Amazon Plans Largest Corporate Surveillance Program In Human History

February 5, 2021

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By Anna Peel. Originally published at ValueWalk.

CNBC and other outlets are reporting on the largest corporate surveillance program that Amazon is planning to install artificial intelligence enabled cameras on its fleet of thousands of delivery vans, monitoring and recording 100% of the time when vehicles are in motion.

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Amazon Plans The Largest Corporate Surveillance Program

Today Fight for the Future launched a campaign calling on Amazon to halt the surveillance program, which they openly admit could be used for law enforcement surveillance and to investigate minor crimes like package theft. In case they take them down, I posted the internal training videos that Amazon is circulating to their drivers about the program on Twitter here:

Before they take it down, here’s the video Amazon circulated internally to roll out what amounts to the largest expansion of corporate surveillance in human history: using artificial intelligence enabled cameras on their fleet of thousands of delivery vans https://t.co/CJy1jPj134 pic.twitter.com/TFIdScGoUV

— Evan Greer (@evan_greer) February 4, 2021

Evan Greer, Deput Director of Fight for the Future comments:

“This amounts to the largest expansion of corporate surveillance in human history. Amazon wants to turn their massive delivery fleet into an army of mobile Ring surveillance cameras. These devices will exacerbate the unsafe and inhumane working conditions that Amazon’s contract delivery drivers are already subjected to. And they’ll violate everyone’s basic rights by constantly collecting and analyzing footage of our neighborhoods, our homes, and our children. It seems inevitable that Amazon will find some easy way to share video with their 2,000+ law enforcement partners––the privacy policy obtained by CNBC clearly states that they can and will share footage with police. And there are essentially no laws in place to limit what commercial purposes Amazon can use this enormous trove of video footage for. Per usual, Amazon is sacrificing security. They are not even responding to questions about how the devices are secured. If the connection isn’t end to end encrypted, this is a security disaster waiting to happen. Hackers already targeted insecure Ring cameras. If they target these devices, it could cause major accidents or get someone killed. We’re demanding that Amazon immediately stop the roll out of this unsafe program, and we call on Congress to launch a full investigation into Amazon’s surveillance empire.”