Jay Carney, AWS | AWS Public Sector Summit 2019
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2019-06-11

Jay Carney, SVP, Global Corporate Affairs,Amazon, AWS sits down with John Furrier & Rebecca Knight at AWS Public Sector Summit 2019 in Washington, D.C.

#AWSPSsummit #AWS #theCUBE

https://siliconangle.com/2019/07/09/in-prime-position-jay-carney-steers-policy-issues-for-amazon-after-years-in-the-white-house-awspssummit-guestoftheweek/

In prime position: White House vet Jay Carney steers policy issues for Amazon

There may be only one corporate executive in the world with the combined experience handling press relations for the president and vice president of the United States, the owner of The Washington Post, and the chief executive of the most valuable technology company in the world. Jay Carney can make that claim.

As senior vice president of global corporate affairs at Amazon Inc., Carney (pictured) is responsible for public relations and policy for the company founded and led by Jeff Bezos, who purchased the Post in 2013. Carney joined Amazon, now the world’s most valuable business by market value, after serving as press secretary for former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden.

His prior experience parrying media questions about global nuclear disarmament and the national debt has undoubtedly prepared him for the hot seat he now occupies, as Amazon and other large tech powerhouses have increasingly come under fire over issues such as data privacy and possible anti-competitive practices.

“You can’t be in a more exciting space if you’re going to be in the private sector engaging in policy,” Carney said. “The space is fascinating because issues really are front and center right now around questions about technology, and how to ensure that it continues to evolve in a way which allows for innovation, but also protects privacy, civil liberties and the like.”

Carney spoke with John Furrier and Rebecca Knight, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. They discussed concerns regarding facial recognition technology, the need to build dialogue with public officials, how the company is addressing potential antitrust issues and Amazon’s success in winning major contracts with government agencies (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE features Jay Carney as its Guest of the Week.

Public benefits versus privacy
Amazon sits at a crossroads today between the benefits of technology innovation to improve the world and concerns that personal privacy will take a serious hit in doing so. An example of this tech policy dilemma can be found in Rekognition, Amazon’s facial recognition software.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Rekognition analyzes still images and video of people. Users of the tool, such as governments and businesses, can build private databases to match stored files against those images. Not surprisingly, enthusiastic users of Rekognition have been law-enforcement agencies that have employed the tool to solve crime. Nonprofit groups, such as Thorn and the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, are also using it to generate leads on missing children or human trafficking victims.

However, the tool has raised an outcry among privacy advocates who fear its potential for misuse.

“As we scrutinize and explore regulating some of these arenas, we should do it in a way that creates public benefit, that prevents whenever possible, misuse of technology, but continues to allow the kind of innovation that’s made the United States the center of technological innovation over the last 30 or 40 years,” Carney said. “That’s not an easy job, but I think that folks in tech need to work with and collaborate with regulators and lawmakers to talk about how to do that.”

Operating in nation’s capital
To engage in dialogue, Amazon relies on an extensive in-house policy operation, led by Carney, that includes approximately 250 people. Among them are Michael Punke, formerly the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization, who leads global policy for Amazon Web Services Inc., and Brian Huseman, previously chief of staff at the Federal Trade Commission and former senior policy counsel at Intel Corp.

Amazon also has not been shy about participating in the political contributions process. Amazon PAC, the firm’s political action committee, increased its spending to $1.8 million in 2018, triple the amount given two years before. Yet, Amazon’s political spending doesn’t even crack the top 20 corporate contributors list in 2018.

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(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Public Sector Summit. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)