SPECIAL REPORT: How Amazon's lobbyists are killing U.S. consumer privacy protections
Record ID:
1646937
SPECIAL REPORT: How Amazon's lobbyists are killing U.S. consumer privacy protections
- Title: SPECIAL REPORT: How Amazon's lobbyists are killing U.S. consumer privacy protections
- Date: 19th November 2021
- Summary: BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) SIGN READING: "NORTH EASTERN UNIVERSITY" (SOUNDBITE) (English) DAVID CHOFFNES, A PRIVACY RESEARCHER AT BOSTON'S NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY, SAYING: "Your computer, you can turn it off. You can close the lid if it's a laptop and the camera and the microphone, they're not on anymore. For some of these devices, like video d
- Embargoed: 3rd December 2021 11:08
- Keywords: Alexa Amazon privacy speakers
- Location: POWAY AND SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES/BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES/UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION/BOVES, FRANCE/WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES/NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City: POWAY AND SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES/BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES/UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION/BOVES, FRANCE/WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES/NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Company News Markets,Economic Events,United States
- Reuters ID: LVA00HF49IUKN
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: 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.
Amazon executives and staffers detail these lobbying victories in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters. In Virginia, the company increased political donations tenfold over five years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself wrote. In California, the company stifled bills restricting the industry's collection and sharing of consumer voice recordings gathered by tech devices. 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, according to an Amazon document.
The architect of this under-the-radar campaign to smother privacy protections has been Jay Carney, a former communications director for Joe Biden, when Biden was vice president and press secretary for President Barack Obama. Hired in 2015, Carney reported to founder Jeff Bezos and built a lobbying and public-policy juggernaut that has grown from two dozen employees to about 250, according to Amazon documents and two former employees with knowledge of recent staffing.
One 2018 document reviewing executives' goals for the prior year listed privacy regulation as a primary target for Carney. 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 proposals to give consumers more control over their data.
The document listed Carney as the goal's "primary owner" and celebrated killing or weakening bills in "over 20 states."
This story is based on a Reuters review of hundreds of internal Amazon documents and interviews with more than 70 lobbyists, advocates, policymakers and their staffers involved in legislation Amazon targeted, along with nine former Amazon public-policy and legal employees. It is the third in a series of reports revealing how the company has pursued business practices that harm consumers or small businesses and conflict with Amazon's public statements on its values. The previous articles showed how Amazon has circumvented e-commerce regulations meant to protect Indian retailers, and how it copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands over those of other vendors on its India platform.
In an August interview, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy declined to comment on why the company has opposed major privacy-protection bills but said: "We have always been very passionate about the privacy of our customers." An Amazon webpage that explains Alexa calls privacy the technology's "foundational principle."
In a statement, Amazon said: "The premise of this story is flawed and includes reporting that relies on early, incomplete drafts of documents to draw incorrect conclusions." The company said it protects consumers' privacy and doesn't sell their data. "We know we must get privacy right in order to meet our customers' high expectations."
Amazon called the 2018 document listing Carney's goals to defeat privacy regulation "out-of-date" and said it doesn't reflect the company's current public-policy goals. The company said it has opposed "poorly crafted" state privacy bills, in part because it would prefer a national privacy law to a "patchwork" of state regulations. The company said it wants a federal law that "requires transparency about data practices, prohibits the sale of personal data without consent, and ensures that consumers have the right to request access to and delete their personal information."
Asked for details of any federal privacy legislation it has supported, Amazon did not name a specific bill. Instead, Amazon provided three examples of what it described as statements of public support by its executives for federal consumer-privacy legislation.
In those cases, Reuters found, the executives were expressing either direct opposition to such a law, opposition to provisions of existing state privacy protections, or advocacy for industry-friendly measures opposed by consumer advocates. No major federal privacy legislation has passed Congress in years, because members have been deadlocked on the issue.
Carney and his deputies set the tone for a more aggressive lobbying operation early in his tenure, drafting a strategy memo for a new corporate-affairs department that combined public-policy and public-relations operations. The memo was written in 2015 with the help of communications executive Drew Herdener and public-policy leader Brian Huseman. A draft version asserted that "journalists and policymakers should respect Amazon as a force for good" because it improves customers' lives and creates "millions of jobs and broader economic prosperity."
