Posted on 02/09/2019 4:47:18 AM PST by free_life
Full tile: Jeff Bezos Protests the Invasion of His Privacy, as Amazon Builds a Sprawling Surveillance State for Everyone Else
IF BEZOS WERE the political victim of surveillance state abuses, it would be scandalous and dangerous. It would also be deeply ironic.
That’s because Amazon, the company that has made Bezos the planet’s richest human being, is a critical partner for the U.S. Government in building an ever-more invasive, militarized and sprawling surveillance state. Indeed, one of the largest components of Amazon’s business, and thus one of the most important sources of Bezos’ vast wealth and power, is working with the Pentagon and the NSA to empower the U.S. Government with more potent and more sophisticated weapons, including surveillance weapons.
Beyond allowing police departments to “store citizens’ crime reports on Amazon’s servers, rather than those operated by the police,” the Amazon products “will allow users to report crimes directly to their smart speakers,” an innovation David Murakami Wood, a scholar of surveillance, warned “serves as a startling reminder of the growing reach that technology companies have into our daily lives, intimate habits, and vulnerable moments — with and without our permission.”
Imagine if a neighborhood was set up with these doorbell cameras. Simply walking up to a friend’s house could result in your face, your fingerprint, or your voice being flagged as “suspicious” and delivered to a government database without your knowledge or consent. With Amazon selling the devices, operating the servers, and pushing the technology on law enforcement, the company is building all the pieces of a surveillance network, reaching from the government all the way to our front doors.
(Excerpt) Read more at theintercept.com ...
Then there’s the patent Amazon obtained last October, as reported by the Intercept, “that would allow its virtual assistant Alexa to decipher a user’s physical characteristics and emotional state based on their voice.” In particular, it would enable anyone using the product to determine a person’s accent and likely place of origin: “The algorithm would also consider a customer’s physical location — based on their IP address, primary shipping address, and browser settings — to help determine their accent.”
All of this is taking place as Amazon vies for, and is the favorite to win, one of the largest Pentagon contracts yet: a $10 billion agreement to provide exclusive cloud services to the world’s largest military. CNN reported just last week that the company is now enmeshed in scandal over that effort, specifically a formal investigation into “whether Amazon improperly hired a former Defense Department worker who was involved with a $10 billion government contract for which the tech company is competing.”
Bezos’ relationship with the military and spying agencies of the U.S. Government, and law enforcement agencies around the world, predates his purchase of the Washington Post and has become a central prong of Amazon’s business growth. Back in 2014, Amazon secured a massive contract with the CIA when the spy agency agreed to pay it $600 million for computing cloud software. As the Atlantic noted at the time, Amazon’s software “will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community.”
Given how vital the military and spy agencies now are to Amazon’s business, it’s unsurprising that the amount Amazon pays to lobbyists to serve its interests in Washington has exploded: quadrupling since 2013 from $3 million to almost $15 million last year, according to Open Secrets.
Bezos, given how much he works and profits to destroy the privacy of everyone else (to say nothing of the labor abuses of his company), is about the least sympathetic victim imaginable of privacy invasion. In the past, hard-core surveillance cheerleaders in Congress such as Dianne Feinstein, Pete Hoekstra, and Jane Harman became overnight, indignant privacy advocates when they learned that the surveillance state apparatus they long cheered had been turned against them.
Perhaps being a victim of privacy invasion will help Jeff Bezos realize the evils of what his company is enabling. Only time will tell. As of now, one of the world’s greatest privacy invaders just had his privacy invaded. “Amazon is building the tools for authoritarian surveillance that advocates, activists, community leaders, politicians, and experts have repeatedly warned against.”
I’d love to know who was clever enough to get past all of the security, take naked pictures of Bezos without his knowledge and put them on his cell phone so they could be hacked.
In December, 2017, Amazon boasted that it had perfected new face-recognition software for crowds, which it called Rekognition. It explained that the product is intended, in large part, for use by governments and police forces around the world. The ACLU quickly warned that the product is “dangerous” and that Amazon “is actively helping governments deploy it.”
“Powered by artificial intelligence,” wrote the ACLU, “Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces.” The group warned: “Amazon’s Rekognition raises profound civil liberties and civil rights concerns.” In a separate advisory, the ACLU said of this face-recognition software that Amazon’s “marketing materials read like a user manual for the type of authoritarian surveillance you can currently see in China.”
Not a good idea. It should be in house and strictly controlled and managed by the military.
Besides, I thought the largest military in the world belonged to China...
It does. Everyone knows that in order to do business in China, you have to give your technology to China. Bezos wants to do business in China, so...…….
Oh the irony. They have fallen into the trap they set for us.
ENJOY, BESOS. You’ve earned it.
bezos is money-mad. He wants ultimate power and money. Strange thing for a worm of a man.
Jeff Bezos should have total lack of privacy, both real and imagined. To the point where others cannot look at him without snickering to themselves and wondering if any of the rumors are true.
This is because much of his power is based on his ego and personna. If some small boy points out both that the emperor wears no clothes, so he also probably was doing “that” with a squid filled pumpkin, while hopped up on jenkem, it will be the end of Bezos reign.
National Inquirer should say they got the information from Alexa
No we are .. 70,000,000 gun owners, a constitutional militia. Next the US is still by far the most powerful professional military and Europe combined would be next, and anyone wanting to take on Israel would learn a hard lesson. China has largest number of active military personnel 2.5 million I think, but most would die before reaching any military goal if sent to fight a nuclear power or superior navy.
India would be formidable, hopefully if they ever go to war they are on our side.
Love it... Alexa who is most perverted selfie texter? Jeff Bezos!
I have been thinking about this! He loves to invade the privacy of everyone else, but don’t touch his tallywacker photos.
Funny that his chief security guy is named Becker.
National Enq is run by a guy named Pecker.
They put out photos of Jeff Bezos Pecker.
We need someone to come up with a joke using this story and these words. Like the old Copper Caper gag.
Great quote: “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” —Donald J. Trump, State of the Union speech 2019.
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