Amazon fined 32 million euros for excessive monitoring of employees

Amazon has been fined €32 million ($34.8 million) by France’s data protection agency CNIL for violating employees’ privacy by excessively monitoring their work at French warehouses .

It is reported that CNIL ( French National Commission for Information Technology and Freedom ) investigated Amazon's warehouses after receiving complaints from employees and the media.

After investigation , CNIL found that Amazon warehouses obtained all scan data from workers' handheld scanners to monitor employees' work through a system that the agency considered "excessively intrusive."

According to CNIL , Amazon has set up three alarm systems. One is used to monitor the time workers spend on quality inspections of items, with a target of at least 1.25 seconds. If the system monitors that the time employees spend on goods inspections is lower than the set threshold, the scanner will prompt an error when the employee scans the goods.

The other two alarm systems will remind employees when the interval between scans is "1 to 10 minutes" and "more than 10 minutes", respectively. At this time, employees may need to explain and clarify these intervals. In addition, CNIL believes that the storage time of this data ( 31 days) is unreasonable.

Of course, Amazon does not agree with CNIL's statement , saying it is "inconsistent with the facts" and reserves the right to appeal . An Amazon spokesperson believes that equipping a warehouse management system is an industry standard and a necessary condition to ensure the safety, quality and efficiency of warehouse operations. It is also a necessary condition for tracking warehouse storage and processing packages on time and in line with customer expectations.

In response to Amazon's explanation, CNIL believes that the company already has a large amount of data to achieve quality and safety in the warehouse . CNIL also pointed out that the system 's tracking level is too high, which may force employees to explain short interruptions to scan ; Amazon also did not ( properly ) inform workers and external visitors of the warehouse's monitoring, and the security of video surveillance was also insufficient .

It is worth mentioning that the fine issued by CNIL this time is equivalent to 3% of the annual revenue of Amazon's French logistics company in 2021. Perhaps under the pressure of the fine , Amazon promised to disable the 1.25-second scanning error prompt and increase the trigger interval of "idle time" from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. CNIL said they will continue to pay attention to this .

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