As executives edited the draft, Herdener summed up a central goal in a margin note: "We want policymakers and press to fear us," he wrote. He described this desire as a "mantra" that had united department leaders in a Washington strategy session.
The final 4,200-word version, which Carney presented to Amazon's board of directors in November 2015, vowed the department would ensure "journalists and policymakers don't take for granted the good that Amazon does when they speak publicly about us and make decisions affecting our business and reputation."
Carney and his deputies declined to comment. In its statement, Amazon said Herdener's "fear us" comment was an editing remark on an unfinished draft.
Amazon's anti-privacy lobbying 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, according to Amazon documents and former employees. 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 intimate and sensitive. Under a 2018 California law that passed despite Amazon's opposition, consumers can access the personal information that technology companies keep on them. Seven Reuters reporters obtained and examined their own Amazon dossiers.
One found Amazon had more than 90,000 recordings Alexa devices made of her family members since 2017.
Another reporter found that Amazon had detailed accounts of her Kindle e-reader sessions and a customer profile which included her family's "Implicit Dietary Preferences."
Alexa devices had also pulled in data from iPhones and other non-Amazon gear - including one reporter's calendar entries, with names of people he was scheduled to contact.
Amazon said customers appreciate that it personalizes services for them, such as shopping recommendations or music selections on smart speakers, "based on the data we collect."
Most consumers don't understand how much personal information they cede to technology firms, said David Choffnes, a privacy researcher at Boston's Northeastern University.
Carney told Amazon directors in 2015 that the company's success had made it a "bigger and more frequent target for critics," according to a copy of his presentation. Calling Amazon's previous lobbying strategies "frugal" and "narrow," Carney advised a more aggressive approach.
Among his team's first targets was a Washington state bill to regulate biometrics, including voice recordings, fingerprints and face scans. State House Rep. Jeff Morris, chair of the technology committee, introduced a measure in January 2015 seeking to give consumers more control over such data.
The bill eventually passed in 2017, but only after lobbyists from Amazon and other firms had chiseled away at its privacy protections by convincing lawmakers to insert alternative language, often verbatim, according to emails between lawmakers and Amazon lobbyists obtained through public-records requests.
When the law passed, Morris, a Democrat, touted it as "first of its kind in the country to protect individual privacy rights associated with biometric identifiers."
Amazon's public-policy team had a different take in a 2017 U.S. policy update on digital devices: The team, it said, had negotiated "favorable changes" that meant the law would have "little, if any, direct impact on Amazon's practices."
Amazon representatives never took a public position on the bill, relying instead on trade groups the company funded to oppose it at hearings, according to Amazon documents and public records of the debate. That was part of a larger strategy, former staffers said, allowing Amazon to avoid public heat for opposing consumer-protection measures.
Amazon relies on a vast database of consumer voice recordings for ongoing development of its Alexa technology. The voice assistants are always listening for verbal cues, such as the word "Alexa," that prompt them to start recording consumer commands. Staffers sometimes listen to these recordings to assess and improve the technology.
Amazon has fought bills that would require the company to tell customers that it keeps their recordings. The devices' default setting stores all voice recordings and transcripts.
Amazon said consumers can opt out of having their recordings examined or adjust settings to prevent them from being stored. A customer trying to adjust settings to limit collection of recordings must navigate a series of menus that twice warn them: "If you turn this off, voice recognition and new features may not work well for you."
Asked about the warnings, Amazon said that an Alexa feature which recognizes a customer's voice to customize music playback, for instance, won't work without stored voice recordings.
Placing voice assistants in homes, cars and offices is central to Amazon's goal of becoming ubiquitous in consumers' lives, always ready to answer their questions or to sell them, for instance, toilet paper or dish soap after hearing they've run out.
Amazon hired Carney as its emerging tech-device business faced growing regulatory scrutiny. The company found him in a 16-month search, said Diego Piacentini, who led the recruiting. Before his White House stint, Carney spent two decades as a Time magazine journalist, including postings in Washington and in Moscow, where he covered the Soviet Union's collapse.
