Amazon, USPS Sign Sunday Delivery Deal

The Amazon-friendly Obama Administration has just concluded another Amazon-friendly deal with the secretive tech company. According to a story in today's Seattle Times, the PO and Jeff Bezos' firm will begin Sunday deliveries in time for the Christmas shopping season. The arrangement is currently limited to the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, the two leading retail markets in the United States.

The deal gives Amazon a significant commercial advantage, in that it can use the USPS infrastructure and staff to deliver goods. The extra available delivery day is also another arrow in Amazon's competitive quiver.

How taxpayers benefit from this agreement was not exactly spelled out, although Amazon will pay for the privilege of going postal. It's public knowledge that the USPS is desperate for money. Amazon has the cash, and the clout with the Obama Administration, to make a deal. According to the Seattle Times story, any firm could have negotiated with the Postal Service for a Sunday gig. However, USPS officials acknowledged only Amazon pursued a deal. One wonders why.

Amazon's Chattanooga, TN facility,
cited by President Obama as an example of
"middle-class" job creation

Of course, as with all things Amazon, the contract is under seal. Inquiring minds would like to know why a federal contract not connected to national security should be a closely guarded secret.

This is Amazon's second federal contract coup this year. Earlier in 2013, the Seattle-based enterprise signed a contract to provide the CIA with cloud-based data systems and management.

Report: NSA Surveillance Panel's First Meeting Dodges Change

Ten days ago, the UK newspaper The Guardian reported on an Obama Administration panel's initial meeting to determine changes to NSA surveillance practices and data collection. The group included representatives from tech heavyweights (with the notable exception of Amazon), insiders from the fed's spy world, and think tank policy mavens. Some participants claimed the meeting was a borderline sham, in which no change was discussed and tech firms worked hard to advance their interests. Those "interests" did not necessarily coincide with those of the larger body of American citizens, who have discovered the military-technology complex has compromised their constitutional right to privacy.

Some details from the Guardian's story offer a disturbing look into what passes for transparency inside the Beltway. The meeting, one participant noted, was something less than a full, open dialogue. For one participant, the tech firms, who dominated the 90-minute meeting, seemed to be walking through a prepared script.

Representatives from the technology firms were identified around the table not by their names, but by placards listing their employers. There was minimal technical discussion of surveillance mechanisms despite the presence of technology companies; (the participant) took the representatives to be lawyers, not technologists.

When it appeared like the meeting would discuss a surveillance issue in a sophisticated way, participants and commissioners suggested it be done in a classified meeting. (The participant) interpreted that as a maneuver to exclude his more-critical viewpoint.

The privacy vs. surveillance issue is one of the few issues where American conservatives and liberals share a common concern. It is the conservatives' great shame that they allowed the Bush Administration to emasculate personal privacy guarantees; it is the liberals' great shame that they have played matador to the Obama Administration's bullish advocacy of the NSA's breathtaking data and communication sweeps.

It's a sad state of affairs when a British newspaper takes the lead and sheds light -- continued light -- on this American issue. No Fox News, no NPR, no major American media player really wants this story. That's a national shame.

Feds Award IBM $1 Billion Cloud Computing Contract

IBM, which howled when Obama Administration-friendly Amazon won a lucrative CIA cloud computing contract, recently won a consolation prize from the federal government. Big Blue won a 10-year, $1 billion deal to provide the Interior Department with cloud computing services. The Interior pie was divided up more or less equally among a number of DC corporate power players, including Lockheed Martin, Verizon, and ATT. The story, originally posted by Bloomberg News, appeared in today's siliconvalley.com.

Why the Interior Department needs a multi-billion dollar, long-term investment in cloud computing was not stated. However, what has become evident is the federal government's role in creating the new millenium's version of the military-industrial complex. This juggernaut requires that tech heavyweights get de facto government subsidies via sweetheart contracts, often generated through corrupt business dealings. As long as Americans remain enthralled with technology and "the promise of tomorrow" (whatever that means), this corrosive situation is unlikely to change.

Obama to Tout Amazon.com at Tennessee Speech

Amazon warehouse outside Chattanooga, TN.
Can you count the number of "middle-class" jobs in this photo?
(Image: timefreepress.com)

On Tuesday, July 30th, President Obama will visit Chattanooga, Tennessee, to deliver a speech about his administration's economic policies. According to WRCB-TV in Chattanooga, the address will be delivered at an Amazon warehouse. President 44 may very well cite Amazon's physical expansion and subsequent hiring as examples of America's middle class moving forward economically. It is unlikely the President will comment on the hundreds of small firms Amazon's Walmartization scheme will knock out of business.

The joint chutzpah of Obama and Jeff Bezos' Amazon juggernaut is breathtaking. Obama's Department of Justice has already gone to the mat for Amazon on the lucrative, influential e-book front: witness the recent, allegedly "consumer friendly" case against Amazon nemesis Apple and the major New York publishing players.  Meanwhile, the Obama administration has approved AWS, Amazon's data and cloud computing arm, to get hush-hush contracts with the CIA and NASA. Then again, this secrecy-obsessed administration may have found a kindred spirit with Amazon, which notoriously keeps the public at arm's length about its affairs.

