France imposes a fine of $34.9 million on Amazon for “surveillance of its employees”

France’s data protection agency on Tuesday sentenced Amazon France Logistics (AFL) to a fine of 32 million euros ($34.9 million) for its “excessively intrusive” staff surveillance system.

The National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties (CNIL) considers that the data collected by the subsidiary of the American internet distribution giant, through the scanners used by its employees in warehouses to process packages, constitutes “a tracking system of activity and excessive performance.

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The scanners record downtime when it exceeds 10 minutes or the rate of processing packages “every second,” the agency says.

The regulatory body sanctions AFL based on the general regulation on data protection and has imposed a fine equivalent to around 3% of the French company’s turnover.

A sanction “almost unprecedented in the percentage of business volume,” the agency told AFP. The maximum fine is 4%.

The surveillance indicators that are unacceptable for the CNIL are the so-called “stow machine gun”, which registers when an article is scanned “too quickly”, in less than 1.25 seconds, and the “idle time”, which indicates a period of inactivity of a scanner for more than 10 minutes.

Another meter shows the time that passes “between the moment the employee clocks in” and when he scans his first package, explains the CNIL.

This system leads workers to justify any interruption, even “of three or four minutes”, of the activity and represents “continuous pressure” for them, the agency indicates.

“We totally disagree with the CNIL’s conclusions, which are factually incorrect, and we reserve the right to appeal,” an Amazon spokesperson reacted in a statement.

The group has two months to file an appeal.

Source: Elcomercio

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