Amazon Wants a Key to Your House. I Did It. I Regretted It.

Megalith

Megalith

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One writer shares his experience with Amazon’s in-home delivery service, Amazon Key, and did not have the best experience. While nobody ran off with his boxes or burgled his house, Amazon missed four of his in-home deliveries and charged him (on top of a Prime membership) for gear that occasionally jammed and made it awkward to share his own door with people, apps, services, and other retailers.

My Amazon Key setup was finicky, even though Amazon sent someone to help. My installer was friendly but found a problem with my decades-old door he wasn’t authorized to fix, so I paid a locksmith $100 for a new strike plate, which was Amazon’s recommendation. That wasn’t enough. From time to time, my Kwikset Convert lock makes a screech that would alarm a hyena, and flashes a warning in the Key app about jamming. Even worse, that happened during an Amazon delivery.
 
Amazon Key, coming soon near you.

Bedroom-Robbery.jpg
 
It's a mindset where you trust the company-specific delivery person who has a camera on them the entire time, more than you trust your neighbors or the people "half a town away", and you'd rather have the package securely in your home than sitting out on your steps where anyone can just drive by and snatch it. Let's hope that vetting company actually vets the people it has vetting other people :)
 
This could be nice for house/apartment that have 2 doors otherwise it's creepy as hell lol... I would install another lock on the inside door.
Why don't they make a window add-on much like you have at convenience store at night... with their phone they could unlock it and insert the package...
 
MMitch said:
This could be nice for house/apartment that have 2 doors otherwise it's creepy as hell lol... I would install another lock on the inside door.
Why don't they make a window add-on much like you have at convenience store at night... with their phone they could unlock it and insert the package...
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Not a bad idea at all. But, because it's Amazon... it'll need to be the size of a phone booth.
 
would you give a key to a handyman if you didn't know him or know anyone who knew him? DO you actually think Amazon will have employees who are screened better than that unknown handyman?

Anything for convenience, hu America?
 
Just want to take one second to say...


HA!!!


Please continue.
 
I thank the writer for doing the stupid things so I can be informed. Also, fuck the idea of smart homes (connected to companies, props to the DIY ppl who wanna mess around and have fun). As stupid as the idea of a clapper lighting system. Just get up and shut the lights yourself.
 
I think this idea is pretty stupid too, but it does come with a camera so if someone wanted to rob you they'd be on tape. Doesn't prevent robbery but it'd be easy to identify them (unless they rolled up in a ski mask or something, though I would hope that Amazon would vet their delivery operators at least a little bit and know who was making the delivery).
 
It would make more sense if it became somewhat normal for residential homes to have something like a large locking cabinet outside. Only the delivery companies you use have access. But that's still an outdoor locker. Apartments could have banks of them as needed (many complexes already take deliveries at one location).

But WTF overcomplicate this by trying to allow access into the home? This is idiotic. They could just drop off a locker and bolt it to the side of your house.
 
Given my recent experience, I would never allow this service, unless it was going into a mud room with an additional separate lock.

Last week I noticed things moving around my garage. I looked deeper and noticed stuff missing. I reviewed the cameras and noticed this corresponded with me leaving the house and my roommate entering the garage, then leaving with a large suitcase.

I busted her when she stupidly put an item on OfferUp with a serial# visible - but the damage was done. Probably over a thousand dollars worth of equipment, tools, and other hardware was stolen.

Moral of the story? Cameras are great, but a smart enough criminal will shield from it. My roommate wrapped items in plastic and suitcases, so you could only make a reasonable assumption that it was the stolen property. If someone I've known and trusted for a long time could do this, just imagine the anxiety of random folks entering your house.
 
Fucking people are dumb.

First internet enabled microphones

Now they are letting them in to their homes.

I cant even think of anything hyperbolic next cause they'd probably do that too.
 
I am imagining the car accidents, doors left unlocked, damaged packages, etc when they expect their drivers to deliver like they expect their warehouse workers to pick orders.
 
