
Why Edward Snowden thinks Amazon is “morally irresponsible.” - spking
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/13/why-edward-snowden-thinks-amazon-is-morally-irresponsible/?tid=pm_business_pop
======
repsilat
> Amazon, whose founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington
> Post

This warms my heart -- not just that the article doesn't take a political
position, but that it was probably _printed_ to disclaim one. That kind of
defensive demonstration of journalistic integrity reminds me that there are
idealistic people working inside these big-business papers.

It's small news, and maybe other people are reporting on it too, but I like
that I read it at the Washinton Post first.

~~~
javajosh
It remains to be seen whether Bezos will take action against WaPo for printing
this piece, as it really could affect Amazon's bottom-line, along with the
Integrity Staffing case, during the holiday shopping season.

~~~
Aloha
That would be incredibly foolish if he did.

~~~
javajosh
It would be _morally wrong_ if he did, but foolish, I'm not so sure. It would
depend on how he did it. First, it's not clear that such an act would ever
become public knowledge. Second, even if it did, it's not clear that such an
act would even generate significant repercussions given the current state of
the public's general "injustice fatigue" and the overall minimal impact such
an act would have. Basically, Bezos has a huge amount of latitude about if and
how he reacts to this, especially if he's smart about it (and he is very
smart).

The larger lesson is that we must open our eyes to the fact that our society
gives powerful individuals an incredible degree of latitude. We cannot let our
idealism blind us to the fact that our business and political leaders wield
tremendous unchecked power, especially in relatively small matters, and
_especially_ if that power is wielded with the intelligent foresight to avoid
accountability.

------
rgbrgb
Yes, they should do everything over HTTPS. I assure you they're moving in that
direction, but they have thousands of pages and many different rendering
technologies to deal with (after 20 years, some cruft and fragmentation is par
for the course).

However, this article insinuates that HTTPS is enough to hide from the
government. HTTPS only protects data in transit. If the big internet companies
are complicit in leaking user data to the government (as Snowden showed) then
HTTPS isn't going to be useful in that regard.

~~~
mkonecny
Renderers and other "old technologies" has nothing to do with SSL. Typically
you insert a reverse proxy in between the client and server to handle SSL
encryption on the fly - it is completely transparent to the server stack.

~~~
pdkl95
It could, in theory, be a problem if their HTML rendering software is
generating a lot of absolute URLs that link back to the same host.

~~~
judk
A college intern could debug that problem. It's a non-issue.

~~~
rgbrgb
Not going to go into details but I'd guess you're underestimating the size of
the codebase (and thus the complexity of certain site-wide changes) by at
least two orders of magnitude. Imagine doing (and testing) a "simple change"
for every project on Github for instance. This is the dark side of giving each
of your dev teams freedom to pick their tools.

------
researcher88
The comments seem disportionately negative towards Snowden. I have rarely
encountered anyone in real life that knew much about Snowden let alone had a
strong conviction about him one way or the other.

Maybe there's so many negative comments because people who are against
something or someone are more likely to post. But it also seems like a good
candidate article for certain interests to subtley influence public opinion.

~~~
IvyMike
The comments aren't necessarily a random sample--a popular political site,
blog, or twitter personality could have linked to the site, with an implied
"Give 'em a piece of your mind".

------
cpncrunch
Calling it "morally irresponsible" is a bit harsh. If you're living in a
country where the government monitors its population to oppress dissidents,
that's a bug in your government that you should fix. If people in those
countries really gave a crap about democracy and freedom, they could easily do
something about it (look at Hong Kong right now for some ideas, or the Velvet
Revolution). The fact that China, Russia, Zimbabwe (and many other countries)
are oppressing their own citizens is only happening because those citizens
don't really give a crap about freedom - perhaps because they've never had it.

And before anyone whines about the NSA and downvotes me, I think you really
need to compare the freedom you have in the USA to some of those other
countries I mentioned.

~~~
cpncrunch
Oh, and I also find it a little ironic that Snowden's living in a country
where you really need to protect yourself from the government. I'd prefer to
live in a safe and free country and not have any encryption, rather than live
in the likes of Russia and have to have everything encrypted.

~~~
01Michael10
Why in every Edward Snowden discussion someone talks about him living in
Russia? Do you not know he was only traveling though Russia when his passport
was invoked by the US? He has no choice but to live in Russia!

~~~
csandreasen
It also seems like the argument that the US stranded him in Russia always
comes up in response as well. His passport was revoked while he was still in
Hong Kong[1]. He traveled to Russia using an invalid travel document issued by
the same Ecuadorian embassy that Julian Assange is living in[2]. Assange later
said in an interview with Rolling Stone that he advised Snowden to go to
Russia because it would be safer for him, and stated that the travel document
was explicitly to assist him in leaving Hong Kong[3]. It was a little fishy
that he was reported to have stayed at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong for
several days prior to hopping on the flight as well[4].

Snowden didn't get stuck in Russia because the US stranded him there. The US
tried to keep him in a country that had an extradition treaty and Snowden
fled, ending up in Russia.

[1] [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-
snowdens...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens-
passport-revoked)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-
rafael-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael-
correa-snowden-mistake)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-told-snowden-to-
sta...](http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-told-snowden-to-stay-in-
russia-2014-5)

[4] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-
at...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-at-russian-
consulate-while-in-hong-
kong/2013/08/26/8237cf9a-0e39-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html)

~~~
01Michael10
The US revoked his passport but they didn't stand him? Snowden had limited
options and he ended up in Russia. He wasn't going to Russia and he didn't
want to live in Russia. This was my point...

