Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon
Speaker 1: customer because you guys paid progress, you guys paid problems.
Speaker 1: This is megaco an investigative podcast exposing some of the
Speaker 1: world's most unethical corporations. This series is about Amazon. I'm
Speaker 1: Jake Hanrahan, journalists and documentary filmmaker. Megacorp is produced by
Speaker 1: H eleven for cool Zone Media. In the last episode,
Speaker 1: we looked at how Amazon is spying on its customers
Speaker 1: through its home security technology. Today, though, we'll be looking
Speaker 1: at Amazon's dealings with the actual spy agencies, specifically America's
Speaker 1: CIA and the UK's m I five and m I six.
Speaker 1: To understand how Amazon works with these intelligence agencies, for
Speaker 1: we need to look into Amazon Web Services or a WUS.
Speaker 1: AWS will feature a lot in this episode, so let's
Speaker 1: hear what Amazon has to say about it. AWS is
Speaker 1: the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. Millions
Speaker 1: of customers trust AWS to power their infrastructure and applications.
Speaker 1: Organizations of every type in size are using AWS to
Speaker 1: lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. AWS gives
Speaker 1: you more services and more features within those services than
Speaker 1: any other cloud provider. This makes it faster, easier, and
Speaker 1: more cost effective to move your existing applications to the
Speaker 1: cloud and to build anything you can imagine, from infrastructure
Speaker 1: technologies like compute, storage and databases to emerging technologies such
Speaker 1: as machine learning and artificial intelligence, data lakes and analytics,
Speaker 1: and Internet of things. Building on AWS means you can
Speaker 1: choose the right tool for the jar. With AWS, you
Speaker 1: can leverage the latest technologies to experiment and innovate more quickly.
Speaker 1: We are continually accelerating our pace of innovation to invent
Speaker 1: entirely new technologies you can use to transform your business.
Speaker 1: Our infrastructure is built to satisfy the security standards of
Speaker 1: the most risk sensitive organizations. To put it simply, AWS
Speaker 1: is the world's most used cloud computing platform, the cloud
Speaker 1: being a technology that allows users to access the same
Speaker 1: files and applications from almost any device wherever they are.
Speaker 1: So what does Amazon's AWS have to do with the CIA. Well,
Speaker 1: in Amazon secured a contract to build the c I,
Speaker 1: a six hundred million dollar cloud computing technology that would
Speaker 1: service all seventeen of the U S Intelligence agencies. Those
Speaker 1: agencies benefiting from Amazon's cloud technology are as follows. The
Speaker 1: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the
Speaker 1: National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the
Speaker 1: Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug
Speaker 1: Enforcement Administration, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Energy,
Speaker 1: the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, Air
Speaker 1: Force Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Army Military Intelligence, the Office
Speaker 1: of Naval Intelligence, the Marine Corps Intelligence, and the Coast
Speaker 1: Guard Intelligence. Every one of those agencies is using AWS
Speaker 1: created services by Amazon, the same company who has had
Speaker 1: scandal after scandal regarding the improper use of the data, video,
Speaker 1: and sound files of millions of people across the world
Speaker 1: that they have stored in their cloud via their home
Speaker 1: security products the Chat. Amazon's deal with the CIA to
Speaker 1: build them a robust cloud computing technology was first handled
Speaker 1: in secret. When it became public, there were a few
Speaker 1: interesting legal issues, as explained in an Atlantic article about
Speaker 1: the deal by Frank Concole Quote. After weighing bids from
Speaker 1: Amazon Web Services, IBM, and an unnamed third vendor, the
Speaker 1: CIA awarded a contract to a WS worth up to
Speaker 1: six hundred million dollars over a period of up to
Speaker 1: ten years. IBM filed a bid protest with g a
Speaker 1: O that the watchdog eventually upheld in June, forcing the
Speaker 1: CIA to reopen bids to both companies for the contract.
Speaker 1: A legal struggle between Amazon and Big Blue ensued, and
Speaker 1: a WS filed a lawsuit against the federal government in July,
Speaker 1: claiming the g a O sus statement was a flawed decision.