One wonders why the president of the United States feels so compelled to publicly praise Amazon. What is the connection between the Obama Administration and Amazon? Why is this connection not questioned in major media outlets?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Expands DC-Area Presence, Big Government Alliance

Image: techcrunch.com

The commonwealth of Virginia recently announced that Amazon Web Services would add 500 employees to AWS' DC-area offices. The Cavalier State's Republican governor let the world know about this development via a news release. The story appeared on a slow news cycle in today's Washington Post.

The announcement and fawningly written WaPo article (which mischaracterized the tech company as a "retail giant") treated Amazon's decision as if it were the Second Coming. The piece pointedly noted how the average of the jobs' salaries would reach low six-figures. Meanwhile, the state provided Amazon with a $500,000 grant "to assist Amazon's recruitment and training." Why these supposedly high-tech, highly qualified applicants would need government assistance to become fully prepared for their new employment remained unstated.

The principal reason AWS is moving into northern Virginia's Dulles Internet-heavy corridor involves federal contracts. Free-enterprise Amazon has discovered the lucrative attractions of Big Government's data needs. Earlier this year, I blogged about Amazon's data storage contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. The pro-Amazon Obama Administration, enamored with Big Data's clout and reach, has intentionally or otherwise provided very useful services to Jeff Bezos' empire. Given that scenario, it is unsurprising that today's WaPo story observed that Amazon's Virginia "expansion follows an announcement this month by Amazon Web Services that the federal government had put the company on a fast track to sell it cloud computing services."

Characteristically, Amazon remained tightlipped about its plans. "An Amazon spokesman," the WaPo article noted, "declined to add more specifics, such as when the jobs would be added." Maybe the CIA has finally found its soulmate. The spooks could even offer it a codename: Sleepless in Seattle.

Report: Amazon Lands Contract to House CIA Data

Here's something to think about as you cozy up to your Kindle Reader: Amazon may soon be a CIA contractor.

As reported originally in Federal Computer Weekly and picked up by the LA Times and The Christian Science Monitor, Amazon Web Services has landed a $600 million deal to provide a cloud-computing "solution" for the intelligence service The two entities may be a perfect match, as both share a penchant for secrecy and a lust for data. The CIA at least has to undergo Congressional oversight, something Amazon often dodges artfully.

Both Amazon and the CIA also prefer storing data indefinitely. The CIA's CIO, Gus Hunt, recently told a tech-heavy gathering in New York that "connecting the dots" in intelligence gathering required the CIA to "collect everything and hang on to it forever." Amazon's M.O. is essentially the same as the spooks' approach to everyday business, except that Big A's clients and prospects offer up their data without question. The CIA just takes.

For some time, the Obama Administration has been cozy with Amazon. The Obama re-election campaign's successful use of "big data" showed the president's awareness of this tool's scope and reach. For some time, I've wondered why the Department of Justice would go out of its way to conduct investigations whose principal commercial beneficiary was unquestionably Amazon.  Of course, Amazon has the data capacity to make many things happen, even for an institution with unique needs, such as the CIA. Perhaps the calculation was that it would be best to keep Big A happy, and keep it on your side. Maybe some top-secret data business could be "accommodated" by the secretive Seattle-based firm. (Keep in mind that Amazon chief Jeff Bezos' "Blue Origin" project is building a rocket for manned space flight.)

Oh yes, for the record, neither the CIA nor Amazon would comment to the media on the reported cloud-computing contract.

Feds Extend Spy Probes Into Citizens' Banking Data

For some time, the privacy rights of Americans has been depicted as a "fringe" issue. Its strongest advocates have tended to be connected to the Tea Party or to the Occupy movement. The Occupy crowd found out just how quickly their privacy wasn't worth a damn. What really mattered was social control and the perpetuation of a fraudulent sense of class harmony, notably in the supposedly liberal bastion of New York City.

The Obama Administration has been something less than progressive regarding privacy rights. The federal government's ambivalence comes across in matters of "national security," the boundaries of which remain as ill-defined as the more remote areas of the Mexico-US border. The basic notion appears to be that just about anything in one's personal life is fair game to investigate, collect, and keep indefinitely. Anything labeled "national security" trumps due process.

This disturbing trend is only gathering momentum. A Reuters story picked up (ironically) in today's Chicago Tribune claims the Obama Administration is creating a plan that would allow US spy agencies "full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country..."

The Big Brotherish scheme is unsurprisingly cloaked in national security imperatives. The idea is to follow the money and snag the forces of evil. This is hardly a novel idea. The question isn't whether the proposed snooping will be effective; the doubt stems from the plan's erosion of fundamental democratic rights. Relying on a government's good intentions, from those who think they know what's best, is a dangerous road for a democracy to travel.