Nobody's thinking of the poor drivers here. Imagine the serial killer that buys this, so he can lure Amazon drivers into his house. :vamp:
 
thesmokingman said:
It might work better with a lock box ala real estate agents. But yea, post #2 ftw.
Click to expand...

yeah right. There are a ton of irresponsible real estate agents. Almost any idiot can get a license to become a re agent. The barrier to entry is super low.

The lockbox might tell you which agent entered the house, but you don't know if he put the key back, or locked the door, and surely don't have a camera pointed at him.

lockboxes are weak.
 
Jeff Bezos is a CIA operative, and Amazon and Washington Post are CIA assets. Bezos is the largest business partner of the CIA, and has deals to create and manage data infrastructure for the CIA. Amazon is one of the most popular sites in the world, and generates more user data than most any other site. Guess who is getting access to all of that data, and which data analysis systems it is being compiled into? Bezos wasn't even the lowest bidder for his initial $600 million contract to manage data for the CIA, yet was still awarded their contract. I think most likely because the bidding process was just for show, while giving the contract to Bezos so that the CIA could incorporate Amazon's mass data generation into CIA data-analysis systems was always intended.

http://www.accuracy.org/release/cia-cloud-over-jeff-bezoss-washington-post/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-amazons-collaboration_b_4824854.html
https://www.rt.com/usa/410453-amazon-cloud-secret-region/


And as if to reciprocate the favour from Amazon, the US government has passed a government procurement bill that has the potential to funnel around $53 billion in government spending into Amazon.

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/02/amazon-amendment-online-marketplaces/
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/17/a...ol-53-billion-in-federal-government-spending/


The CIA indiscriminately hacks and installs monitoring tech into cell phones, routers, webcams, OSes, motherboard firmwares, and intercepts servers and installs tracking equipment into them. It doesn't matter whether a person is suspected of doing something or not, the CIA simply wants to tag and have its tracking and monitoring on every person in the world.

Similar to how the CIA has been stacking US news organizations with CIA operatives since the 1950's (starting with Operation Mockingbird), the CIA also gets agents recruited from, and hired to technology companies to deploy backdoors, and to report on vulnerabilities. And the FBI has been caught paying Best Buy Geek Squad employees to snoop on customers.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...nd-computers-evidence-criminal-activity.shtml
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/fbi-us...o-increase-secret-public-surveillance-7950030

Obviously, the US government will do the exact same thing with Amazon's in-home delivery persons that they did with Best Buy's Geek Squad, and pay delivery persons to snoop on people's homes, to install tracking or listening devices, to collect information about the residence - and no tracking ankle-bracelet showing where a delivery person went in the home, or for how long is going to offer any assurances, as they'll obviously just hack them to show what they want to be shown.

Just like when a person uses Amazon, they have to accept that their data is being compiled and analyzed by the CIA, if they allow an Amazon delivery person to enter into their home, then they have to accept that they've invited the CIA into their home, and that the CIA is going to whatever they please with that access. I think that once a person uses Amazon's in-home delivery service even once, that, no matter how small the chance, the person has to accept that it's possible their home is no longer private to themselves.
 
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SighTurtle said:
I thank the writer for doing the stupid things so I can be informed. Also, fuck the idea of smart homes (connected to companies, props to the DIY ppl who wanna mess around and have fun). As stupid as the idea of a clapper lighting system. Just get up and shut the lights yourself.
Click to expand...

Or You can be smart like me and have a 120v switch set to a key fob or cell phone.
 
Semantics said:
If you live in a neighborhood where you can't leave packages outside why the fuck would you want whoever they could hire drop shit off inside your house
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At least the delivery person will probably drop a deuce in your toilet instead of on your driveway. They probably won't flush though, just to give you that "full-service" experience.
 
NeoNemesis said:
Naive logical fallacy argument
Click to expand...

As the links show, Bezos' deals with the CIA bolster and expand his business. And in his praise for the CIA, Bezos has shown that he personally believes in the CIA's mission, and has said he hopes to strengthen their working relationship.