Speaker 1: In October, US Court of Federal Claims, Judge Thomas Wheeler
Speaker 1: sided with Amazon and overturned g ao's decision to force
Speaker 1: the CIA to read but the contrast, Big Blue went home.
Speaker 1: A WS claimed a victory under the deal's original financial specs.
Speaker 1: Nearly eighteen months after the procurement was first released, the
Speaker 1: CIA and Amazon went to work end quote. Now to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of how big this Amazon CIA
Speaker 1: deal was, let me tell you what the c i
Speaker 1: A Chief Information Officer, Douglas Wolfe said about it. He
Speaker 1: called it, quote one of the most important technology procurements
Speaker 1: in recent history. End quote. Well, you might be thinking, well,
Speaker 1: it's the CIA simply leasing technology from Amazon. Bear in
Speaker 1: mind that the Amazon engineers oversee all the hardware for
Speaker 1: this CIA cloud tech. Why Well, because a w S
Speaker 1: actually owns the hardware, and they're the ones responsible for
Speaker 1: maintaining it. That said, let's take a look at some
Speaker 1: of the previous security issues Amazon has had with online security,
Speaker 1: including hearts of its a WS technology. January, hacker broke
Speaker 1: the security of an Amazon owned online store, exposing the
Speaker 1: information twenty four million customers. December fourteen, hackers from Anonymous
Speaker 1: leaked thirteen thousand user names and passwords for Amazon accounts,
Speaker 1: along with several other websites. November twenty fifteen, Amazon found
Speaker 1: a credible security risk was forced to reset the past
Speaker 1: words of thousands of its users. July hacker claimed to
Speaker 1: a brief an Amazon server to obtain the personal details
Speaker 1: of eighty thousand Kindle users. Amazon said the breach wasn't legit,
Speaker 1: to which the hacker responded saying the server was owned
Speaker 1: by Amazon and that the details could be used to
Speaker 1: disable all of the leaked accounts. November eighteen, a major
Speaker 1: data breach of customer information was announced, in which Amazon
Speaker 1: claimed a technical issue led to customers private information accidentally
Speaker 1: being posted online. This information included customers names and email addresses. July,
Speaker 1: a Capital One server using Amazon's a WS was hacked
Speaker 1: by a former Amazon employee. Information of over one million
Speaker 1: customers was exposed, including social security numbers, bank account numbers,
Speaker 1: credit card transaction records, and credit scores. The hacker was
Speaker 1: allegedly an AWS systems engineer. Amazon denied any responsibility for
Speaker 1: the attack. September, Amazon users in Japan begin to see
Speaker 1: the order histories, purchase details, shopper names, and delivery addresses
Speaker 1: of other Amazon customers. There were nothing to do with them.
Speaker 1: This lasted a few days until Amazon said they'd fix
Speaker 1: the problem without fully explaining what had happened. January twenty,
Speaker 1: several Amazon employees were fired after it was discovered they'd
Speaker 1: been sharing sensitive customer data with a third party. Several
Speaker 1: customer email addresses and phone numbers were later leaked online. Again,
Speaker 1: Amazon has never fully explained what happened with this incident. February,
Speaker 1: a large AWS database that wasn't secured was discovered online.
Speaker 1: It held sensitive data or millions of customers in Europe
Speaker 1: for Amazon and for other companies. Names, addresses, emails, phone numbers,
Speaker 1: payment histories, invoice links, and partial credit card numbers were
Speaker 1: all left unsecured. As well as this and Amazon Marketplace
Speaker 1: web Services authentication token was in the database. As well
Speaker 1: as an a w S access key I D. October
Speaker 1: twenty more Amazon employees were fired over a separate incident,
Speaker 1: but they've been leaking Amazon customer email addresses to a
Speaker 1: third party one line. February one third party gained access
Speaker 1: to logitechs AWS cloud server, which contained backup files to
Speaker 1: customer management of risk and compliance data for security matters.