Carney's writing ability impressed Bezos, who eschewed bullet-pointed presentations in favor of "six-pagers," carefully crafted narratives on high-priority issues. The founder often solicited Carney's opinion during meetings of the so-called S-team, the senior executives who advised Bezos, said Piacentini, an S-team member who left the company in 2016.
Carney made his mark early when he persuaded a reluctant Bezos to let him publicly excoriate a New York Times story on Amazon's work culture, Piacentini said. But Piacentini described Carney as focusing "way more" on policy than public relations.
Former employees said Carney focused on high-level strategy and delegated supervision of day-to-day lobbying to Huseman. Huseman, a former U.S. Federal Trade Commission attorney who joined Amazon in 2012, was an exacting manager. He wanted to know the whereabouts of all of his employees and regularly made them justify their above-market paychecks, three former staffers said. He was known for obsessing over the smallest grammatical and formatting details of "six pagers" and for expecting quick responses to late-night work messages.
Carney and Huseman adopted a core tenet of Amazon's corporate culture - data-driven management - in their expansion of a program called "watering the flowers," an effort to cultivate politicians that started before Carney arrived. Its goal was to create a "well-tended garden" of influencers that could help with "policy challenges or crises," according to a 2014 public policy six-pager that outlined the effort.
The program became a defining metric for grading public-policy staffers. They were required to enter every contact and meeting with policymakers into a shared database, according to former Amazon employees and company documents.
The data categorized public officials based on their strategic importance. The highest tier included U.S. Congressional leaders and key state officials, including legislative leaders in California and Washington state, where Amazon fought privacy regulation.
Such VIPs ("Very Important Policymakers") should be targeted for in-person meetings, Amazon site visits or campaign donations at least once a year, according to the 2014 Amazon document. To highlight job creation, Amazon often used its gargantuan warehouses to host such meetings with politicians.
A 2017 public policy planning document touted 1,000 "watering the flowers" meetings by mid-year in North and South America, up 30% from the same period the year before. Every staffer's metrics were circulated to colleagues every quarter, and each had to explain why they did or didn't meet goals.
Amazon said in its statement that it needed to ramp up public-policy efforts as it grew and diversified its business. The company hired Carney and expanded his department "to educate lawmakers, regulators and the public about Amazon in a more coordinated and focused way."
Former employees said Carney focused on high-level strategy and delegated supervision of day-to-day lobbying to Huseman. Huseman, a former U.S. Federal Trade Commission attorney who joined Amazon in 2012, was an exacting manager. He wanted to know the whereabouts of all of his employees and regularly made them justify their above-market paychecks, three former staffers said. He was known for obsessing over the smallest grammatical and formatting details of six-pagers and for expecting quick responses to late-night work messages.
Amazon called the former employees' description of Huseman's management "negative" and "untrue" and said the company takes steps to ensure staffers can enjoy their time off.
Carney and Huseman adopted a core tenet of Amazon's corporate culture - data-driven management - as they expanded a program called "watering the flowers," an effort to cultivate politicians. Its goal was to create a "well-tended garden" of influencers that could help with "policy challenges or crises," according to a 2014 public-policy six-pager that outlined the effort.
The program spawned metrics for public-policy staffers. They were required to enter every policymaker and staff contact into a database, according to former Amazon employees and company documents. A 2017 public-policy planning document touted 1,000 watering-the-flowers engagements by mid-year in North and South America, up 30% from the same period the year before. Staffers' metrics were circulated to colleagues quarterly; each had to explain why they did or didn't meet goals.
Amazon ranked officials by their strategic importance. The highest tier included leaders in Congress and legislatures in states including California and Washington, where Amazon fought privacy legislation.
Such VIPs ("Very Important Policymakers") should be targeted for meetings, Amazon site visits or campaign donations at least annually, according to the 2014 document.
Another tactic Amazon uses to sway lawmakers, three former Amazon public-policy staffers said in interviews, is the promise of job creation. The company often used its gargantuan warehouses to host its VIP meetings with politicians, the internal documents show.
The company also gave public-policy staffers a mobile app enabling them to look up the number of Amazon employees in a politician's district, the three former employees said. Company lobbyists would open lawmaker meetings with such figures, which two of the employees said carried an implied threat: These are jobs Amazon can take away.