You must have been insulated from any news from the previous many years, to still be able to think that confirmed standard US intel agency modus operandi is "insane."

https://www.pcworld.com/article/317...releases-detection-tool-for-efi-rootkits.html
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...de-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/
https://www.rt.com/news/379775-cia-weaponized-85pc-worlds-smartphones/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ocuments-reveal-CIA-hacked-Wi-Fi-routers.html
https://arstechnica.com/information...t-cia-operation-for-infecting-air-gapped-pcs/
https://www.rt.com/viral/398411-cia-wikileaks-webcam-surveillance/
https://arstechnica.com/information...-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-...r-cia-agent-and-deputy-director-directorate-i
https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...pying-how-the-cia-secretly-recruits-academics
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-...instream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

It was a person from The Washington Post, now owned by Jeff Bezos, who was recruited to run the CIA's Operation Mockingbird, which was about stacking US news organizations with CIA operatives.


I hope that these links help clarify things. And as you can see, all of it is as factual as the FBI paying Best Buy's Geek Squad to snoop on people's PCs.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/...urth-Amendment-Safeguards-by-using-Geek-Squad


Jeff Bezos is Amazon's founder and CEO, and Amazon is one of the largest user data-producing sites in the world. Jeff Bezos praises the CIA, and has signed contracts with the CIA to create and manage data-infrastructure, including a clandestine cloud data service for US intel agencies. Bezos also bought the Washington Post, an outlet known for pushing CIA narratives, and for regularly featuring CIA-insider stories, at the same time as he made his first $600 million data-infrastructure deal with the CIA, in 2013. The US government, which has wantonly abused every avenue of access to spy on and monitor US citizens for at least a good half-century, has passed a bill to favour US online retailers for government purchases, which would send a good portion of $53 billion in government spending in Amazon's direction.

Amazon's in-home delivery service is a golden ticket for the CIA to do all the things that the CIA has always done, now with direct access to potentially hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of homes. As such letting an Amazon in-home delivery-person access your home when you're not around is not different than giving the CIA an open invitation to bug or do whatever they'd like to to your home.
 
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Delicieuxz said:
Holy leaps of logic Batman
Click to expand...

Work hard enough and you can connect pretty much anything.

It could just as easily be explained as:

1) Amazon won the CIA contract because it had the features they needed at an acceptable price.

2) They are a big client so he plays nice with them.

The complexity of the conspiracy you are weaving would require so many participants that it would be impossible to keep it a secret for more than about two minutes.

Just take the tinfoil hat off and join the rest of society.
 
Honestly why do they even need to do this? Why cant you install something like a mail box on your porch? Sure it wont be able accept everything due to size but fuck letting someone in my house. Only a matter of time before some one gets shot. Amazon is going to be liable if something happens. What happens when it does get hacked? Yes the common criminal wont be able to figure it out but some nerd will and then put it out there for all the criminals to use.
 
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SighTurtle said:
I thank the writer for doing the stupid things so I can be informed. Also, fuck the idea of smart homes (connected to companies, props to the DIY ppl who wanna mess around and have fun). As stupid as the idea of a clapper lighting system. Just get up and shut the lights yourself.
Click to expand...
I guess I'm not worried about what information Phillips is retrieving from my lighting habits :rolleyes:
 
Delicieuxz said:
Jeff Bezos is a CIA operative, and Amazon and Washington Post are CIA assets. Bezos is the largest business partner of the CIA, and has deals to create and manage data infrastructure for the CIA. Amazon is one of the most popular sites in the world, and generates more user data than most any other site. Guess who is getting access to all of that data, and which data analysis systems it is being compiled into? Bezos wasn't even the lowest bidder for his initial $600 million contract to manage data for the CIA, yet was still awarded their contract. I think most likely because the bidding process was just for show, while giving the contract to Bezos so that the CIA could incorporate Amazon's mass data generation into CIA data-analysis systems was always intended.

http://www.accuracy.org/release/cia-cloud-over-jeff-bezoss-washington-post/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-amazons-collaboration_b_4824854.html
https://www.rt.com/usa/410453-amazon-cloud-secret-region/


And as if to reciprocate the favour from Amazon, the US government has passed a government procurement bill that has the potential to funnel around $53 billion in government spending into Amazon.

