The CNIL has just announced that Amazon will be fined 32 million euros. Jeff Bezos’ firm is accused of having carried the surveillance of its employees far too far.
The French personal data regulator, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), has already imposed fines on several companies in the past for disproportionate surveillance of their employees. But the amounts have until now been quite low, compared to what has just been decided in the case of the American online commerce giant Amazon.
A fine of 32 million euros
Alerted by a certain number of journalistic investigations questioning Amazon’s treatment of its employees, the CNIL wanted to directly control the American company. And she drew the conclusion that she was carrying out excessively abusive surveillance of the people working for her, which consequently prompted her to impose a fine of 32 million euros.
She considers that “ employees [étaient] under close supervision for all tasks performed with scanners, [les systèmes en place] thus placed continuous pressure on them. » For its part, Amazon expressed its “ deep disagreement with the conclusions of the CNIL which are factually incorrect and we reserve the right to appeal. »
Several shortcomings noted
Beyond the overly intrusive monitoring of employees, whose activity and performance were collected, the CNIL also identified several other shortcomings. Among them, the fact that the security of access to the video surveillance software was not strong enough; poor information for temporary workers on the collection of their data; poor information for employees and external visitors regarding video surveillance systems.
The fine that was decided is based on the GDPR, and corresponds to 3% of Amazon France Logistique’s turnover. This allows a fine to be imposed, the limit of which is 4% of this turnover. This decision is “ almost unprecedented » according to a statement communicated to theFrance Media Agency and which The world echoes.
Source : CNIL, The world
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