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Amazon is calling for the dismissal of a complaint issued by the National Labor Relations Board after two warehouse workers in the US state of Georgia claimed they faced retaliation, surveillance, and questioning after they led employee complaints about policy changes. Amazon, in common with other companies such as Trader Joe's and Starbucks, is claiming that following a recent US Supreme Court decision ending the "Chevron deference" principle, the NLRB's complaint violates the US constitution…
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Workers at a St Peters, Missouri Amazon warehouse have filed an unfair labour practice charge with the US National Labor Relations Board alleging that Amazon has interfered with employees' right to unionise by intrusively surveilling them. Constant video and audio recording analysed by AI enables the company to discipline hundreds of thousands of workers and making it hard for them to talk to each other about working conditions, injuries, and other issues. In Europe, more than 20 labour…
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Companies like the Australian data services company Appen are part of a vast, hidden industry of low-paid workers in some of the globe's cheapest labour markets who label images, video, and text to provide the datasets used to train the algorithms that power new bots. Appen, which has 1 million contributors, includes among its clients Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. According to Grand View Research, the global data collection and labelling market was valued at $2.22 billion in 2022 and is…
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French data protection agency CNIL has fined Amazon's French warehouse management unit €32 million, or about 3% of its turnover, for its "excessively intrusive" surveillance of the performance of its thousands of staff. The system relied on data collected from the scanners warehouse staff use to process packages. CNIL said the surveillance placed workers under continuous pressure and forced them to justify absences, as the scanners timed inacctivity to the second and also penalised workers for…
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When the Los Angeles Police Department opted to monitor the messages posted in forums on Neighbors, a companion app to Amazon's Ring doorbell cameras, the system forwarded over 13,000 messages in just over two years. Research shows, however, that this type of surveillance does a poor job of deterring property crime. A study of Neighbors posts in LA also shows that posters typically live in whiter, more affluent districts, and about 30% of posts did not describe criminal activity, just behaviour…
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An eight-country study of Amazon employees has found that 57% say the company's performance monitoring system damages their mental health, 51% (65.7% of drivers) say it's had a negative effect on their physical health, and 59% feel the monitoring is excessive. In addition, 58% say Amazon doesn't explain clearly how it uses the data it collects on workers. Injury rates at Amazon warehouses are above the industry average.https://uniglobalunion.org/news/globalsurvey23/Publication: UNI Global…
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Workers in Amazon warehouses are tracked closely by a system that records every minute of "time off task" via the radio frequency handheld scanners workers use to track customer packages. Breaching strict time off task time limits can get an employee fired. Time off task includes bathroom breaks, talking to other Amazon employees, or going to the wrong floor of a warehouse: - managers may be required to ask offenders to account for each missing minute. https://www.vice.com/en/article/…
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AI-powered cameras made by the startup Netradyne and used in Amazon's delivery vans incorrectly penalises drivers for events beyond their control or which do not constitute unsafe driving such as if they are cut off by another vehicle. The data collected by the cameras is sent to Amazon, which uses the information to evaluate drivers' performance by assigning them with a score for safe driving. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-…
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A BBC Panorama investigation that brought hidden cameras into a UK-based Amazon warehouse found that workers walked up to 11 miles in a shift and had just 33 seconds on average to find each product, following instructions from a handset. Experts on stress at work say the warehouse conditions are ideal for increasing the risk of mental and physical illness.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25034598Publication: BBCPublication date: 2013-11-25Writer: BBC
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Humans who review footage of warehouse workers flagged by Amazon’s AI computer vision system to check for employee errors - are themselves surveilled in detail to ensure they make punishing targets. The workers, who are paid as little as £212 a month to review thousands of images and videos per day, report physical problems, deteriorating eyesight, and cognitive exhaustion. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-11-21/the-eyes-of-amazon-a-hidden-workforce-driving-a-vast-…
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Behind every powerful AI system are huge numbers of people labelling and clarifying data to train it, contracted by companies like Remotasks, a subsidiary of Silicon Valley-based data vendor Scale AI, whose customers include the US military and OpenAI. Often the workers, who are assigned tasks they don't understand for a purpose they don't know, are sworn to secrecy. Yet labelling is crucial; it can make the difference between a car stopping to spare the person walking a bike across the road or…
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Technology companies that call themselves "AI first" rely on heavily surveilled gig workers who label data, deliver packages, moderate content, and perform gig work via platforms. Startups pressured by their venture capital funders even hire humans to pretend to be chatbots so they can claim to be "AI" companies. For these reasons, worker exploitation needs to be a central part of the discussion of the ethical development and deployment of AI systems.https://www.noemamag.com/the-exploited-labor…
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A former Amazon warehouse worker writes that every day was "brutal" because of the "exploitative and dangerous" standards enforced by Amazon executives. Amazon's anxiety-inducing policies about bathroom use and low pay should be seen in context with fast food and retail workers, who frequently encounter violence on the job and many essential workers' struggle to afford the basic necessities of life. In response, workers are beginning to target investors as an important voice that can help…
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An excerpt from the new book "Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door—Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy", describes in detail the tracking systems used in Amazon warehouses to ensure workers meet their managers' targets. The system is a mix of surveillance, measurement, psychology, targets, incentives, slogans, and proprietary technologies.https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-way-amazon-uses-tech-to-squeeze-performance-out-of-workers-deserves-its-own-name-bezosism-…
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Documents filed with the US National Labor Relations Board show that Amazon issues warehouse workers with radio-frequency handheld scanners to track and record every minute of "time off task". The filing is part of a dispute at the State Island Amazon warehouse, where workers voted to unionise in 2022. Managers must ask the person with the most "time off task", which includes time spent in the bathroom, talking to other associates, and navigational errors, about their whereabouts for each "…
