Internal letter: 'Amazon is implicated' in separating migrant children, employees say

A group of Amazon.com Inc. employees asked CEO Jeff Bezos in an internal letter to stop providing infrastructure and services that enable Immigration and Customers Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.

The letter is in response to a Trump administration policy that has separated more than 2,000 migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border with Mexico.

"In the face of this immoral U.S. policy, and the U.S.’s increasingly inhumane treatment of refugees and immigrants beyond this specific policy," the letter, obtained by Gizmodo, said, "we are deeply concerned that Amazon is implicated."

Microsoft employees sent a letter last week expressing a similar sentiment to CEO Satya Nadella, who responded by downplaying the company's $19.4 million contract with ICE.

The Amazon letter calls on Bezos to stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement and to end a cloud contract with Palantir, a Peter Thiel-founded firm that offers tools for ICE, and other Amazon partners who work with the agency.

An American Civil Liberties Union investigation found Amazon marketed to law enforcements and government agencies its facial recognition software Rekognition, which can "identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image."

"We already know that in the midst of historic militarization of police, renewed targeting of black activists, and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human rights abuses," Amazon employees said in the letter. "This will be another powerful tool for the surveillance state, and ultimately serve to harm the most marginalized."

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2018/06/25/internal-letter-amazon-is-implicated-in-separating.html?ana=e_tf&s=newsletter&ed=2018-06-25&u=ColXVN5SPzQtLHFP87ho2w07857290&t=1529969536&j=82349491