Amazon public policy manager Lisa Kohn informed Illinois officials in August 2017 about the perils of regulating job-creating tech companies, according to emails between Kohn and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's chief of staff, obtained by Reuters through public-records requests.
Kohn asked the governor to veto legislation that would require technology companies to get consumers' permission before tracking their whereabouts on smartphones. In one email, Kohn sent the Rauner aide a letter from a trade group Amazon helped fund, warning that the bill sent a "terrible signal" to tech companies considering investments and imposed "needless burdens that threaten technology investment and job creation in Illinois."
The Republican governor gave the same rationale in announcing his veto of the bill in September 2017, saying it would have resulted "in job loss across the state." The veto came days after Amazon announced it would create tens of thousands of jobs at a second U.S. headquarters, setting off a competition among cities to offer the company lavish tax breaks. Illinois wanted the headquarters for Chicago. Amazon specified that it wanted "a business-friendly environment."
Amazon's public-policy team claimed credit for killing the measure in an internal January 2018 public-policy update: "In Illinois, we defeated a problematic geolocation bill by obtaining a veto from the governor."
Rauner and Kohn did not respond to requests for comment.
In its statement, Amazon acknowledged its representatives "regularly remind" politicians of the many Amazon workers in their districts, but said the company never uses its job creation as "legislative leverage" on specific bills.
Internal company records show Amazon strenuously opposed a California bill, the first of its kind in the United States, that would compel companies to grant consumers, upon request, access to the data companies keep on them. The 2018 Amazon document reviewing executive goals discussed plans to oppose the bill, noting concern about the legislation's "right to know" provisions for consumers. A public-policy update that year said of the bill: "We strongly prefer no regulation, but if regulation becomes inevitable, we will seek amendment language to narrow any new requirements to the greatest extent possible."
When the bill became law, it was considered a major failure internally, a former Amazon public policy employee told Reuters. An Amazon legal strategy document written after the bill became law called the measure emblematic of "troubling regulatory and legislative trends" that "caught us by surprise."
After losing that state battle, Amazon last year started allowing all U.S. consumers to request access to their personal data.
Another setback came last month, in the U.S. Senate.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and the ranking member of the judiciary committee, was among Amazon's top-tier VIPs, the 2014 "flowers" document shows. In October of this year, Grassley co-authored a bill with Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar that would prohibit companies including Amazon from favoring their own products on their e-commerce platforms. The proposal followed the Reuters investigation showing that in India Amazon copied other retailers' products and promoted its own offerings over competitors' in search results.
Told by Reuters that Amazon had prioritized him for lobbying, Grassley pointed to the new bill and said any efforts to influence him haven't worked.
"I can't imagine they're too thrilled with that bill, but it's good policy," he said.
Still, as Carney's operation grew, it racked up major victories. In California, the e-commerce giant has undermined three efforts to limit companies' use of voice recordings, according to Amazon documents and interviews with legislators.
Amazon's latest effort to stop regulation of voice recordings focused on a bill from Republican Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham. The lawmaker worried that Amazon staffers were listening to some Alexa recordings made in people's homes. The company says employees only listen to a tiny fraction of the recordings.
Cunningham has tried unsuccessfully since 2019 to require companies to get consumer consent before collecting or sharing recordings. When Cunningham re-introduced the measure this year, Amazon took a novel lobbying approach: It argued the privacy protections would hurt disabled people.
The lawmaker said he first heard that rationale from lobbyist Anthony Williams, a new Amazon hire and former aide to California Governor Gavin Newsom. Cunningham said Williams showed him a promotional video about how Alexa helped blind people with everyday tasks such as checking the weather. Williams didn't respond to requests for comment.
In late July, Amazon disclosed the $30,000 payment to their firm in a quarterly lobbying report.
Pough did not respond to additional requests for comment. Debra Ruh said last month that she opposed Cunningham's bill "long before working with Amazon." She apologized for her earlier, incorrect statement that she had never worked with Amazon, saying she was "caught off guard" by the question. She declined further comment on her work with the company.
