Amazon firm: fired worker deserved it. Less so on its cop FR ban

The wrongful-firing lawsuit filed against Amazon Web Services in the UK has gained a new life. An October dismissal of the case was overturned, and the suit formally began Monday.

Ex-employee Charles Forrest accuses AWS EMEA SARL, of wrongly dismissing him for blowing the whistle internally on purported illegal sales of AWS facial recognition software to Russia and others. Forrest also charges AWS with disability discrimination.

Amazon says it legally fired him in 2023 for gross misconduct. It has repeatedly refuted everything else alleged in the suit.

Forrest’s case had been dismissed last year but a new judge in October allowed him to appeal. The court actions this week are the start of that appeal.

When Forrest’s legal campaign launched, it seemed possible that Amazon might choose to make the whole thing go away. After all, this particular unlawful-dismissal case contains allegations with strategic implications for the company.

Did, as the plaintiff insists, AWS sell Rekognition facial recognition software to VisionLabs, which is owned by MTS, a Russian telecom? That’s unknown right now. Amazon has said it has no paper trail showing a transaction with VisionLabs. Some say AWS sold it to an unknown company that then sold it to VisionLabs.

Regardless, Forrest doesn’t have to prove AWS violated international sanctions with anyone. He has to show that Amazon treated him illegally while employed by the firm. Along the way, Forrest is almost guaranteed to contend that he was fired for complaining about alleged illegal corporate sales practices.

Forrest, a former AWS senior account manager, has also accused AWS of selling Rekognition services to UK law enforcement.

Documents from his case supplied to Biometric Update (documents which have not been verified) state that the UK’s “Police National Database has already deployed this Amazon Facial Recognition technology … against its entire dataset of millions of UK Police mugshots.”

According to the court documents, the service has also been used in UK police body cameras and “a UK Young Offenders Institute.”

Selling to UK police was not illegal, Forrest notes, but in 2020, AWS pledged not to sell facial recognition systems to law enforcement. The company last summer denied it had broken its voluntary moratorium with sales to UK police.

Yet, UK police retained and used Rekognition after the moratorium was announced, according to reporting by the Financial Times. Amazon did not publicly promise to deactivate accounts held by law enforcement before the policy change.

It is noteworthy that the FBI last month announced it is testing Rekognition.

According to reporting by trade publication ComputerWeekly, Amazon executives have defended its work with the FBI. They reportedly have said that they never took all Rekognition subscriptions off the table, just accounts used for criminal investigations. (Amazon has continued to parse its message about the FBI’s pilot.)

Forrest might have hoped for a two-for-one payoff in his wrongful termination lawsuit. Certainly, he wants compensation for the besmirching dismissal, and he might get it.

Forrest is less likely to succeed if he wants to use his day in court to change Amazon’s biometric sales policies.

In the two years since he began his legal fight with Amazon, the U.S. government has shifted its position on the importance of ethical best practices and regulation.

The president has already started dismantling privacy regulations and his most visible supporter, businessman Elon Musk, is cratering federal agencies everywhere with an eye toward collecting the offices’ data.

And with every visiting head of state to the White House, governments globally are realizing they can do what they want with data collection, sales, monetization, and political control. There will be no pushback from their peers, including the U.S.

Already savvy enough to sell out his one virtuous investment – The Washington Post – to gain Trump’s favor, Amazon’s founder and executive chair, is in the biometric industry to win. And moratoriums and ethical sales of things like facial recognition systems only limit profits.

Regrettable as it is to consider, Forrest might want to focus on his wrongful dismissal case and look for work outside the data-collection sector.

Article Topics

Amazon Rekognition  |  Amazon Web Services (AWS)  |  biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  law enforcement  |  lawsuits  |  Russia  |  VisionLabs