The US Government is inspecting Amazon warehouses over ‘potential worker safety hazards’

Amazon warehouses in New York City and elsewhere are being investigated by federal prosecutors and the US Department of Labor over unsafe workplace conditions, ABC News has reported. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted inspections “related, among other things, to Amazon’s required pace of work for its warehouse employees,” a spokesperson said in a statement. 

On top of probing potential safety hazards, the investigators were also looking into “possible fraudulent conduct designed to hide injuries from OSHA and others,” the agency added. It said that it opened the inspections based on referrals from the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York regarding allegations of safety and health violations. It’s also probing Amazon workplaces outside of Illinois and Florida. 

Over the last several years, Amazon has faced a number of complaints and probes over workplace safety, particularly around demanding tasks. Earlier this year, Washington state’s Department of Labor cited and fined the company for “strenuous work at an unsafe pace” in Kent. Last year, the company issued a rare apology for tweets attacking criticism of working conditions, specifically that drivers and other workers were forced to pee in bottles to achieve objectives. 

Following the collapse of a warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois during a hurricane, the company was criticized by members of congress and the senate for “wholly inadequate” warehouse safety. In April, workers at New York’s Staten Island warehouse voted to form the company’s first US union. 

Exclusive: Amazon instructs New York workers ‘don’t sign’ union cards

Amazon, the second-largest employer in the United States, has made plain its desire to keep its workforce from unionizing. In one of its warehouses, ALB1 in upstate New York, that message has become crystal clear: “Don’t sign a card.” 

Photos of the new digital signage were sent to Engadget by an employee at the facility. Their presence was confirmed by a second employee, David, who claims to have been at the fulfillment center approximately since its opening in 2020. According to David (whose full name is being withheld for fear of retribution by his employer), the carousel of anti-union posters went up today and cycles between approximately seven different slides, each actively discouraging workers from signing a union card. “It’s on a constant loop while people punch in and punch out of their shifts,” he said, “[when] they go on their breaks, or they go on their lunch. Any time that we’re going to be up towards the front.” 

Amazon has been known to post signage meant to discourage unionization at other facilities. As Vicereported in March, workers at JFK8 in Staten Island, New York were treated to an array of posters with circumspect slogans like “Is union life for me?” and “Will the [Amazon Labor Union]’s voice replace mine?” The signage at ALB1 appears to represent the most forceful tack the company has taken in expressing its disdain for an organized workforce. The company also has a track record of breaking labor laws and frustrating organizing efforts: firing or otherwise retaliating against workers, preventing workers from handing out pamphlets, and interfering with a union election. Behind closed doors, the company also planned a smear campaign against a prominent organizer. 

We’ve asked both Amazon and the National Labor Relations Board for comment on the legality of this signage and will update our story if receive a response. 

Workers at ALB1 have been pushing to form a union since at least May. It’s not yet clear if the organizing efforts are pointed toward joining Amazon Labor Union, the grassroots group that successfully voted to unionize one of the Staten Island facilities in April. That said, based on the new signage, management at this fulfillment center appears to consider the group its primary threat. Nearly all of the signs specifically reference ALU, which the company calls “untested and unproven.” Another even suggests joining ALU would involve giving up some measure of personal privacy, though it’s not clear in what way. We’ve asked ALU for comment as well and will update this story if we hear back from the group. 

Jury convicts ex-CIA engineer for leaking the agency’s hacking toolset

Joshua Schulte, the former CIA engineer arrested for what’s being called the biggest theft of classified information in the agency’s history, has been convicted by a federal jury. Schulte was arrested in relation to the large cache of documents that Wikileaks had published throughout 2017. That string of CIA leaks known as “Vault 7” contained information on the tools and techniques the agency used to hack into iPhones and Android phones for overseas spying. It also had details on how the CIA broke into computers and how it turned smart TVs into listening devices. A federal jury has found Schulte guilty on nine counts, including illegally gathering national defense information and then transmitting it.

According to The New York Times, Schulte was arrested after investigators traced the leaks to him. The former CIA engineer worked with a team in a secret building protected by armed guards to create tools, like malware, that were used to target the devices of suspected terrorists. In 2018, he was formally charged with 13 counts that included theft of classified information, obstruction of justice, as well as possessing and sending images and videos with child pornography. He’s still awaiting trial on charges of possessing child pornography, which he allegedly downloaded from 2009 until March 2017. 

Schulte’s original trial back in 2020 was declared a mistrial after jurors couldn’t come to an agreement regarding some of hist most serious charges, illegally gathering and transmitting national defense information included. After that event, the former CIA engineer had decided to represent himself. As part of his closing arguments, he told the jurors that the CIA and the FBI made him a scapegoat for their embarrassing failure, repeating what his side had been saying from the time he was arrested.

While the judge, AP said, was impressed with his closing arguments, they weren’t enough to get the jury on his side. In court, he argued that the government’s case is full of holes and that he didn’t even have motive to leak the CIA’s hacking tools. Prosecutors, however, accused him of being a disgruntled employee who felt that he was disrespected when the agency ignored his complaints about his work environment. As retaliation, he allegedly tried “to burn [the CIA] to the ground.” US Attorney Damian Williams said his actions rendered the “most valuable intelligence-gathering cyber tools used to battle terrorist organizations and other malign influences around the globe” essentially useless. Williams also accused Schulte of trying to leak more classified materials against the government while he was behind bars. 