Amazon said Ruh Global had already had "extensive conversations" with Cunningham to oppose the bill by the time Amazon partnered with the firm. Amazon said the bill's consumer-consent requirements could "negatively affect the accessibility of these devices for all customers, including those with disabilities."
Cunningham called it "absolutely false" that he'd had prior conversations with Ruh Global. The lawmaker said he had never heard of the marketing firm or the nonprofit it created before Pough's testimony. "I assure you: I never spoke to that guy," he said.
Cunningham dismissed Pough's testimony, saying that Amazon wanted to "sandbag" the legislation with an "emotional story."
Three national disability rights leaders told Reuters that devices such as Alexa can help people with disabilities live more independently. They said, however, that individuals with disabilities have the same privacy concerns as anyone else and should not be used by corporate lobbyists as a shield against regulation.
Cunningham's bill passed the Assembly 63-0 in May and went to the Senate Judiciary Committee. It would go no further.
Amazon's Williams had lobbied committee Chair Tom Umberg, according to a person familiar with their discussions. Amazon has donated $9,200 to Umberg's election campaign since he took office in 2018, campaign-finance records show.
The week before a committee hearing on the bill, Cunningham said, Umberg called him to suggest he withdraw it until 2022 because of opposition from tech firms, which Cunningham did.
Umberg said donations have no bearing on his decisions about legislation. Amazon said: "Of course we do not tie contributions to votes."
Umberg acknowledged discussing the bill with Amazon's Williams and other tech industry representatives, who had "strong concerns" about the bill. Umberg said he told Cunningham that he would have a better chance of passing it in 2022 because of committee members' concerns.
Amazon more recently has widened its lobbying strategy to focus less on killing or neutering legislation it opposed, and more on drafting favorable bills and getting them passed in friendly legislatures, a former public policy employee said. That tack paid off in a big way this year in Virginia, where Amazon convinced Sen. David Marsden, a business-friendly Democrat, to introduce privacy legislation that the company had drafted.
Amazon had long before identified Marsden as a priority politician under its "watering the flowers" effort, according to the 2014 Amazon document outlining the program.
Marsden confirmed to Reuters that Amazon drafted the bill he introduced. Privacy advocates say the wide-ranging bill was designed to appease the technology industry and offered consumers little protection. Its passage in February 2021, with little opposition, was considered a "huge victory" inside Amazon, said a former public-policy employee.
Amazon did not comment on its drafting of the legislation or its lobbying strategy, but said it had "strong relationships" with Virginia politicians. The company said it supported the Virginia bill because it afforded certainty to businesses while protecting consumer data.
Amazon has increased its Virginia political donations from $27,750 in 2016 to $277,500 last year, more than in any other state but California, according to Amazon's corporate disclosures and the Virginia Public Access Project. Amazon is now one of the biggest donors to the Virginia legislature's Democratic and Republican fundraising committees.
Bordering Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, Virginia offers Amazon immense strategic benefits. It was Virginia where Amazon Web Services, which holds lucrative contracts with defense and intelligence agencies, built one of its largest clusters of data centers.
Amazon also located its second headquarters in Virginia, spurning Illinois and others who competed for the jobs. In exchange, the Virginia legislature approved an incentive package of $750 million by a lopsided margin. The House of Delegates debated the measure for just 14 minutes. Virginia Delegate Lee Carter, a Democrat who was one of the few to criticize the lavish subsidies, said state leaders want Virginia to be "the next Silicon Valley," and so they generally let tech firms "do whatever they want."
Amazon said in its statement that all companies, not just Amazon, can tap government subsidies. The company said it plans an investment of $2.5 billion and more than 25,000 jobs.
Marsden told Reuters he was given the text of the privacy bill by Amazon contract lobbyist Meade Spotts, of the Richmond, Virginia, firm Spotts Fain. Amazon came to him, Marsden said, because he had previously helped to pass another Amazon-drafted bill, which allowed small automated vehicles to ferry packages from delivery trucks to homes.
Amazon was "surprised how easy that went," Marsden said, and it called on him again for the privacy bill. "You stick with the horse that's working with you, I guess."
Spotts did not respond to requests for comment.
