Amazon Data: Yes, There Is a Good Reason
August 28, 2020
About three years ago, I gave my first lecture about Amazon’s streaming data marketplace. The audience was about 150 law enforcement and intelligence professionals. My goal was to describe some technical capabilities Amazon had set up since 2006. I stumbled upon the information reading through AWS public sector information available from open source; for example, patent documents and Amazon’s blog posts.
I was greeted with “We buy quite a bit from Amazon, but policeware?” I have included a description of the streaming data marketplace in my talks and posted some information in this blog. I was interviewed by reporters from Le Monde, the New York Times, and a couple of other “real news” outfits. Like those engaged in law enforcement and intelligence, no one cared.
One company developing specialized software expressed surprise when I recommended taking a look at what capabilities resided in the Amazon Web Services’ construct. The reaction was, “Everyone uses Microsoft Azure.” Most recently I gave three lectures at the 2020 National Cyber Crime Conference. One of them was about Amazon. I have about 250 people at my talks about investigative software and alternatives to the Dark Web. I still don’t know who listened to my Amazon lecture. I assume not too many people.
I read “Kindle Collects a Surprisingly Large Amount of Data.” The write up makes a single point. Reach a book or some other text on an Amazon Kindle and data flows to Amazon. There’s no awareness of the online book store’s streaming data marketplace or any of the related technology, features, and functions. Well, there is one article. That’s a start.
I scanned the comments and noted one which struck me as interesting:
There’s definitely no good reason why it should be sent to Amazon at all.
A good reason exists. Amazon is poised to provide a number of useful services to government agencies. Let me spark thinking with some questions:
What’s the value of a service which can generate a “value” score or “reliability” score or a “credibility” score for an individual?
Answer these and one is well on the way to grasping the Amazon policeware and intelware construct in my opinion. You can learn more by writing benkent2020 at yahoo dot com and inquiring about our Amazon for fee reports.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2020
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