News reports this week have documented that Amazon plans to install surveillance cameras in its "last mile" delivery vehicles—a move it has already taken in its long-haul trucks. The cameras will enable the company to observe its drivers’ every move—literally.

Amazon is no stranger to the dark art of surveilling its workers. A report last September from the Open Markets Institute documented management’s electronic (and not just electronic) eyes that followed its warehouse workers as they scurried among the shelves. Other reporting, some of it based on leaked internal documents, has uncovered the surveillance the company has engaged in to deter unionization and other worker activism in Europe and the United States.

The company has apparently determined it will keep an Orwellian eye on its every employee, both on and off the job.

My question is why a select group of more powerful Amazon directors aren’t subject to the same discipline. After all, if a worker takes too long for a bathroom break, the amount of damage inflicted on the company isn’t likely to significantly depress the value of its shares. If a director sloughs off on the job, however, the consequences could be more serious.

I’ve checked out the company’s directors, and there are suspicious characters. Longtime director Thomas Ryder, who heads Amazon’s all important Audit Committee, was the CEO of the Reader’s Digest Association, and for all we know may sneak in readings from the magazine’s "Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met" when he should be busy auditing.

At a moment when it is trying to persuade (or, if we may dump the euphemism, intimidate) thousands of its employees at an Alabama warehouse to vote No in the upcoming unionization election, you’d think the company would realize the propaganda value of subjecting the great as well as the small to its abusive tactics. "Hey," Amazon could say. "We not only spy on you. We spy on everyone!"

Well, not Jeff, but you get the point.