>The Amazon centers are property tax-abated for 10 years, providing instead 1.5% income tax on workers via a joint economic development agreement with Marysville. After construction, a small fraction of workers remain to be taxed, she said.
Lol, gotta love the scam. Small town politicians must get some amazing bribes.
>While under construction about a year ago, a worker at the Warren Road Amazon facility was crushed to death, Stewart said. Another fell to his death in February at the Industrial Parkway site. And an April 17 fire at the Industrial Parkway center tied up firefighters for more than 30 hours, causing $50 million in damage, Stewart said. During each call, Stewart said, Amazon officials have not been helpful. "They wanted to do background checks on all my firefighters; I wouldn't let them," he said. "And we've struggled to gain access to emergencies. They'll stop us at the gate, and our medic units have been delayed. They're denying us access to patients.
You immediately arrest have any employee interfering with emergency response and throw them in jail. Repeat until Amazon runs out of employees dumb enough to continue doing so.
But our CISO paint-by-number checklist says only people with background checks and the NDAs can enter the data center. We can't have emergency services stealing our customer's bits!
>You immediately arrest have any employee interfering with emergency response and throw them in jail.
Imagine that you work for a 3 letter US agency and is storing confidential data on AWS. Would you allow random individuals (yes even for emergency personnel) to have unfetter access to your computation and storage systems? What about health data? What about data belonging to other countries? Do you do a sweep for unauthorized remote access device after the incident?
Then they need to have staff on site that is fully qualified to handle any type of emergency any time there is anyone at all in the facility, which they don't.
I've never experienced it but I've been told that if an emergency responder needs to enter an area where classified information is stored you let them in, escort them, and security will debrief them and have them sign an NDA after the fact if they saw any classified information.
> you let them in, escort them
My understanding is that the fire department has pretty broad legal authority to tell you where to shove your policies your if your building is on fire. They can legally smash down your doors, haul you out kicking and screaming, and detain you outside of the building while they put the fire out.
This is largely correct. However, staff also need to be trained and drilled on security policies and procedures. That's often lacking, especially if security is outsourced to third party contractors.
Well the thing with emergency services needing emergency access right now is that Amazon would have needed to think about that at an earlier stage.
If that’s what they are storing, they can do what many other government agencies are doing and staff their own first responders.
…and why should the local fire department care about those concerns?
Because there are federal agents with rifles guarding the data center, and they're allowed to use deadly force if the local FD ignores their instructions.
What AWS datacenters are guarded by federal agents?
The ones hosting classified data used by federal agencies. https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/
Is that this one in particular?
Reading between the lines: yes, certainly. Amazon wouldn't stop firefighters from getting into a normal datacenter, nor would they have the authority to stop them if they wanted to. A private corporation can't demand background checks from emergency responders; a letter agency can.
One would think they would cite that as a reason
If the first responders can draw guns on the DataCenter and it can’t defend itself, it’s not worthy of being declared a TLA site.
So you let them in with an eyes on, constant escort.
> "And we've struggled to gain access to emergencies. They'll stop us at the gate, and our medic units have been delayed. They're denying us access to patients.
> You immediately arrest have any employee interfering with emergency response and throw them in jail. Repeat until Amazon runs out of employees dumb enough to continue doing so.
Absolutely. Ex-paramedic/firefighter. We responded to a cult facility once (think Nexium-esque but "bigger"). 911 call for chest pain. Stopped at the gate by armed guards. "You can't bring your ambulance in". Uh, yes, we can. "No. We can't allow you in, then." My officer at the time, to the head guard, "Are you the individual who called 911?" "No, I'm not, someone in there did." "Alright, so to be very clear before I call law enforcement out here, you are acknowledging you are interfering with emergency services performing their duty by actively preventing us from getting to our patient?"
We got let in.
I like the part where people suddenly realize just how much gate you would need to stop 30 tons of fire truck.
Most facilities don’t have it. Those that do have their own medical personnel (and tanks, usually).