Schulte will have to face the court again to face charges related to possession of child pornography before a sentencing date can be set. The nine counts he was convicted of, however, are enough to keep him in prison for up to 80 years.

Amazon gave Ring footage to police without customer consent

As of July 1st of this year, Amazon has provided Ring footage to US law enforcement 11 times without user consent or a court order, according to a disclosure shared by Senator Edward Markey on Wednesday. The Massachusetts Democrat sent Amazon a letter last month with questions about the company’s policies related to Ring and its relationships with police. Amazon responded to the letter at the start of July.

The disclosure marks the first time Amazon has shared this kind of information with the public. In its law enforcement guidelines, Ring says it reserves the right to “immediately” respond to police requests in cases where someone could die or suffer serious injury.

“In each instance, Ring made a good-faith determination that there was an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to a person requiring disclosure of information without delay,” wrote Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice-president of public policy, of the 11 videos. Huseman didn’t say the specific footage Ring shared with police.

In his letter, Markey asked Amazon to agree not to accept financial contributions from police or participate in sting operations. The company did not agree to those restrictions. In the past, Ring has actively courted partnerships with law enforcement and even gone so far as to author statements shared by police.

“It’s simply untrue that Ring gives anyone unfettered access to customer data or video, as we have repeatedly made clear to our customers and others,” a Ring spokesperson told Engadget. “The law authorizes companies like Ring to provide information to government entities if the company believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, such as a kidnapping or an attempted murder, requires disclosure without delay. Ring faithfully applies that legal standard.” 

The news that Amazon shared footage with police without user consent at least 11 times this year is likely to add to the concerns many privacy experts have about the company. In 2021, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that the Los Angeles Police Department requested footage from Ring of Black Lives Matter protests captured by residential cameras. 

Markey used the disclosure to call on lawmakers to pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, a bill he introduced alongside Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley. “As my ongoing investigation into Amazon illustrates, it has become increasingly difficult for the public to move, assemble, and converse in public without being tracked and recorded,” said Markey. “We cannot accept this as inevitable in our country.”

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Hacker claims they stole police data on a billion Chinese citizens

A hacker (or group of hackers) claims to have stolen data on a billion Chinese citizens from a Shanghai police database. According to Bloomberg, the hacker is attempting to sell 23 terabytes of data for 10 bitcoin, which is worth just over $198,000 at the time of writing.

The data includes names, addresses, birthplaces, national IDs and phone numbers. The Wall Street Journal reports that the hacker provided a sample of the data, which included crime reports dating as far back as 1995. Reporters confirmed the legitimacy of at least some of the data by calling people whose numbers were listed.

It’s not yet clear how the hacker infiltrated the police database, though there have been suggestions that they gained access via an Alibaba cloud computing company called Aliyun, which was said to host the database. Alibaba said it’s investigating the matter.

The true scope of the leak is unknown. However, cybersecurity experts have dubbed it the biggest cybersecurity breach in China’s history.

Tesla faces new lawsuit over claims of racism and harassment at its Fremont factory

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Amazon employees in Maryland say they were fired for organizing workers

Amazon is once again facing allegations of firing union organizers. The Washington Postreports employee group Amazonians United has filed National Labor Relations Board charges accusing Amazon of illegally firing two workers at a Maryland warehouse for labor organizing. The staff at the DMD9 delivery outpost in Upper Marlboro allegedly lost their jobs for both collecting petition signatures and promoting a large-scale walkout protest in March.

The petitions, created in August and December of 2021, pushed for improved working conditions that included healthier food, less restrictive bathroom breaks and pay raises that had been granted at other facilities. The August petition led to some changes, but Amazon’s refusal to budge on the December petition prompted the March walkouts. One of the fired employees, Jackie Davis, said she was fired weeks later without a clear or justified reason.

Company spokeswoman Kelly Nantel denied any wrongdoing in a statement to The Post. Amazon fired Davis for “time theft” and not being at the facility after clocking in, the representative claimed. Nantel also maintained that worker support for a movement “doesn’t factor” into terminating employment, and that the staffers simply didn’t meet “basic expectations.”

The charges come in the wake of numerous accusations of anti-union activity on Amazon’s part. The NLRB found that Amazon illegally fired a New York union organizer last fall, while two workers at a Staten Island warehouse claimed they were fired for helping to organize the first successful Amazon union election. The tech pioneer has also been accused of intimidation tactics that include threats of lower pay, labeling labor organizers as “thugs” and multiple attempts at interfering with union votes. In 2021, Amazon spent $4.3 million on consultants known for thwarting unionization campaigns.

Whatever the reasons for these latest firings, it may be difficult for Amazon to avoid pressure to change. Amazonians United has secured some improvements by replacing conventional union strategies with grassroots relationship building and pressing for smaller material gains. This won’t necessarily lead to more successful unionization efforts, but it won’t be surprising if there are more reforms.