"We don’t need another NSA..."

"...even one with a privacy policy."

"Every day, big tech companies like Amazon make huge ethical decisions which affect people’s lives without any democratic accountability," said Edin Omanovic, advocacy director at Privacy International.

"Clearly it is worrying that at the heart of this will now be someone who spent years defending secret data grabs which were later proved to be unlawful.

Last week, a US federal court ruled that the NSA's phone record surveillance, uncovered by Edward Snowden in 2013, was illegal.