Amazon’s surveillance tools are fundamentally designed to reinforce anti-Black ideologies, and are deployed globally to violently uphold apartheid, white supremacy, and genocide. These are the facts:
Amazon’s Ring cameras give unprecedented access to home footage to over 2000 police departments across the country. In 2020, the LAPD used Ring cameras to surveil activists during the 2020 uprisings.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) works with the Department of Homeland Security to dramatically expand the monitoring and tracking of migrants using biometric data and a tracking system.
Amazon and Google’s cloud-based technology expands Israel’s artificial intelligence capabilities to surveil Palestinian activists, the Gaza border, and operate the Iron Dome system.
Amazon’s own workers are harassed and constantly surveilled to meet exploitative production quotas while their bosses work overtime to sabotage efforts to unionize for humane conditions.
“At the warehouse, you are clocked for even using the restroom. Amazon will do anything to make sure Black people don’t lead a free and joyful life, treating their workplaces and our neighborhoods like prisons,” said Courtenay Brown, United for Respect activist and Amazon Associate. “We need to stand up together and fight back.”
As part of MJ’s efforts to create a world without surveillance, we demand an end to the sale of Amazon’s technologies as weapons of apartheid, genocide, and white supremacy.
