A former head of the National Security Agency (NSA) joined the board of directors of Amazon, which angered the former contractor with the agency and the owner of the most famous leaks of the current era, Edward Snowden.
General Keith Alexander, whose appointment was announced last week, became known to the public after Snowden issued a warning about the NSA's mass surveillance programs.
A spokesman for Privacy International told the BBC that the move was "worrying".
Snowden expressed his concern hours after the announcement of General Alexander’s appointment, writing on Twitter, "It turns out that the word Hey Alexa is short for Hey Keith Alexander."
"Yes, Keith Alexander is personally responsible for the illegal mass surveillance programs that have caused a global scandal," he added.
A US federal court ruled last week that the NSA's surveillance of phone records, a scandal that Snowden revealed in 2013, was illegal.
General Alexander said at the time that journalists should not be allowed to report on the documents Snowden leaked.
According to a BBC report, Alexander said in 2013, "I think it is a mistake that newspaper reporters have all these documents. We have to find a way to stop it. We don't need another national security agency."
Eden Emmanovic, an official at Privacy International, said that Amazon's decision to appoint General Alexander "was very worrying. Every day big technology companies like Amazon make huge ethical decisions that affect people's lives without any democratic accountability."
"It's disturbing in this appointment by Amazon that someone who spent years defending the seizures of confidential data, which later proved to be illegal, would be responsible for customer data. We don't need another national security agency, even if it has a policy," he added. Privacy".
Emmanovic indicated that this step may make it easier for Amazon to exert its influence in the security market, adding, "Amazon now wants to enter the lucrative defense and security market, so that the keys to the huge data stores that governments keep in their hands."
"It is no secret that the key to this is the appointment of influential former government employees, the concentration of power that will result from this is bad for people, bad for companies, bad for societies," he added.
And Amazon faced major criticism last year when it became clear that its intelligent personal assistant, "Alexa", was among a variety of voice assistants who were sending audio recordings to human contractors for review.