Speaker 1: October one hacker posted one d and twenty eight gigabytes
Speaker 1: of leaked files from Amazon's Twitch streaming service to a
Speaker 1: four Chan message board. The files included Twitches source code,
Speaker 1: earnings numbers for streamers, and much more. For the job. Now,
Speaker 1: I know there was a long list, but it was
Speaker 1: worth going into detail when you consider it's all related
Speaker 1: to the company that ran a six hundred million dollar
Speaker 1: cloud text service for the c I, a arguably the
Speaker 1: most active intelligence agency on Earth. Now, if you're wondering
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this, things might become clearer when
Speaker 1: we take a look at some of the ways in
Speaker 1: which the CIA themselves have spied on people across the world.
Speaker 1: This project mocking Bird in nineteen sixty three, for example,
Speaker 1: Mockingbird was a c I a wire tapping operation initiated
Speaker 1: by then President John F. Kennedy, the CIA secretly listened
Speaker 1: into the phone conversations of journalists to uncover their sources.
Speaker 1: Then there's the time in nineteen sixty nine when the
Speaker 1: CIA wire tapped anti war activists who were opposed to
Speaker 1: the conflict in Vietnam. Frankly, there are many examples of
Speaker 1: US intelligence agencies spying on its own citizens. One of
Speaker 1: the most notorious was exposed by whistleblower Edwards Snowden, who
Speaker 1: showed through stolen documents that the n s A was
Speaker 1: spying on millions of Americans. Privacy is what gives you
Speaker 1: the ability to share with the world who you are
Speaker 1: on your own terms. Privacy is the fountain head of
Speaker 1: all others. Front of speech doesn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: meaning if you can't have a quiet space, a space
Speaker 1: within yourself, within your mind, within the community of your
Speaker 1: friends with you to decide what it is that you
Speaker 1: actually want to say. Without privacy, you don't have anything
Speaker 1: for yourself. Arguing that you don't care about privacy because
Speaker 1: you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you
Speaker 1: don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. Now,
Speaker 1: if you believe that the n s a, the CIA
Speaker 1: and all the others have moved past all that and
Speaker 1: would never do it again. Then I guess sleep easy. However,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth considering that the next wave of
Speaker 1: technology will probably be used by intelligence agencies the same
Speaker 1: way or the others were. What we do know is this, Amazon,
Speaker 1: a gigantic global company that pretty much openly has no
Speaker 1: scruples when it comes to abusing its workers and spying
Speaker 1: on its customers, has contracts were of the CIA to
Speaker 1: run a cloud network for the data of all seventeen
Speaker 1: of its intelligence agencies, agencies that also have no scruples
Speaker 1: on spying on people and harvesting data to serve its
Speaker 1: own purposes. But don't worry, I'm not about to go
Speaker 1: all conspiracy theorists on you. But honestly, it is no
Speaker 1: secret that the lines between big tech government agencies and
Speaker 1: mega corporations are becoming increasingly blurred. Facebook and Twitter's constant
Speaker 1: compliance with both totalitarian regimes and global intelligence agencies has
Speaker 1: proved this time and again. As we can see, Amazon
Speaker 1: is certainly no stranger to this game either. In less
Speaker 1: than thirty years since it was founded, Amazon went from
Speaker 1: a company that sells cheap books to one that builds
Speaker 1: cloud storage databases for the CIA and willingly gives the
Speaker 1: US police access to its customers home security networks during
Speaker 1: civil rights protests. When you put all of this into context,
Speaker 1: I think personally that it starts to feel like we're
Speaker 1: already running full pel into a grim corporate dystopia. But
Speaker 1: that's me. I'm quite cynical now, Americans, don't worry. It's
Speaker 1: not just you lot that have Amazon team and not
Speaker 1: with your intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, the same thing is happening
Speaker 1: in my country in the UK. Last year in one
Speaker 1: it was revealed in the British media that the country's
Speaker 1: three main intelligence agencies had contracted Amazon's a WS to
Speaker 1: host classified data in a deal that the Financial Times
Speaker 1: newspaper said was quote aimed at boosting the use of data,
Speaker 1: analytics and artificial intelligence for espionage end quote. The technology
Speaker 1: has been taken on by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters or
Speaker 1: g h c Q, and it will also be used
Speaker 1: by Britain's the intel agencies, the Secret Intelligence Service or
Speaker 1: m I six and the Security Service m I five.