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/02/amazon-amendment-online-marketplaces/
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/17/a...ol-53-billion-in-federal-government-spending/


The CIA indiscriminately hacks and installs monitoring tech into cell phones, routers, webcams, OSes, motherboard firmwares, and intercepts servers and installs tracking equipment into them. It doesn't matter whether a person is suspected of doing something or not, the CIA simply wants to tag and have its tracking and monitoring on every person in the world.

Similar to how the CIA has been stacking US news organizations with CIA operatives since the 1950's (starting with Operation Mockingbird), the CIA also gets agents recruited from, and hired to technology companies to deploy backdoors, and to report on vulnerabilities. And the FBI has been caught paying Best Buy Geek Squad employees to snoop on customers.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...nd-computers-evidence-criminal-activity.shtml
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/fbi-us...o-increase-secret-public-surveillance-7950030

Obviously, the US government will do the exact same thing with Amazon's in-home delivery persons that they did with Best Buy's Geek Squad, and pay delivery persons to snoop on people's homes, to install tracking or listening devices, to collect information about the residence - and no tracking ankle-bracelet showing where a delivery person went in the home, or for how long is going to offer any assurances, as they'll obviously just hack them to show what they want to be shown.

Just like when a person uses Amazon, they have to accept that their data is being compiled and analyzed by the CIA, if they allow an Amazon delivery person to enter into their home, then they have to accept that they've invited the CIA into their home, and that the CIA is going to whatever they please with that access. I think that once a person uses Amazon's in-home delivery service even once, that, no matter how small the chance, the person has to accept that it's possible their home is no longer private to themselves.
Click to expand...

The RT guy again...
 
NeoNemesis said:
Work hard enough and you can connect pretty much anything.

It could just as easily be explained as:

1) Amazon won the CIA contract because it had the features they needed at an acceptable price.

2) They are a big client so he plays nice with them.

The complexity of the conspiracy you are weaving would require so many participants that it would be impossible to keep it a secret for more than about two minutes.
Click to expand...

It's not complex. At the simplest design, the only participants it requires are those who are already working for a US intel agency, and who are willing to be an Amazon delivery person - and maybe Bezos seeing that mission-friendly people are given delivery staff manager positions, starting in areas of most interest. History shows that the CIA has had success stacking US news media with operatives, both by having its agents get employed by news agencies, and by recruiting people already working for news agencies. And the FBI had success in getting Geek Squad employees to snoop on people's PC in exchange for money.

We already know of factors lending to exploitation, but you're rationalizing the potential they present as if it's pre-determined concluded they don't mean anything. In the context of all the compounding factors, and the known history of US agency actions, they are pretty big red flags, IMO. In fact, it's proven that US agencies use these exact methods. So, why would the case of granting unsupervized access to one's own house, the holy grail of snooping opportunities, be an exception in the eyes of US agencies? I'm sure there are people at US agencies already salivating over the prospects of what can be done with that kind of access freely available to the CIA's close business-partner.

Also, it isn't necessarily a matter of connecting existing factors to say that this is happening right now, but is a matter of recognizing that if there's an avenue for exploitation available, the CIA will make use of it, and that US agencies have made non-lawful usage of less golden opportunities.

Also, it's not just US intel agencies that will seek to exploit this, but police will, as well. They already do these things - impersonate delivery persons, plant fake evidence, plant eavesdropping and tracking gadgets on suspect vehicles, monitor houses...

If they know that in-home deliveries are going to a suspect's house, they're going to make use of that - and not necessarily with Amazon's awareness, but also potentially by intercepting the delivery person and asking them to do something for them, like leave a listening device inside the house, or to report to them on what the house looks like on the inside, whether there are any signs of illegal possessions, smells that indicate drugs, etc.

It's a given that the access is going to be tapped by non-delivery interests.


scan13 said:
The RT guy again...
Click to expand...

