An ex-employee has accused Amazon of breaching UK sanctions by promoting facial recognition know-how to Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine, The Monetary Instances reported.
Charles Forrest alleged that he was unfairly dismissed in 2023 after accusing Amazon of wrongdoing on plenty of points between November 2022 and Might 2023, in keeping with the article. The allegations had been offered to a London employment tribunal as a part of a listening to this week.
Forrest stated that Amazon closed a take care of Russian agency VisionLabs to offer entry to its Rekognition facial recognition know-how. It did that “via what seems to be a shell firm primarily based within the Netherlands,” in keeping with the tribunal filings. He additionally accused the corporate of breaking its self-imposed moratorium on police use of facial recognition tech applied after the homicide of George Floyd.
Amazon denied the allegations. “We imagine the claims lack advantage and stay up for demonstrating that via the authorized course of,” a spokesperson instructed the FT. “Primarily based on obtainable proof and billing data, AWS didn’t promote Amazon Rekognition companies to VisionLabs.”
Forrest was let go for “gross misconduct” after refusing to work his contractual hours and failed to reply to emails or attend conferences, Amazon alleged. It denied that Forrest made the kinds of disclosures that will entitle him to whistleblower protections.
Amazon appeared to acknowledge that it had breached its ban on police use of facial recognition tech, whereas including that it did not break any legal guidelines. “A self-imposed moratorium doesn’t quantity to a authorized obligation,” it stated.