Marsden said Amazon referred him to what the company called a "neutral resource" and a technical advisor on privacy issues: Stacey Gray of the Future of Privacy Forum. Amazon has long funded the Future of Privacy Forum, budgeting $100,000 for the group in 2018, according to a public policy planning document from the prior year. At one hearing, Marsden called Gray his "phone-a-friend" for any legislator with questions.
Gray said her organization operates independently and that Amazon is only one of its more than 200 donors, a comment echoed by Amazon in its statement. Marsden said Amazon disclosed to him that it financed the privacy research group.
Marsden's bill allowed technology companies to track customer internet searches to create marketing profiles on customers. It gave tech companies exemptions to collect and analyze smart-speaker recordings without customer consent. And it prevented consumers from suing companies over privacy violations.
Amazon said it opposed consumers' right to sue because it believes such complaints should be handled by state officials such as attorneys general.
Marsden described the Amazon-drafted law as a "compromise" between corporate and consumer interests. "We haven't had any real angst on the consumer side," he said. "Before this, consumers had nothing. Businesses didn't know what the rules were, so they did whatever."
Consumer advocates were never consulted on the bill and only learned of it shortly before it passed, said Leonard Bennett, a Virginia attorney who serves on an advisory board of the National Consumer Law Center. He described the law as "anti-consumer."
"We came to it late the way a fire department comes to a fire late: After it's already a raging inferno," Bennett said.
Among the few Virginia legislators opposing the bill was Ibraheem Samirah. He said he received two unsolicited political donations of $1,000 from Amazon, one about five months before the bill was considered, the other about two months after. Someone representing the company contacted Samirah each time to see if he had cashed the checks, which he called a highly unusual inquiry. He declined to take the money.
Amazon said the outreach to Samirah was an "administrative follow-up" because there had been some instances of Virginia lawmakers not cashing donation checks for months.
In a public hearing on the bill, Samirah tried to raise concerns but was cut off by the committee chair, who sponsored the legislation, a video of the session shows.
Amazon, Samirah said, has successfully preempted safeguards for Virginians. At the request of Reuters, Samirah obtained his personal data from Amazon. The records show the tech giant has data detailing when Samirah, who was raised as a Muslim, had listened to an audio version of the Quran. The company also had more than 1,000 of his phone contacts.
"Data is everything" for tech giants, Samirah said. The Virginia law, he said, was Amazon's attempt "at controlling the problem before it gets out of their hands. And they did it very effectively."
As a Virginia lawmaker, Ibraheem Samirah has studied internet privacy issues and debated how to regulate tech firms' collection of personal data. Still, he was stunned to learn the full details of the information Amazon.com Inc has collected on him.
The e-commerce giant had more than 1,000 contacts from his phone. It had records of exactly which part of the Quran that Samirah, who was raised as a Muslim, had listened to on Dec. 17 of last year. The company knew every search he had made on its platform, including one for books on "progressive community organizing" and other sensitive health-related inquiries he thought were private.
"Are they selling products, or are they spying on everyday people?" said Samirah, a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Seven Reuters reporters also requested their Amazon files. The data the company supplied in response reveals its ability to amass strikingly intimate portraits of individual consumers.
Amazon collects data on consumers through its Alexa voice assistant, its e-commerce marketplace, Kindle e-readers, Audible audiobooks, its video and music platforms, home security cameras and fitness trackers. That information can reveal a person's height, weight and health; their ethnicity (via clues contained in voiceprints) and political leanings; their reading and buying habits; their whereabouts on any given day, and sometimes whom they have met. Alexa-enabled devices make recordings inside a customer's home, and Ring security cameras capture every visitor.
In a statement to Reuters, Amazon said it collects such details to create and improve products and services and customize them to individuals. Asked about the records of Samirah's listening to the Quran, Amazon said such data allows customers to pick up where they left off from a prior session.
The only way for customers to delete much of this personal data is to close their account, Amazon said. The company said it retains some information, such as purchase history, after account closure to comply with legal obligations.
The company said it allows customers to adjust their settings on voice assistants and other services to limit the amount of data Amazon collects. Alexa users, for instance, can stop Amazon from collecting their recordings or have them automatically deleted periodically. And they can disconnect their contacts or calendars from their smart-speaker devices if they don't want to use Alexa's calling or scheduling functions.