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Amazon has begun issuing partner delivery companies with AI-enabled cameras to monitor and track drivers' behaviour on the road. The cameras add another layer of monitoring to existing requirements to run the smartphone app Mentor; drivers complain that the app's bugs lead to unfair disciplinary action against them; the app may also follow them into their homes. Drivers swap tips on gaming the app on Reddit.https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/amazon-mentor-app-tracks-and-disciplines-delivery-…
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Amazon delivery partner companies are ordering their drivers to turn off Amazon's Mentor monitoring app so they can take more risks in order to hit Amazon's delivery targets. Mentor, made by a company called eDriving, is a smartphone app Amazon uses to monitor drivers in Amazon-branded vans that tracks drivers' speed, braking, acceleration, and cornering; it also detect "phone distraction" and gives drivers a safe driving score. Amazon has pushed the liability for infractions onto the more than…
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Numerous video clips from Amazon's in-van driver-facing surveillance cameras are appearing on Reddit in violence of Amazon's stated privacy policies and raising questions about drivers' privacy. The videos are clearly not being posted by drivers themselves, but come from inside Amazon delivery partners, though who is posting them is unknown. The cameras capture all aspects of drivers road behaviour; the company claims they protect road safety. Drivers say they do not have access to the videos.…
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A 24-year-old man in Atlanta, Georgia is suing Amazon after being left with extensive brain and spinal cord injuries after an Amazon van crashed into his car. Amazon claims it isn't legally liable because the driver worked for the delivery company Harper Logistics LLC. However, the lawsuit seeks to prove that Amazon controls all aspects of deliveries from how many packages drivers are assigned to their continued employment and tracks drivers intensively, pressuring them to take risks in order…
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Emails obtained by EFF show that the Los Angeles Police Department contacted Amazon Ring owners specifically asking for footage of protests against racist police violence that took place across the US in the summer of 2020. LAPD signed a formal partnership with Ring and its associated "Neighbors" app in May 2019. Requests for Ring footage typically include the name of the detective, a description of the incident under investigation, and a time period. If enough people in a neighbourhood…
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The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has filed a lawsuit in Hamburg against three AdTech industry trade bodies including the Interactive Avertising Bureau (IAB). Members of the IAB include big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter...), data brokers (Equifax, Experian, Acxiom...) and advertising agencies (Groupm, Publicis, IPG...).
The lawsuit follows the filing in 2018 of complaints with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) and UK Information Commissioner (ICO), which…
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When Dallas police posted on Twitter asking for videos of the protests taking place after George Floyd's killing, a flood of videos and images of K-pop stars were uploaded to its anonymous iWatch Dallas tip-off app. Law enforcement can call on vast numbers of networked cameras - from cars, food and retail chains that are typically willing to share with police, law enforcement agencies' own networks of surveillance and body cameras as well as object and face recognition software, protesters and…
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French data protection regulator CNIL fined Google and Amazon €100 million and €35 million respectively for breaches of the French Data Protection Act. The CNIL found that the French websites of Google and Amazon had not sought the prior consent of visitors before advertising cookies were saved on computers, and failed to provide clear information to users as to how they intended to make use of online trackers and how to refuse any use of cookies.
In relation to Google, the CNIL made an…
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A growing number of companies - for example, San Mateo start-up Camio and AI startup Actuate, which uses machine learning to identify objects and events in surveillance footage - are repositioning themselves as providers of AI software that can track workplace compliance with covid safety rules such as social distancing and wearing masks. Amazon developed its own social distancing tracking technology for internal use in its warehouses and other buildings, and is offering it as a free tool to…
Content type: Examples
A growing number of companies - for example, San Mateo start-up Camio and AI startup Actuate, which uses machine learning to identify objects and events in surveillance footage - are repositioning themselves as providers of AI software that can track workplace compliance with covid safety rules such as social distancing and wearing masks. Amazon developed its own social distancing tracking technology for internal use in its warehouses and other buildings, and is offering it as a free tool to…
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Several of the Chinese companies producing personal protective equipment such as face masks were shown via undercover video footage to be using Uighur labour under a government labour transfer programme that pays regional subsidies for each worker taken in. The equipment is being shipped all over the world, including to the US and Latin America. In the course of the pandemic, the number of companies producing PPE in Xinjiang has risen from four to 51. At Medwell, one such company, Uighurs are…
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The Australian government reported soon after releasing its CovidSafe contact tracing app that the app doesn’t work properly on iPhones because it doesn’t use Apple’s Exposure Notification framework and the Bluetooth functions deteriorate if the app isn’t kept running in the foreground. The government will update the app to use Apple’s framework. The app will store data on Amazon Web Services servers within Australia, although critics have expressed concern that the data could be handed over to…
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In early July the Open Rights Group issued a pre-action legal letter to UK health secretary Matt Hancock and the Department of Health and Social Care saying they have breached requirements under the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR by failing to conduct an impact assessment for the Test and Trace system. ORG and its lawyers, AWO, had been asking for details of the DPIA since the beginning of June, a few days after the system was launched. In their response, the DHSC’s lawyers said “there were…
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Hours before OpenDemocracy filed suit to compel the UK government to release all the contracts governing its deals with a list of technology firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and Faculty, the UK government released the contracts. Faculty is being paid more than £1 million to provide AI services for the NHS, and the companies involved in the NHS data store project, including Faculty and Palantir, were originally granted intellectual property rights and were allowed to train…
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It's been two months since the launch of "Perú en us manos", the mobile app promoted by the Peruvian government amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Until now the app did not accomplish the ambitious goals it set out to.
On its first month the app had detected 1400 risk zones while there where already 36,000 confirmed infection cases. There is little transparency on how those risk zones are estimated. Developers of the app state that only one fifth of the data provided by the Health Ministry is clean…