For a thought exercise, let's play this out.
Amazon copies data running through VMs (or grabs it from storage).
Let's assume it isn't on hardware certified for capital-letter processing [1], most of which require regular third party audits.
So they have your illegally-obtained data [2], which presumably they want to use to make money.
Except they can't leave any record of its source, in any documented form. This includes server logs, data transfers, emails about data, meeting minutes about data.
So they create some isolated network, run by a third party contractor, that transfers encrypted data from the taps to a store, then decrypts. All of which brings us to the most difficult part.
Who does... what with it?
The source data itself is radioactive. Who knows when "pricing strategy for company X" or obvious equivalent might pop up in the stream?
So you... what? Exclusively touch it via algorithm that outputs only aggregate information? How do you possibly code and maintain that pipeline, sight unseen?
All while risking an incredibly profitable business.
Or, you know, you just operate as an honest IaaS provider and make $10B in revenue / quarter with a 25% growth rate...
The unit could be the "open sales modeling unit" that just supplies one data feed among thousands.
They can certainly take the risk. If crimes only happened when there was a 0% change of getting caught there would be no crime.
> If amazon copied all your proprietary data, you would almost certainly never notice, no criminal law would apply, and you'd have a hell of a time proving it in a civil suit.
If Amazon were doing this and profiting from it, that would essentially be a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the leadership of the company. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? I tend to think conspiracy theories are rarely true. Would it be caught? I believe it would likely be caught.
Companies get things done by having meetings, informing their hierarchy, and following executive decisions. In what meeting do you imagine this being discussed? Who floats this idea, and who signs off on it? I just don't see it happening. And if it does, I expect whistleblowers to put a stop to it.
Actually, they are quite uncommon, which is why they make headlines when discovered.
I'm not taking a side here, just pointing out a fallacy.
Bezos is making the most money of everyone living. Many of the scandals happen when the founder is retired or dead.
Boeing:
See 737 MAX, other 737 boondoggle like the vertical stabilizer reversal back in 94'ish.
Monsanto, hell, what chemical hasn't hid information they damn well shouldn't:
Dicamba, roundup.. Take your pick. The stellar behavior of this corporate citizen taints cements the stereotype of an entire industry.
https://thecounter.org/dicamba-trial-monsanto-basf-pesticide...
https://www.phillyvoice.com/new-york-times-dupont-hid-decade...
Special mention goes to a certain German pharma company who brought you Thalidomide:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnenthal_GmbH
The lovely folks at Insys:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/health/insys-trial-verdic...
Believe there was a fraudulent implant thing a bit ago... Where'd I put that?
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/health/2014/07/09/south...
Someone beat me to Dieselgate.
Arthur Anderson LLP.
PG&E deliberately skimped on maintenance, leading to fires in California, and if I recall natural gas lines overpressuring in Massachusets?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_gas_explosions
Excuse me, the natural gas one was Columbia Gas.
Big Tobacco...
Nestle I think getting caught using child labor in their supply chain at one point.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...
Oh what else can I think of off the top of my head? Uhhh...
That's all I can think of for right now. I mean we can hit the history books or case law to get a solid count I suppose, but to be frank, once a company hits a certain revenue point, it is pretty much guaranteed they've had to do something to get dirty/avoid getting outed as dirty.
So it really isn't that unusual. Throw in stuff that happened back before the rise of the Unions of the last century, and since their decline, and you also end up with so.e decent stories of workforce abuse. Though admittedly there's slant depending on who is telling it.
Like the Pinkertons as a matter of fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_%28detective_agency%...
Or the original incarnation of Equifax, who were tasked with vetting prospective executive promotees.
Just because it'sorganized doesn't mean it's doing anyone any favors.
I stand by my statement -- it is rare.
I know of a case of fraud in oil well lease payouts, someone was stealing a small from a large number of leases and had been doing so for years.
A company auditor caught it. Did they go to the police? No. They paid the guy to leave the company and never talk about it again. The guy might have stolen hundreds of thousands in the process, but the company knew they'd lose millions, just from clients demanding audits going decades back. It was easier and cheaper to cover up and never mention again.
The very least we can say is that company malpractice is more common than it appears, unless 100% of it is reported on.
As has been mentioned as well is that governmental/regulatory apparata are typically starved of funding, so must limit their investigation/scrutiny to likely the most obvious cases.
Furthermore, if you've just entered into white collar circles these last few years, you may have been surprised at a tendency to not write things down. This isn't just people not realizing it is a good idea to do so, but a conscious decision in many cases due to eDiscovery, and the effects it has on provability in a court of law.
Pay attention on HN, and you'll get little snippets of other cases of "tribal skeletons" every now and again.
Anyway, by all means, I'm not necessarily arguing against your point; merely stating that given the sample size, and keeping in mind that regulators/the media can only dig up so much muck given limited manpower; it is not prudent to assume there isn't wrongdoing where no one has looked yet. I used to hold the same view you espouse; then I started A)cataloging things and B) noticed how often settlements seem to be applied with no admission of wrong doing.
Absence of evidence does not imply evidence of the non-existence thereof. You just haven't found it yet.
Can't believe I forgot about Wells Fargo, btw. That whole mess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_account_fraud_scan...
ISP's have been known to falsify their Form 477 data fabricating coverage stats, and overcharging customers:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/complaints-att-directv-bundled-...
https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/verizon-wireless/nation...
There's plenty more where that came from with every ISP to be honest.
FTC keeps stats on all enforcement actions apparently. Might be a decent place to start looking to get some solid numbers.
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/
Mind that that's only the ones. I assume CFPB and other commissions have similar, but do keep in mind they can't be everywhere or investigate everyone. So without stats on how many actions are dropped by prosecutorial/investigator's discretion, it is actually difficult to make really solid claims as to the actual frequency of malfeasance. Further, from my social circle's anecdata, it seems to be a safe bet that just about every organization at least has something in the the way of "muck they've cleaned up after" without getting authorities involved.
Anyway... I've rambled enough.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
main thing here is that in big corps you can divide big (evil) task into smaller steps which could be defined as non-evil in isolation, and nobody in actual implementation people crowd would understand big picture.
It's the difference between breaking into a Walmart with a ski mask and assault rifle and stealing a bunch of blu rays vs recording the HDMI out from whatever device you stream Netflix from. They're not the same thing at all, either in terms of harm done, applicable criminal law, or ability to build a compelling civil lawsuit.