Amazon Fined $35M in France over 'Overly Intrusive' Surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Fined $35M in France over 'Overly Intrusive' Surveillance

uk.pcmag.com

74 pointspg_123432 comments

Amazon France entity doesn’t make make much money, the regulator that issued the fine (la CNIL) says its roughly 3-4% of Amazon’s revenue here.

How does Amazon France entity declare their revenue, losses and profits, when all purchases in Amazon in Europe seem to be invoiced by

Amazon EU S.à r.l. Luxembourg (an EU tax heaven) ?

Seems like a subsidiary of Amazon was fined which makes 1.135 billion and a net profit of 58.9 million euros.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39107156

Damn, this is a really interesting statement from AMZN:

"The use of warehouse management systems is standard industry practice: they are necessary to ensure safe, quality and efficient operations and to ensure inventory tracking and package processing on time and in accordance with to customer expectations.”"

They're saying: human beings (warehouse workers) are not capable of providing adequate work without oversight by machines, AI, and other human beings. They may well be right.

> They may well be right.

Huh? What does this even mean? Are you honestly claiming that humans can't work without something standing over their shoulder the entire time?

I read this as it being not that people are incapable. But at scale it's hard to track accidents, so tech needs to be used otherwise it's impossible. To do so at scale inside of a warehouse like Amazon's

This tech is absolutely not about accidents, it's about making sure workers spend every single second of their time producing revenue and not talking to each other, going to the toilet, having a break, discussing their shitty working conditions, that kind of stuff.

You must not have worked around warehouse workers. They can, but they won't consistently do it to a speed and quality acceptable to Amazon without some oversight. Maybe French workers are unicorns, but this definitely provides the US customer with a lower price.

Is this just a warehouse worker thing or are you also incapable of working efficiently without being spied on?

Many people won't follow the rules unless they know there are consequences for not doing so. Oversight plays a key part of that.

Some can't, saying otherwise is just being naive.

Let's just say that people working there don't have many options.

> human beings (warehouse workers) are not capable of providing adequate work without oversight

There may be some disagreement about "adequate work". Amazon's idea of adequate has forced workers to urinate in plastic bottles for lack of bathroom breaks.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56628745

With that in mind, I think it's probably true that most workers will not voluntarily urinate in bottles in order to work a few extra minutes without draconian oversight.

I think we should take these stories with a grain of salt given that workers still seem to prefer to work at Amazon Warehouses over small mom-and-pop stores in many markets that have thriving economies and worker shortages.

Not to mention, Amazon has programs that encourage you to upgrade your skills and shift from line worker to supervisor ... and ultimately even out of the warehouse into management and operations. These are not career paths usually available in other employment settings for workers who did not prepare adequately after high school for work.

Amazon reportedly has a 150% annual employee turnover rate. That seems to say that lots of people want to work there, but few want to stay once they've experienced it.

I don't think that's what that stat says.

For instance, if Amazon hired ten people in January, retained 5, fired 5 in February, and replaced them. Then, I fired 3 in March and replaced them. Then fired 2 in April, and replaced them. Then, fired 1 in May and replaced them. That's consistent with having candidates that only meet job requirements 50% of the time. But it would show up as 100% turnover.

That's not the same thing as people not wanting to work there. Warehouse jobs are demanding, but pay relatively better for unskilled labor than other jobs. And the workforce that is available for those jobs is often not the best in terms of skills and work habits.

These are things you learn when you run a small business. The American domestic high school educated workforce in most cities is very unreliable. You have more luck with immigrants, but if for some reason you can't hire illegals (like Amazon) then you are kinda at the mercy of having a workforce that often doesn't show up for shifts, has difficulty reading and following instructions, etc.

I encourage everyone that wants to fight for more worker rights to start a business that uses unskilled labor and provide those workers with some more rights.

Hiring American top-25 college grads to work in a startup isn't the same thing.

> Amazon says the ruling is 'factually incorrect'; it’s considering appealing the decision.

If it were factually incorrect, it should be easy to demonstrate this in an appeal. Even if one court fails understand the obvious facts of the case, the second one will, that's what appeals are for after all. I look forward to a full and transparent account of the facts, which will no doubt demonstrate Amazon's probity in this matter. I guess the only possible way they wouldn't win on appeal, or wouldn't make the appeal, is if they're lying. Unlikely, but worth bringing up on the off chance.

$35M seems like a parking ticket. Has anyone done any studies on fining based on % of income/wealth? Like a traffic violation might be fined at 0.001% of income or something.

For traffic violations I think Finland has already implemented such system.

Also, iirc: Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland. Not all the same for all types of infractions, but all have some types of scaled-to-income/whatever fines for individuals.

Here in Germany we only have flat fines for standard traffic infractions. If you make it all the way into crime territory we have the concept of Tagessätze (lit. day fines). The court sentences you to X amount of Tagessätze. The actual fine per day is determined based on your income, usually equal to the amount you make after taxes per day. The judge is free to either estimate your income or can require you to declare it.

There is something similar in France : "jours amende". The key point is that if you don't pay the fine, you go to prison the number of days indicated in the "jours amende". It's for criminal court, not for traffic infractions.

For at least one country on the list the scaling is only for egregious violations.

It's a GDPR fine above 20M€, so it's already based on their income.

Regardless of how this was calculated, it is a parking ticket to Amazon.

Indeed, but courts in France have the habit of always firing warning shots. Non-compliance can trigger another court decision with forceful consequences.

So far GDPR has only yielded symbolic amounts. But the legislative cap is at profit-destroying levels.

It is based on income; just not Amazon's global income. It's based on their income in France.

The total revenues of Amazon's activities in France were over €9 bn in 2022. So we're at about 0.3%. A warning shot IMHO

Yeah, it seems a little murky which years' income is the basis for the fine. I was reading another article[1] which compares their fine to their 2021 revenue but doesn't explicitly say whether the 2021 revenue is the basis for the fine.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/01/23/amazon-fined-fo...

Revenue is a weird number to talk about in an operation with margins as thin as Amazon's.

According to the official document that CNIL provided [1] (translated with google translate):

> The company AFL, a simplified joint stock company registered in the trade and companies register on January 3, 2000, is located at 67 boulevard du général Leclerc in Clichy (92110). Its turnover amounted to 1.135 billion euros in 2021, for a net profit of 58.9 million euros.

AFL is Amazon France Logistics. Which seems to be the entity that got fined. So the fine is more than 50% of their (the logistics part of Amazon in France) net profit.

[1] https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/cnil/id/CNILTEXT000048989272

It probably takes Amazon of 2023 about an hour (after taxes) to pay this off.

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