Amazon Is Launching a “Secret” Cloud Service for the CIA

Megalith

Megalith

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Amazon Web Services unveiled a cloud computing region for the CIA and other intelligence community agencies developed specifically to host secret classified data. The AWS Secret Region will allow the 17 intelligence agencies to host, analyze, and run applications on government data classified at the secret level through the company’s $600 million C2S contract, brokered several years ago with the CIA.

The AWS Secret Region is essentially its own commercial data center air-gapped—or shut off—from the rest of the internet. CIA Chief Information Officer John Edwards views the new region as a key step in commercial cloud computing technology that has already changed the way the IC handles data and addresses cybersecurity. AWS also stood up an IC Marketplace, which allows intelligence agencies to download, test and buy software from companies based in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
 
Contractors routinely create, host, or process classified information in their own facilities as long as they go through the proper accreditation. It's really no more dangerous than existing programs/processes so *meh*
 
Yay, another thing to get hacked for more citizen data to be released into the wild.
 
How is it a secret if they are publicly announcing they are going to host ? Sounds like they want to become a massive target......
 
Probably in part motivated by these massive leaks from poorly configured AWS S3 buckets we keep seeing.

It's probably just segregated storage with strong default security settings so that intelligence community goons can't screw it up as easily.
 
scojer said:
Yay, another thing to get hacked for more citizen data to be released into the wild.
Click to expand...

It's unlikely they'll get hacked. It's more likely that some employee will transfer classified data to an unclassified network via cd/usb/etc device. That or hand jamming it. Pretty much the only way classified data has made it to the outside world. That's already an issue with just the US government networks not attached to anything else.

If they make Amazon go through accredidation and inspections, I don't see it being much of a problem. Plenty of companies already have their own classified networks attached to government networks. Like all the major contracting companies.

I'm just wondering what government entity will be overseeing it all.
 
Some things I think people should be aware about, concerning Jeff Bezos and his companies, Amazon, and The Washington Post:

- Amazon and the Washington Post are funded by the CIA (obviously, as per this article's subject).
- Through Amazon, Jeff Bezos handles information gathering system and data management for the CIA - which is what Bezos' previous contract with the CIA was about.
- Amazon and The Washington Post are both data-generating mega-centres, and that is likely a central factor to the partnership that Bezos has with the CIA. Bezos / Amazon was not even the lowest bidder for the CIA data-infrastructure contract - yet were still awarded the contract. It could be that the giving of the CIA contract to Amazon was pre-determined in advance, and the bidding process was just going through the motions. Amazon.com is the #11 most-visited website, according to Alexa, and is plausible in the top 10 most-visited sites, if counting Amazon.ca and Amazon.uk, and whatever other regional Amazon sites there are. And the type of user data that Amazon generates is highly personal, making Amazon an ideal asset for the CIA.
- Amazon's Privacy Notice says: "We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Amazon.com, our users, or others."


So, I think it should be expected by everyone that whatever activities they have on Amazon, and whichever articles a person reads at Washington Post, are being aggregated and analyzed by the CIA.


And when asked to clarify his relationship with the CIA, Jeff Bezos has only given a general "We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA" comment. I think I recall that his full (though still brief) statement, which I cannot immediately find, included a comment that Bezos hoped to further strengthen his working relationship with the CIA.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-amazons-collaboration_b_4824854.html
http://theantimedia.org/cia-washington-post-russia/


I expect that Bezos and the CIA working together is like an evolution of Operation Mockingbird, which was an operation that started in the early 1950's with the aim to fill US news outlets with undercover CIA operatives posing as journalists, to flood the US with pro-US-government propaganda.

The ideals of that program were still going strong decades later, as, in 1981, then-CIA director William Casey was quoted as saying to then-president Reagan, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."


I still use Amazon, but while expecting that all usage data is being harvested into CIA data-centres. And I mostly only trust WaPo to be loyal to CIA narratives.
 
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