It looks like Amazon will use its own Amazon Web Services to keep various classified data of the British secret services, or some of the most important state secrets. The newspaper revealed the agreement Financial Times, who explained that a cloud, therefore a virtual storage space, will be used by the three British spy agencies, Gchq, MI5 and MI6.
Amazon Web Services allies with the British secret services
According to what was revealed on the pages of the newspaper, Amazon is expected to create a digital platform tailored to exploit cutting-edge technologies in espionage, such as big data analysis and artificial intelligence, but that everything is handled by Her Majesty’s officials. However, it remains a decision destined to raise doubts and criticisms from various points of view, starting from fears that British sovereignty will be jeopardized with respect to such crucial data actually kept by a private entity.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman has already been consulted on this matter Boris Johnson who did not comment directly on the revelation of the newspaper but made some clarifications. “We have been using private sector technology in homeland security applications for decades in order to keep the country safe obviously ensuring the security of this technology is a top priority and all protections are already in place for classified information regardless of the technology provider. “.
For the moment, one of the most important and immediately visible criticisms of the whole agreement is the fact that it could give rise to “sovereignty concerns”, as the Financial Times itself points out, precisely because a large amount of the UK’s most secret data will be hosted by a single US technology company. Having said this, it must also be said that Amazon has now reached such dimensions that it can also be considered external to the American environment.
In any case, the company of Jeff Bezos it will have no way of accessing classified data, as you may have already guessed.