The default privacy settings on Amazon devices and services, however, allow for collecting the maximum amount of data. Changing those settings, or deleting data already collected, isn't always easy.
Amazon mentions that customers can delete data in one line of its privacy policy, which runs nearly 3,500 words and includes links to 20 other pages related to privacy and user settings. The line reads: "To the extent required by applicable law, you may have the right to request access to or delete your personal information." That section of the policy links to a general customer service page. Another webpage takes users to a page where they can delete their account, but warns "certain services may be limited or unavailable" if customers restrict data collection.
Amazon said its privacy notice describes all the ways it collects, uses and shares personal information "in a way that is easy for consumers to understand."
Samirah, 30, got an Amazon Alexa-enabled smart speaker during last year's holiday season. He said he only used it for three days before returning it after realizing it was collecting recordings. "It really sketched me out," he said.
The device had already gathered all of his phone contacts, part of a feature that allows users to make calls through the device. Amazon said Alexa users must give permission for the company to access phone contacts. Customers must disable access to phone contacts, not just delete the Alexa app, in order to delete the records from their Amazon account.
Samirah said he was also unnerved that Amazon had detailed records of his audiobook and Kindle reading sessions. Finding information about his listening to the Quran disclosed in his Amazon file, he said, made Samirah think about the history of U.S. police and intelligence agencies surveilling Muslims for suspected terrorist links after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Why do they need to know that?" he asked. Samirah's term ends in January, after he lost a bid for re-election earlier this year.
There is no reason to believe that Samirah's dossier has been shared with outside parties, but law enforcement agencies have in the past sought data on customers from technology companies. Amazon discloses that it complies with search warrants and other lawful court orders seeking data the company keeps on an account, while objecting to "overbroad or otherwise inappropriate requests." The company did not say how often it complies with such requests, but said its goal is to release 'the minimum amount of content we are required to provide."
Amazon said Alexa products are designed to record as little as possible, starting with the trigger word, "Alexa," and stopping when the user's command ends. A Reuters examination of thousands of recordings of one reporter's family, however, showed the devices sometimes record longer conversations.
The reporter's data request revealed that Amazon had collected more than 90,000 Alexa recordings since 2017 - averaging more than 60 daily. The recordings included details such as the names of the reporter's children and their favorite songs.
It captured the children asking how they could convince their parents to let them "play," and getting detailed instructions from Alexa on how to convince their parents to buy them video games. Be fully prepared, Alexa advised the kids, to refute common parent arguments such as "too violent," "too expensive" and "you're not doing well enough in school." The information came from a program for Alexa called "wikiHow" that provides how-to advice on 180,000 topics, according to Amazon's website.
Some recordings involved conversations between family members using Alexa devices to communicate across different parts of the house. Several recordings captured children apologizing to their parents after being disciplined. Others showed the reporter's children, all below age 13, asking Alexa about sexual anatomy and terms like "pansexual."
The reporter did not realize Amazon was storing the recordings before the company disclosed the data it tracked on their family.
Amazon said Alexa devices are designed to record as little audio as possible, and it has scientists and engineers working to improve the technology and avoid false triggers that prompt recording. The company said it alerts customers that recordings are stored when they set up Alexa accounts.
Amazon's privacy policy gives the company wide latitude to collect data, use it for advertising purposes and share it with third parties - without getting into many specifics. The terms of service for its Kindle store, for instance, just say that Amazon collects "information about use of your Kindle application."
That information can get quite personal. Amazon's Kindle e-readers precisely track a user's reading habits, another reporter's Amazon data file showed. The disclosure included records of 3,800 reading sessions since 2017, including timestamped logs - to the millisecond - of books read, words highlighted or looked up, pages turned and promotions seen. It showed, for instance, that a family member read "The Mitchell Sisters: A Complete Romance Series" on Aug. 8, 2020 from 4:52 p.m. until 7:36 p.m., flipping 428 pages.
Florian Schaub, a privacy researcher at the University of Michigan, said businesses are not always transparent about what they're doing with users' data. "We have to rely on Amazon doing the right thing," he said, "rather than being confident the data can't be misused."
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