Speaker 1: It will also be used by the Ministry of Defence
Speaker 1: in joint operations I think. The following quote from the
Speaker 1: f T sums up many concerns in Britain when it
Speaker 1: comes to this deal. Quote. The contract is likely to
Speaker 1: ignite concerns over sovereignty given that a vast amount of
Speaker 1: the UK's most secret data will be hosted by a
Speaker 1: single U S tech company. The agreement, estimated by industry
Speaker 1: experts to be worth five hundred million pounds to one
Speaker 1: billion pounds over the next decade, was signed this year.
Speaker 1: According to four people familiar with the discussions. However, the
Speaker 1: details are closely guarded and we're not intended to be
Speaker 1: made public end quote. At least when in the US
Speaker 1: the CIA did their deal with Amazon, the figures were
Speaker 1: out there for the public to see. For us here
Speaker 1: in the UK, we're not even allowed to know how
Speaker 1: much of our money as taxpayers went into this deal
Speaker 1: with Amazon, and they didn't even want the details to
Speaker 1: get out at all. Sadly, this level of secrecy and
Speaker 1: audacity from our government is nothing new. Despite the utterly
Speaker 1: negligent lack of coverage on this in the mainstream media,
Speaker 1: the UK is actually slowly becoming an increasingly authoritarian country.
Speaker 1: This isn't a political earbashion either, don't worry, this is
Speaker 1: just an objective fact. Take, for example, the current government's
Speaker 1: plans to introduce something called the Police, Crime, Sentencing and
Speaker 1: Court Bill. It's a long bill, but to sum it up,
Speaker 1: it's effectively an openly authoritarian plan put forward by the
Speaker 1: Tory government to criminalize protests, even completely peaceful ones. It
Speaker 1: will give police the powers to shut down any protest
Speaker 1: based on extremely vague parameters such as noise levels. So
Speaker 1: if it passes, you could literally be legally arrested by
Speaker 1: the police for simply banging a drum at a protest.
Speaker 1: The bill has passed its first round of votes and
Speaker 1: will almost definitely be made into law. Once that's passed,
Speaker 1: the data collected on all protesters will no doubt end
Speaker 1: up processed in the new AWS cloud contracted to Amazon
Speaker 1: by the British government for an undisclosed fee. In this
Speaker 1: hypothetical situation, you could argue that Amazon would essentially become
Speaker 1: a tool for the blatant degradation of a free society.
Speaker 1: I mentioned all of this because I think when you
Speaker 1: look at the grand scheme of things, it all starts
Speaker 1: to tie into each other. I think that becomes even
Speaker 1: clearer when you look at what some of this new
Speaker 1: Amazon a WS built technology will be used for. It
Speaker 1: will quote enable spiers to share data more easily from
Speaker 1: field locations overseas and power specialist applications such as speech recognition,
Speaker 1: which can spot and translate particular voices from ours worth
Speaker 1: of intercepted recordings end quote. As we know, governments often
Speaker 1: use spy technology like this to keep tabs on its
Speaker 1: own citizens. Got you saying? The executive director of Privacy,
Speaker 1: International charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy
Speaker 1: across the world, said the following quote. This is yet
Speaker 1: another worrying public private partnership agreed in secret. If this
Speaker 1: contract goes through, Amazon will be positioned as the go
Speaker 1: to cloud provider for the world's intelligence agencies. Amazon has
Speaker 1: to answer for itself which country security services it would
Speaker 1: be prepared to work for. Ends quote. I think he's
Speaker 1: got a good point there. Now very in mind, this
Speaker 1: Amazon a w S deal is all backed by Jeremy Fleming,
Speaker 1: the director of g h c Q, who was said
Speaker 1: he wants to put artificial intelligence at quote the heart
Speaker 1: of British spy agencies. Now trust me, it's not just
Speaker 1: me who sees a problem with this a w S
Speaker 1: spy cloud. Even British MPs have kicked up a fuss
Speaker 1: in Parliament over it. Politicians from Labor, the British opposition party,
