence agencies had contracted Amazon's a WS to

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Speaker 1: host classified data in a deal that the Financial Times

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Speaker 1: newspaper said was quote aimed at boosting the use of data,

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Speaker 1: analytics and artificial intelligence for espionage end quote. The technology

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Speaker 1: has been taken on by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters or

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Speaker 1: g h c Q, and it will also be used

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Speaker 1: by Britain's the intel agencies, the Secret Intelligence Service or

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Speaker 1: m I six and the Security Service m I five.

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Speaker 1: It will also be used by the Ministry of Defence

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Speaker 1: in joint operations I think. The following quote from the

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Speaker 1: f T sums up many concerns in Britain when it

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Speaker 1: comes to this deal. Quote. The contract is likely to

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Speaker 1: ignite concerns over sovereignty given that a vast amount of

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Speaker 1: the UK's most secret data will be hosted by a

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Speaker 1: single U S tech company. The agreement, estimated by industry

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Speaker 1: experts to be worth five hundred million pounds to one

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Speaker 1: billion pounds over the next decade, was signed this year.

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Speaker 1: According to four people familiar with the discussions. However, the

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Speaker 1: details are closely guarded and we're not intended to be

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Speaker 1: made public end quote. At least when in the US

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Speaker 1: the CIA did their deal with Amazon, the figures were

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Speaker 1: out there for the public to see. For us here

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Speaker 1: in the UK, we're not even allowed to know how

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Speaker 1: much of our money as taxpayers went into this deal

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Speaker 1: with Amazon, and they didn't even want the details to

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Speaker 1: get out at all. Sadly, this level of secrecy and

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Speaker 1: audacity from our government is nothing new. Despite the utterly

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Speaker 1: negligent lack of coverage on this in the mainstream media,

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Speaker 1: the UK is actually slowly becoming an increasingly authoritarian country.

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Speaker 1: This isn't a political earbashion either, don't worry, this is

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Speaker 1: just an objective fact. Take, for example, the current government's

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Speaker 1: plans to introduce something called the Police, Crime, Sentencing and

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Speaker 1: Court Bill. It's a long bill, but to sum it up,

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Speaker 1: it's effectively an openly authoritarian plan put forward by the

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Speaker 1: Tory government to criminalize protests, even completely peaceful ones. It

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Speaker 1: will give police the powers to shut down any protest

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Speaker 1: based on extremely vague parameters such as noise levels. So

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Speaker 1: if it passes, you could literally be legally arrested by

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Speaker 1: the police for simply banging a drum at a protest.

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Speaker 1: The bill has passed its first round of votes and

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Speaker 1: will almost definitely be made into law. Once that's passed,

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Speaker 1: the data collected on all protesters will no doubt end

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Speaker 1: up processed in the new AWS cloud contracted to Amazon

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Speaker 1: by the British government for an undisclosed fee. In this

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Speaker 1: hypothetical situation, you could argue that Amazon would essentially become

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Speaker 1: a tool for the blatant degradation of a free society.

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Speaker 1: I mentioned all of this because I think when you

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Speaker 1: look at the grand scheme of things, it all starts

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Speaker 1: to tie into each other. I think that becomes even

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Speaker 1: clearer when you look at what some of this new

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Speaker 1: Amazon a WS built technology will be used for. It

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Speaker 1: will quote enable spiers to share data more easily from

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Speaker 1: field locations overseas and power specialist applications such as speech recognition,

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Speaker 1: which can spot and translate particular voices from ours worth

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Speaker 1: of intercepted recordings end quote. As we know, governments often

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Speaker 1: use spy technology like this to keep tabs on its

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Speaker 1: own citizens. Got you saying? The executive director of Privacy,

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Speaker 1: International charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy

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Speaker 1: across the world, said the following quote. This is yet

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Speaker 1: another worrying public private partnership agreed in secret. If this

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Speaker 1: contract goes through, Amazon will be positioned as the go

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Speaker 1: to cloud provider for the world's intelligence agencies. Amazon has

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Speaker 1: to answer for itself which country security services it would

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Speaker 1: be prepared to work for. Ends quote. I think he's

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Speaker 1: got a good point there. Now very in mind, this

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Speaker 1: Amazon a w S deal is all backed by Jeremy Fleming,

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Speaker 1: the director of g h c Q, who was said

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Speaker 1: he wants to put artificial intelligence at quote the heart

