John,
We're now less than a year away from one of the most important elections of our lives, and you'll never guess who is running the digital election infrastructure for states across the country.
Amazon.
Amazon software will provide live election-night results.1 Amazon will maintain voter-registration data and voter lists. Even the federal agency in charge of enforcing election laws is using Amazon products.
Amazon has an awful track record on data security and civil liberties. We simply can't trust them to run our elections as well.
Will you donate to help launch our urgent campaign to demand that Congress investigate Amazon?
DONATE
There are so many reasons why it's a bad idea to let Amazon run our elections:
1. Amazon has a terrible track record for respecting privacy. Amazon's Alexa has been caught listening to our conversations and collecting data on us. Amazon Ring is partnering with local police departments to build a nationwide digital dragnet. Their racially biased facial-recognition technology threatens to create a 24-hour, 50-state, automated system of racial profiling. Can you imagine what they might do with a gold mine of data about our political views?
2. Amazon is actively working to elect more pro-Amazon candidates. Last month, Amazon dumped $1.5 million into municipal elections in Seattle. In 2018, Amazon spent $13 million on campaign contributions to influence the outcome of the midterm elections. Now, at the same time that they are actively trying to influence the outcome of elections, they want us to trust them to run the election itself.
3. Amazon is vulnerable to hackers. One of the reasons U.S. elections are hard to hack is because they are so decentralized, with each city and state running their own election process. Centralizing voter data and election results in one system means that hackers could upend our entire democracy by cracking into that single system. Capital One's database stored on Amazon's cloud service was hacked by a former Amazon employee, and voter information stored on Amazon's cloud has been repeatedly compromised.2
Amazon is already a threat to our economy, our homes, and our civil rights. We can't let them threaten our elections as well.
Will you donate to help call on Congress to investigate Amazon before it's too late?
We will not be co-opted into the United States of Amazon. Give what you can to stop Amazon's interference in our democracy.
Together,
Ayele at Fight for the Future
Footnotes:
1. Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-elections-amazon-com-insight/how-amazon-com-moved-into-the-business-of-u-s-elections-idUSKBN1WU173
2. Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-elections-amazon-com-insight/how-amazon-com-moved-into-the-business-of-u-s-elections-idUSKBN1WU173
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.
