European lawmakers ask Amazon boss Jeff Bezos if he is spying on them

Members of the European Parliament have written a letter to Jeff Bezos asking if Amazon is spying on politicians, trade unionist, and members of staff, via the use of hired intelligence agents.

The letter was authored by French Politician Leila Chaibi of the La France Insoumise party, and signed the 36 Members of European Parliament (MEP) mostly from the left-wing and green parties across the European Union.

The letter reads: “We wonder about your intentions with great concern: doe Amazon’s monitoring intentionally target trade unionist, Amazon workers, as well as political representatives (including ourselves) who could possibly express criticism of its activities?”

The letter was sent to the e-commerce giant, following a recent incident that involved Amazon deleting two job postings for “intelligence analysts” with specific requirements of French and Spanish language skills, which suggests that the monitoring would be in Europe. The job descriptions included monitoring various threats as perceived by Amazon, especially those that come from trade unions and “hostile political leaders.”

“We… question the definition of ‘hostile political leaders’ described in the recent job posts hitherto mentioned. Who does it concern? Has Amazon already spied on Members of the European Parliament? Did it intend to?”, the letter reads.

The job posting said the hired analysts would have the task of gathering intelligence on “sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company… funding activities connected to corporate campaigns (internal and external) against Amazon” and briefings on “dynamic situations” especially those that involve geopolitical crises, protests, and other issues “sensitive to human resources and employee relations.”

“We are concerned about whether European trade unions, as well as local, national or European elected representatives are affected by this approach to ‘threat monitoring’, which aims to repress collective action and trade union organizing,” the lawmakers said in the letter.

If the job posting had not been taken down and analysts hired, they would have been charged with gathering internal and external threats information for Amazon.

In response to the accusations about Amazon spy job listings, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the posting was an inaccurate “description of the role” and the error has since been corrected. Adding that, Amazon has no intention to “spy” on third-party groups. Rather, it wants to hire analysts who can critically examine publicly available information to have a better understanding of the environment the company operates.

The trade union has appealed to the European Commission to investigate if Amazon’s monitoring of workers is legal. While investigation goes on, Amazon workers in France and Spain have gone on strike, and France labor union has forcefully closed Amazon warehouses for one month.