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Speaker 1: of British spy agencies. Now trust me, it's not just

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Speaker 1: me who sees a problem with this a w S

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Speaker 1: spy cloud. Even British MPs have kicked up a fuss

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Speaker 1: in Parliament over it. Politicians from Labor, the British opposition party,

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Speaker 1: have demanded that PRETP tell the Home Secretary explain why

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Speaker 1: Britain will be using a US based company for our

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Speaker 1: most secretive information. They're also asking if any risk assessment

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Speaker 1: was done before this deal was put into motion. One

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Speaker 1: Labor MP named Conor mcgin wrote in a letter saying

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Speaker 1: quote these reports are deeply concerning and raised serious questions

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Speaker 1: about the wider security safeguards in place when it comes

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Speaker 1: to the potential risks of outsource in critical elements of

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Speaker 1: UK national security infrastructure to non UK based companies end quote. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you look at the history of Britain, outsourcing is

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Speaker 1: hardly something politicians have cared about before. For example, Margaret Thatcher,

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Speaker 1: the now deceased former Prime minister, decimated the north of

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Speaker 1: the country through outsourcing. But I digress now. The response

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Speaker 1: from the government to the Amazon a w S UK

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Speaker 1: spy cloud was frankly a bit blunt and unhelpful. A

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Speaker 1: British government spokesman said the following quote, I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to comment on the technology used by intelligence services for

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Speaker 1: both security and commercial sensitivity reasons end quote. Amazon, for

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Speaker 1: their part, declined to comment entirely. Now, I think one

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Speaker 1: thing that's worth considering once all these a WS spy

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Speaker 1: agency clouds are up and running is what if there's

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Speaker 1: a major outage. Well, in December twenty one, there was

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Speaker 1: a major a WS outage, Amazon's web server suffering a

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Speaker 1: crippling outage today delivery trucks halted for a time and

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Speaker 1: taking parts of the Internet with it. The problem not

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Speaker 1: only affecting Amazon, but reportedly many other major services, including Netflix,

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Speaker 1: Disney Plus, and some of the smart devices right in

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Speaker 1: your own home. That massive Amazon server outage temporarily crippling

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Speaker 1: some of the world's most popular online services. It went

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Speaker 1: through over the JIB. The service was down for several

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Speaker 1: hours after a loss of power at one single data

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Speaker 1: center in the US. The knock on effect was massive.

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Speaker 1: The PlayStation network went down, Zoom went down, Slack went down,

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Speaker 1: so did Hulu, Disney, Imager, Epic Games, Grinder, Asana, Netflix,

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Speaker 1: and many more applications and sites. It affected many services

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Speaker 1: for hours, and this was actually the third a WS

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Speaker 1: outage in the space of four weeks. What happens if

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Speaker 1: the secret intelligence clouds of the world's most powerful countries

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Speaker 1: get an AWS style outage. My guess is it would

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Speaker 1: be much worse than not being able to play Halo

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Speaker 1: for a few hours. So we know Amazon is spying

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Speaker 1: on customers in their homes and is now helping actual

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Speaker 1: spy agencies spy on people across the world. Now, let's

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Speaker 1: be real. The world is a big, bad place and

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Speaker 1: there will always be some need for espionage. Otherwise, every

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Speaker 1: hostile country would have the drop on each other, Militants

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Speaker 1: would be able to attack innocent people at will, and

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Speaker 1: it will probably be more chaotic than it already is.

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Speaker 1: But I think we have to ask ourselves, knowing what

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Speaker 1: we know about Amazon, do we really want them to

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Speaker 1: become the new Big Brother. Well, as we've spoken about

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Speaker 1: in this episode, that becomes a really we won't even

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Speaker 1: have a choice in the matter. On the next episode

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Speaker 1: of Mega Corp, we'll be looking at Jeff bezos quest

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Speaker 1: to dominate space and the questionable dealings of his Blue

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Speaker 1: origin commercial rocket company. Megacorp is made by my production

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Speaker 1: company H eleven for Cool Zone Media. It's written, researched,

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Speaker 1: and produced by myself, Jake Hanrahan. It was also produced

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Speaker 1: by Sophie Lichtman. Music is by some Black, graphics by

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Speaker 1: Adam Doyle and sound engineering by Splicing Block. If you

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Speaker 1: want to get in touch, follow me on social media

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Speaker 1: at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h a n A h

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Speaker 1: A n