The fox was always inside the henhouse. The fox just agreed to pay discount prices for some of the chickens.
Kidding aside, doesn't this seem like exactly the sort of move you would want your government agencies to make? Take advantage of free-market services where appropriate, and not get all "NIH"?
At one point in time I knew some people that did contract work at National Institutes of Health, and the way they talked about it, NIH might as well stand for Not Invented Here.
I don't think the fox/henhouse analogy is as foregone as you describe. Say what you will about the CIA and the law, but there are lots of restrictions on their work inside US borders (where much AWS infrastructure is located).
Furthermore, while I'm acting mostly on assumption here, I doubt the agency is going to Amazon because they can't build and/or afford their own setup.
I doubt the agency is going to Amazon because they can't build and/or afford their own setup
I can build and I can afford my own versions of a great many things. I still buy from vendors.
Anyway, AWS is heavily segregated. Simply having consumer instances is not going to enable them to snoop your traffic, and simply having consumer instances is not going to enable them to make Amazon give them your traffic if they couldn't make Amazon give it to them before.
Kidding aside, doesn't this seem like exactly the sort of move you would want your government agencies to make? Take advantage of free-market services where appropriate, and not get all "NIH"?