Speaker 1: have demanded that PRETP tell the Home Secretary explain why
Speaker 1: Britain will be using a US based company for our
Speaker 1: most secretive information. They're also asking if any risk assessment
Speaker 1: was done before this deal was put into motion. One
Speaker 1: Labor MP named Conor mcgin wrote in a letter saying
Speaker 1: quote these reports are deeply concerning and raised serious questions
Speaker 1: about the wider security safeguards in place when it comes
Speaker 1: to the potential risks of outsource in critical elements of
Speaker 1: UK national security infrastructure to non UK based companies end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: if you look at the history of Britain, outsourcing is
Speaker 1: hardly something politicians have cared about before. For example, Margaret Thatcher,
Speaker 1: the now deceased former Prime minister, decimated the north of
Speaker 1: the country through outsourcing. But I digress now. The response
Speaker 1: from the government to the Amazon a w S UK
Speaker 1: spy cloud was frankly a bit blunt and unhelpful. A
Speaker 1: British government spokesman said the following quote, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to comment on the technology used by intelligence services for
Speaker 1: both security and commercial sensitivity reasons end quote. Amazon, for
Speaker 1: their part, declined to comment entirely. Now, I think one
Speaker 1: thing that's worth considering once all these a WS spy
Speaker 1: agency clouds are up and running is what if there's
Speaker 1: a major outage. Well, in December twenty one, there was
Speaker 1: a major a WS outage, Amazon's web server suffering a
Speaker 1: crippling outage today delivery trucks halted for a time and
Speaker 1: taking parts of the Internet with it. The problem not
Speaker 1: only affecting Amazon, but reportedly many other major services, including Netflix,
Speaker 1: Disney Plus, and some of the smart devices right in
Speaker 1: your own home. That massive Amazon server outage temporarily crippling
Speaker 1: some of the world's most popular online services. It went
Speaker 1: through over the JIB. The service was down for several
Speaker 1: hours after a loss of power at one single data
Speaker 1: center in the US. The knock on effect was massive.
Speaker 1: The PlayStation network went down, Zoom went down, Slack went down,
Speaker 1: so did Hulu, Disney, Imager, Epic Games, Grinder, Asana, Netflix,
Speaker 1: and many more applications and sites. It affected many services
Speaker 1: for hours, and this was actually the third a WS
Speaker 1: outage in the space of four weeks. What happens if
Speaker 1: the secret intelligence clouds of the world's most powerful countries
Speaker 1: get an AWS style outage. My guess is it would
Speaker 1: be much worse than not being able to play Halo
Speaker 1: for a few hours. So we know Amazon is spying
Speaker 1: on customers in their homes and is now helping actual
Speaker 1: spy agencies spy on people across the world. Now, let's
Speaker 1: be real. The world is a big, bad place and
Speaker 1: there will always be some need for espionage. Otherwise, every
Speaker 1: hostile country would have the drop on each other, Militants
Speaker 1: would be able to attack innocent people at will, and
Speaker 1: it will probably be more chaotic than it already is.
Speaker 1: But I think we have to ask ourselves, knowing what
Speaker 1: we know about Amazon, do we really want them to
Speaker 1: become the new Big Brother. Well, as we've spoken about
Speaker 1: in this episode, that becomes a really we won't even
Speaker 1: have a choice in the matter. On the next episode
Speaker 1: of Mega Corp, we'll be looking at Jeff bezos quest
Speaker 1: to dominate space and the questionable dealings of his Blue
Speaker 1: origin commercial rocket company. Megacorp is made by my production
Speaker 1: company H eleven for Cool Zone Media. It's written, researched,
Speaker 1: and produced by myself, Jake Hanrahan. It was also produced
Speaker 1: by Sophie Lichtman. Music is by some Black, graphics by
Speaker 1: Adam Doyle and sound engineering by Splicing Block. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch, follow me on social media
Speaker 1: at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h a n A h
Speaker 1: A n