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+--- Thread: Amazon wages secret war on Americans' privacy (/Thread-Amazon-wages-secret-war-on-Americans-privacy)
Amazon wages secret war on Americans' privacy - Levin - 21-11-2021
By JEFFREY DASTIN, CHRIS KIRKHAM and ADITYA KALRA Filed Nov. 19, 2021, 11 a.m. GMT
In recent years, Amazon.com Inc has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states, as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers.
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In Virginia, the company boosted political donations tenfold over four years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself drafted. In California, the company stifled proposed restrictions on the industry’s collection and sharing of consumer voice recordings gathered by tech devices. And in its home state of Washington, Amazon won so many exemptions and amendments to a bill regulating biometric data, such as voice recordings or facial scans, that the resulting 2017 law had “little, if any” impact on its practices
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The architect of this under-the-radar campaign to smother privacy protections has been Jay Carney, who previously served as communications director for Joe Biden, when Biden was vice president, and as press secretary for President Barack Obama.
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One objective: “Change or block US and EU regulation/legislation that would impede growth for Alexa-powered devices,” referring to Amazon’s popular voice-assistant technology. The mission included defeating restrictions on artificial intelligence and biometric technologies, along with blocking efforts to make companies disclose the data they keep on consumers.
The document listed Carney as the goal’s “primary owner” and celebrated killing or amending privacy bills in “over 20 states.”
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Amazon’s lobbying against privacy protections aims to preserve the company’s access to detailed consumer data that has fueled its explosive online-retailing growth and provided an advantage in emerging technologies
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The data Amazon amasses includes Alexa voice recordings; videos from home-camera systems; personal health data from fitness trackers; and data on consumers’ web-searching and buying habits from its e-commerce business.
Some of this information is highly sensitive. Under a 2018 California law that passed despite Amazon’s opposition, consumers can access the personal data that technology companies keep on them. After losing that state battle, Amazon last year started allowing all U.S. consumers to access their data. (Customers can request their data at this link.) Seven Reuters reporters obtained and examined their own Amazon dossiers.
One found that Amazon had more than 90,000 recordings Alexa devices made of the reporter’s family members since 2017.
Much much more in very long report: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-privacy-lobbying/