AWS: We’ll go to court to fight government requests for data

http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/361679/amazon-web-services-we-ll-go-court-fight-gov-t-requests-data

by breadtk • 13 years ago

81 32 13 years ago

justinsb• 13 years ago

"If Amazon faced a subpoena that required it to keep the order secret, such encryption would be useful to customers. “If the data is encrypted, all we’d be handing over would be the cypher text,” he said."

That strikes me as a little misleading. I'm sure the subpoena would request a snapshot of all running VMs's memory & CPU state, from which (I believe) it's relatively easy to extract encryption keys. If the first subpoena didn't, the second one sure would!

dchichkov• 13 years ago

And I'm sure there would be a third one, stating that it is necessary to keep the warrant canary alive and chirping ;)

Crito• 13 years ago

Where is their warrant canary located?

rdl6• 13 years ago

The terrifying thing is that they could be required to keep doing this in the background indefinitely, compromising both all the data and any future users -- sort of like the Hushmail compromise.

Using AWS the way cpercival does for tarsnap (with keys managed outside, and S3 as dumb storage) is reasonable. Using AWS to run a game or other toy app is reasonable. Using AWS if you yourself are a USG entity (and thus immune to lesser legal action) is fine.

I can't imagine using AWS (or any outsourced cloud provider) to run sensitive apps using current EC2-type technology in the current legal climate in the US. The other scary thing is AWS is probably among the best providers for technical security, and still has this vulnerability (disclaimer: I haven't yet checked out Google Cloud Engine much).

Colocation or managed hosting is borderline in some situations too (particularly if you allow the provider unlimited access to singleuser mode on your boxes, don't encrypt drives, manage keys and credentials through the provider, etc.), but it's a lot better than virtual hosting for anything at all sensitive.

It's not just official USG action to fear; it's provider staff or technical compromise as well.

ra• 13 years ago

sort of like the Hushmail compromise

That's interesting. I couldn't find anything that describes the hushmail compromise in this way. Do you have a link that explains it?

(Am currently thinking about how to make a more secure email service)

gulfie• 13 years ago

It could be worse. They could assume control of the VMs run them for a while. ( http://www.sfgate.com/local/article/FBI-shared-child-porn-to... )

Could the FEDs incentivize AWS to be quite about it? I'd guess yes.

thejosh• 13 years ago

Is it just me or is Amazon talking in "from now on" (future tense) instead of past tense?

camus• 13 years ago

it's pure PR. if they dontcomply => no juicy govermnent contracts.

kondro• 13 years ago

I'd like to see government departments move off AWS once they've built services specifically for the AWS platform.

nacho2sweet• 13 years ago

I don't understand the whole fight subpoenas and contact the customers thing. Isn't a big part of the PRISM system them NOT having direct access and just trying to collect all the data from certain systems and rebuilding it, or pulling stuff from it? Like basically just tapping the line?

hornytoad• 13 years ago

AWS will just lock you (or wikileaks) out on gov't request, although they'll claim that to be "inaccurate": http://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/

danso• 13 years ago

FWIW, Google has been doing this for some time, well before the current controversy. A few months ago, it was reported that Google was challenging the courts on the highly secret national security letters, which mandated that recipients not disclose their existence and which were issued without needing court approval:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/google-fights-nsl/

NSL's are a serious issue and as much a threat to our liberty as what was disclosed by Snowden's leak. The outrage sparked by Snowden's effort is hopefully something that leads to good reform and protection of our liberties, but the fodder for outrage has existed for a long time now.

girvo• 13 years ago

  > “If a U.S. entity is serving us with a legally binding
  > subpoena, we contact our customer and work with that
  > customer to fight the subpoena. We will do that proactively
  > and help the customer in any way to comply with the
  > subpoena or fight it.”

How does that work, with gag-ordered FISA requests?

noir_lord• 13 years ago

This is answered directly in the article where they suggest you take advantage of their encryption offerings.

