General
Keith Alexander, who oversaw the National Security Agency when Edward Snowden revealed the shocking extent of its illegal wiretapping and data collection programs, has joined
Amazon's board as a director.
Gen. Alexander's duties on the audit committee and anywhere else he might be needed are not spelled out anywhere. He is currently co-CEO of IronNet Security, the firm he founded six years ago. Before that he was head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.
He is perhaps best remembered by the general public as having helped build and operate an enormous set of secret programs for domestic surveillance in the security-first post-9/11 era. There's a bit more to running the country's cybersecurity infrastructure than that, of course, but the Snowden leaks ended up defining the end of his career in government intelligence.
Amazon itself has faced
accusations of surveilling and profiling its own users via network of Alexa-powered devices (and
internet infrastructure, and
buying habits, and
emotion-monitoring smartwatches), and while it may get a few tips from the more experienced Gen. Alexander,
it is more likely his expertise and connections within the wide world of intelligence and military matters that the company seeks.That sort of thing is helpful when trying to make lucrative deals with the feds, something of a sore spot with Amazon since it
lost the excruciatingly drawn-out bid process for the $10 billion JEDI contract to Microsoft. (The award is still being challenged.)
Gen. Alexander will join former and current executives from the likes of Pepsico, Starbucks, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bridgewater Associates, and others
on the board director rolls.
I've reached out to Amazon for further information and comment and will update this post if I hear back.
Update: Amazon directed me to its official SEC filing for more info, but wanted to emphasize that "There are strict conflict of interest rules for government contracting that we will continue to follow." In other words, he's not getting them in the door anywhere — though doubtless his CV will prove invaluable in other ways.
TechCrunch interviewed the General on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt not too long ago to find out how he perceives the need to balance security and privacy.
Comment: The implications of Amazon's new hire
is not lost on some:
[...] Edward Snowden, [was] were less than "thrilled" about the appointment.
Snowden - who in 2013 blew the whistle on a secret NSA surveillance program, leaking a massive trove of documents proving the bulk and warrantless collection of Americans' telephone records by the government - was one of the first to call out Amazon for hiring Alexander.
"It turns out 'Hey Alexa' is short for 'Hey Keith Alexander.' Yes, the Keith Alexander personally responsible for the unlawful mass surveillance programs that caused a global scandal," tweeted the whistleblower, who remains in exile in Russia.
Snowden noted that while Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts nearly 6 percent of all websites, the figure looks even more damning "if you measure it by traffic instead of number of sites."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, a Snowden ally who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the US intelligence machine's global mass surveillance program, tweeted that Alexander's appointment only revealed Amazon's true colors.
"Gen. Keith Alexander was head of NSA when it secretly built a massive domestic surveillance system aimed at Americans - the one an appellate court just ruled likely illegal. Amazon just appointed him to its Board of Directors, again showing who they are," Greenwald said.
Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that the "bulk collection" of data used by the NSA was illegal, with Snowden hailing the decision as a milestone in the fight against government-sanctioned snooping.
Even without an ex-spy chief with a less-than-stellar reputation in terms of privacy protection on its board, Amazon has faced growing pushback over its intrusive high-tech devices. Its virtual assistant Alexa was caught red-handed passively recording intimate conversations of unsuspecting family members, while its new fitness tracker 'Halo' promises to scan users' bodies and track emotions in their voice.
It has been suggested that Alexander's addition to the board may raise Amazon's chances to win government contracts, as it is still reeling after losing out on the $10 billion JEDI 'war cloud' contract with the Pentagon, which was awarded to Microsoft last October. Amazon has attempted to stall the deal, filing a lawsuit alleging that US President Trump's bias against the company robbed it of the lucrative deal.
Comment: The implications of Amazon's new hire is not lost on some: