[ucarion]

They may not be impersonating Amazon, but they are using Amazon's services to circumvent the intent of policies (laws) that Amazon wants to comply with. Amazon has decided to stop be an unwitting participant in this particular mechanism of circumventing oppression.

For the record, I'm of the opinion that the US should insist that American companies not help dictators abroad in their censorship efforts. But it's hardly unreasonable for Amazon to say, "this type of stuff is illegal in Egypt. We don't want any trouble, so please stop using us as a means of circumventing Egyptian law."

[fwn]

It is perfectly understandable why Amazon did that and siding with oppressive regimes is of course not unreasonable at all.

Just unethical, hence the discussion.

[manigandham]

AWS is not siding with oppressive regimes, what's with the misleading political slant?

They don't want customers breaking terms of service, whatever those terms are, and especially when it means the rest of their customers are affected. It's not a single company involved here and they're looking out for everyone else they serve.

[thecrash]

In this case, enforcing their Terms of Service does constitute siding with oppressive regimes. You could argue that it's not AWS' goal to help oppressive regimes, but in the struggle against censorship, that is the side they have put themselves on in practice. On one side, there are people all over the world who want to communicate freely. On the other, there are authoritarians who want to suppress and surveil that communication. AWS policy used to help the former, and now helps the latter.

I think maybe you're trying to express that under a free market ethical framework, AWS has done nothing wrong here. Which is true, and an insightful indictment of the free market as an inherently liberatory force.

[manigandham]

That's not what "siding with" means. AWS is remaining neutral to politics as a company, which is a very good thing. Why do you want multinational corporations to get more involved in geopolitics? Do you think that will somehow lead to a better outcome?

Signal had an strategy, but it involves breaking the terms of service, so that vendor has no reason to comply and put the other customers at risk. Signal just needs to figure out another option. It's a technical issue and nobody is stopping Signal itself. AWS will still host them just fine as long as they follow the terms.

By the way, the free market is what allowed companies like AWS and Signal to exist in the first place, and lets you contributed effort and money if you'd like, so perhaps you should widen your context before throwing around indictments.

[DEFCON28]

Exactly! These countries may start blocking Amazon and Cloudfront domains. Amazon needs to put its foot down.

[collinmanderson]

Amazon isn’t nesessarily against censorship. They just don’t want to provide this sort of spoofing service. Regardless of whether the spoofers are good or bad.

[bonesss]

I believe this is the fundamental issue, from Amazons PoV: this altruistic project with nice goals is abusing a network nuance, but most other actors using this capability are likely to be bad actors.

I don't think Amazons reasoning was "oh, lets help dictators dictate", but more "hey, isn't this a potential security hole ripe for abuse that would make us look incompetent?".

[smsm42]

Reasonable, but cowardly and disgusting.

[manigandham]

Maybe point that anger towards the government and military then, instead of a private corporation with thousands of business customers and millions of consumers.

[na85]

.... Because the US Military is responsible for changing a sovereign state's law if Americans don't like it? What the fuck?

[manigandham]

Yes. It's called war. What's confusing here? If a citizen of a nation thinks that another nation is not behaving as they would like (whichever country or whatever behavior that is), the proper channels to enact change are through government action, either diplomatic or militarized.

Asking a private corporation to be international police is not good for anyone, as well intentioned as it may seem.

[jaakl]

Military (or state in general) may have other, softer and more covert means of influencing other countries besides war, like “persuading” home corporations to act on their behalf. Thats not unheard of nowadays

[manigandham]

Sure, even more of a reason why companies should not be in the business of politics on either side.

[smsm42]

War is an ultimate and extremely costly measure. Just as inter-personal violence should be reserved for extreme cases - if you don't like a mayor in your city, you vote against him, campaign against him, write letters, go to protests - but you do not assassinate him. The same way, inter-national war is a measure of last resort and should not be resorted to due to mere disagreement about cultural norms and such.

> Asking a private corporation to be international police

This implies only police can and does enforce cultural and moral norms. This is the exact opposite of the correct order of things - the police should be preventing or punishing crimes, like theft, robbery, rape, murder, etc. - and people themselves - individually or in organized groups, like companies, NGOs, voluntary societies, etc. - should be creating and enforcing moral norms. You can not just delegate this to "the police", being it national or international.

Thus, asking Amazon to take part in helping to create an international norm of upholding free speech is reasonable. And their refusal is morally despicable.

[manigandham]

Yea, that's why I said: "government action, either diplomatic or militarized". Any reasonable person will choose diplomacy first.

Nobody is talking about cultural norms here. The story is about Signal being used to help those in oppressive societies with active censorship, not some differing cultures. And "police" is a form of expression, not literally a police department.

Asking Amazon to do anything political is absurd because it's a corporation that should be focused on its paying customers, none of whom would appreciate unwillingly being affected by Signal intentionally breaking their terms of service. Do they suddenly not matter?

It's morally despicable to just expect and force others to help you in your causes, no matter how noble (you think) it is.

[latch]

You say "proper" but what you're describing (at least the military option) is a war of aggression. This is not only illegal (both internationally, and, for example, in US Law), but described as "the supreme international crime."

[manigandham]

It's an option, and if it comes to war then the legality of whether it should've been declared is usually not a priority. Also in the context of oppressive regimes, the "aggression" in this case wouldn't be unwarranted, nor is it unprecedented.

Regardless, what actually isn't proper is expecting major corporations to do police duty. That never ends well.

[na85]

You're being very nonchalant about going to war to make things easier for Amazon.

I find that chilling.

[manigandham]

I find it surprising how these threads get so lost in a just a few posts.

What I said is that if someone has an issue with another country (oppressive or otherwise) then they should use political means to influence change through their (and foreign) governments. As the commenter specifically stated the military, war is how that change is done in that case.

[illumin8]

Yes, but I don't think you're considering the significant direct cost to the owner of SOUQ.COM for DNS queries. If all of a sudden I get millions of extra DNS queries for my domain because Signal is using it to front their traffic to CloudFront, I might get a huge DNS bill.

Should any government coerce me into paying a large DNS bill just to sponsor freedom of speech? Even if it is a noble cause, we shouldn't coerce innocent 3rd parties into doing this.

[surrealize]

It's not a significant direct cost. Millions of extra DNS queries amounts to single-digit dollars (route 53 pricing).

[tempestn]

And the owner of souq.com isn't some random person; it's Amazon.