Is that supposed to mean something? I can only imagine what you'd be trying to insinuate if I'd linked to a site like CNN, or NYT (one of the CIA's "most valuable" infiltration targets and success stories).
 
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burglars will start carjacking amazon vans, or just following them then running up to the house when the guy opens the door.
 
NeoNemesis said:
Work hard enough and you can connect pretty much anything.

It could just as easily be explained as:

1) Amazon won the CIA contract because it had the features they needed at an acceptable price.

2) They are a big client so he plays nice with them.

The complexity of the conspiracy you are weaving would require so many participants that it would be impossible to keep it a secret for more than about two minutes.
Click to expand...

By the way, for some insight into the structure that the CIA used to recruit over 400 journalist operatives throughout the 50's - 70's, to see that this is actually done, and to see how the similar infiltration might be possible in other industries, there's a huge detailing of the CIA's media infiltration program in this article from former Washington Post journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein: http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php


Often the CIA’s relationship with a journalist might begin informally with a lunch, a drink, a casual exchange of information. An Agency official might then offer a favor—for example, a trip to a country difficult to reach; in return, he would seek nothing more than the opportunity to debrief the reporter afterward. A few more lunches, a few more favors, and only then might there be a mention of a formal arrangement — “That came later,” said a CIA official, “after you had the journalist on a string.”

Another official described a typical example of the way accredited journalists (either paid or unpaid by the CIA) might be used by the Agency: “In return for our giving them information, we’d ask them to do things that fit their roles as journalists but that they wouldn’t have thought of unless we put it in their minds. For instance, a reporter in Vienna would say to our man, ‘I met an interesting second secretary at the Czech Embassy.’ We’d say, ‘Can you get to know him? And after you get to know him, can you assess him? And then, can you put him in touch with us—would you mind us using your apartment?”‘

Formal recruitment of reporters was generally handled at high levels—after the journalist had undergone a thorough background check. The actual approach might even be made by a deputy director or division chief. On some occasions, no discussion would he entered into until the journalist had signed a pledge of secrecy.



I'm sure that today's methods, especially for a delivery driver and not a journalist, would be a lot more casual. At the time of the article, there were reported to be more than 400 CIA journalist operatives.


Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.


Basically, I'm saying that if there's an snooping / surveillance / subterfuge opportunity to exploit, then the CIA is going to exploit it. And unsupervised access into millions of people's homes is a holy grail of such opportunities for US agencies, and so it's going to be exploited. And on those grounds, I personally would not allow any in-home delivery probably from anywhere, but particularly from CIA bed buddy Amazon.
 
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mnewxcv said:
burglars will start carjacking amazon vans, or just following them then running up to the house when the guy opens the door.
Click to expand...

or they just break your window or kick in your door... Or they just follow delivery people and steal from the people that don't have amazon key... aka just take the box.

sheesh...

People have been letting in service people for a long time. Yes there is greater risk and everyones comfort level and situation are different. Will there be examples of theft, delivery people making sam'ches? Sure, just like bad things happen to anyone/thing.

If you watched the video the delivery people didn't even walk in, opened door and slid the package in. Probably because they have a job and more deliveries to make.
 
We got people here following UPS, FEDEX and USPS, when they drop a package at your door, the followers are running up and grabbing the packages before you are able to go out and get it..
 
Delicieuxz said:
Amazon's in-home delivery service is a golden ticket for the CIA to do all the things that the CIA has always done, now with direct access to potentially hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of homes. As such letting an Amazon in-home delivery-person access your home when you're not around is not different than giving the CIA an open invitation to bug or do whatever they'd like to to your home.
Click to expand...

If the CIA wanted access to a home, they could do it a 101 ways less convoluted than co-opting a fleet of delivery drivers.
 
Just waiting for the switch to "Yeah sorry we're not responsible if your package gets stolen since you didn't have Amazon key service"

If you have the space though, build a little (big?) strong box outside your door using the same lock and have them dump packages in there.
 
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