How Amazon.com moved into the business of U.S. elections

) cloud computing arm is making an aggressive push into one of the most sensitive technology sectors: U.S. elections.

While it does not handle voting on election day, AWS - along with a broad network of partners - now runs state and county election websites, stores voter registration rolls and ballot data, facilitates overseas voting by military personnel and helps provide live election-night results, according to company documents and interviews.

The company’s efforts are welcomed by election administrators, who in interviews said they often struggle with keeping outdated systems up to date at the local level. Most security experts Reuters spoke to said that while Amazon’s cloud is likely much harder to hack than systems it is replacing, putting data from many jurisdictions on a single system raises the prospect that a single major breach could prove damaging.

Amazon’s push into the election business comes as the company faces criticism from politicians, labor unions and privacy advocates over its business practices and growing influence. President Donald Trump has accused the company of competing unfairly and repeatedly attacked the Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for alleged bias, a charge Bezos and the paper deny.

“Some of the largest presidential, congressional and gubernatorial campaigns are also trusted to AWS,” Amazon’s Jackson told clients in the February webinar viewed by Reuters. An ES&S spokeswoman said the company has not seen any impact from Amazon’s efforts. Dominion did not respond to requests for comment.Voting itself does not happen via Amazon. Voting machines in most states are not connected to any cloud service.

In his webinar to clients, Amazon’s Jackson said these services help the company win bigger contracts. For example, Oklahoma has tied up with an Amazon partner and pays $26,000 for two services on Amazon’s servers, Pam Slater, assistant secretary at the Oklahoma State Election board said.

nanditab1 👌

nanditab1

nanditab1 What could go wrong?

nanditab1 Wow . Just what Chinese and Russian hackers would love

nanditab1 We should make ELECTION DAY, A SHUT DOWN BIG TECH DAY TO PROHIBIT THEM FROM ELECTION INTERFERENCE! We know what they are capable of!

nanditab1 Just, no. No way...

nanditab1 Or in simple terms it gives Amazon the capability to continue to interfere in and alter US elections to favour the Democrats.

nanditab1 Cloud Amazon's? Esse será o braço mais eficiente e garantidor da democracia. Eleições sem fraudes e com garantia cybersecurity? Sentiu Brasil? STF TSE TRE's Eleições2020 SenadoFederal CamaradosDeputados

nanditab1 Hell to the no

nanditab1 That sounds like a disaster. All states should go back to paper ballots.

nanditab1 1 pen & a piece of paper!

nanditab1

nanditab1 oh my god. this is a god awful idea. who oked this?

nanditab1 I am not sure this is a good idea

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