If Amazon faced a subpoena that required it to keep the order secret, such encryption would be useful to customers. “If the data is encrypted, all we’d be handing over would be the cypher text,” he said.

rdl6• 13 years ago

It doesn't protect you meaningfully as an EC2 user, since there's no (current, on AWS) way to do an "encrypted VM" where everything including memory is encrypted and the hypervisor can't be coerced into decrypting it en masse.

It does protect you for S3 if and only if you conduct the crypto outside AWS and generate/manage the keys yourself (e.g. how tarsnap does it). It may protect you for some of the other AWS services IFF you use them in the same hybrid way, but I don't know of anyone who uses AWS's database services without just using EC2 nodes primarily to talk to them.

cperciva• 13 years ago

One interesting tidbit from the AWS re:invent conference in November: According to Stephen Schmidt, Amazon does regular "drills" where they pretend that a warrant has been received for a user's data, and they need to identify and isolate and copy all of it.

This tells me two things: First, that Amazon gets these requests often enough to have a well-tested procedure for handling them; and second, that it's still very much a manual process -- and that government agencies can't just reach in and grab data on their own.

chaz• 13 years ago

As an alternate explanation: we practice fire drills, but that doesn't mean building fires are routine. Drills are indicative of something you want to get right when the time comes, not frequency.

workhere-io• 13 years ago

If it's true that the US authorities can order a company to implement access for the NSA and lie to its customers about the fact, I don't see how you can trust any US company with data that need to be secure.

Also, AWS recently signed a huge deal with the CIA (http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-600-million-deal-for-amaz...). I doubt that a company that works so closely with US government agencies is jumping through hoops to protect its customers from government snooping.

cryptolect• 13 years ago

The impression I get, as a consumer, is that I can no longer trust official statements from the likes of Google, Amazon, etc since they could have been legally gagged from telling the truth. I've lost confidence in US tech companies, because they could be forced to act without being allowed to disclose it or reasonably fight it.

To date I still don't believe what Google/Amazon are saying. It all feels like weasel words. Like when Obama stated that the NSA "cannot" listen to your calls. He meant that they cannot by law, rather than cannot because they dont have access. The way he phrased it though meant that 80% of people listening would've thought it was the latter definition.

And to have the National Intelligence guy on record lie to Congress? Who is controlling whom here? It really does feel like the US government has lost control of its intelligence services.

Now don't mind me, I'm busy trying to find somewhere on the map I can relocate my services to.

jellicle• 13 years ago

He meant that they cannot by law, rather than cannot because they dont have access.

Really what he meant is that the NSA can't target their listening at you, but they certainly can listen to your calls accidentally or in a mission targeted at some other person or targeted at you if they don't know for a fact that you're a U.S. person, and once they do listen to your calls, they certainly can forward that information to any appropriate law enforcement agency to take action against you, and they certainly can use that information to get a warrant to legalize targeting you if need be.

So really what he meant is that yes, the NSA can listen to your calls, "legally", in almost all circumstances. By taking care not to initially link up phone numbers and names/addresses, they can maintain that they didn't know you were a U.S. person for as long as they need to.

If you didn't understand that from his use of the word "cannot", well, I guess that's just your poor listening skills at fault.

hownottowrite• 13 years ago

Yes, I'm sure they'll be happy to endanger a $600M cloud contract to protect the data. http://qz.com/95994/amazon-is-staffing-up-for-its-600-millio...

logn• 13 years ago

FYI, for virtual machines, I've been thoroughly impressed with this service:

http://www.exoscale.ch/

They're in Switzerland and seem committed to maintaining your data/security (and they have the full force/support of Swiss law).

Their UI is super usable. It's a true pleasure to use. You can choose from several posix distros and a Windows one. There's decent selection for different sizing. But they're in beta now, so there's not a full lineup of features. The pricing is very good. And the support is awesome. I've raised a couple of tickets and they were responded to in a couple of hours.

orokusaki• 13 years ago

Ha, this coming from the same company that is helping the CIA build a 600 million dollar data center for spying...

AWS: We’ll go to court to fight government requests for data

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