WASHINGTON – In response to the news that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will transition to Amazon Board Chairman, and promote Andy Jassy to CEO, the MPower Change Campaign Manager leading MPower Change’s #BreakUpWithAmazon efforts, Lau Barrios, released the following statement:
“Meet the new boss, possibly even worse than the old boss.
Amazon’s latest PR move is replacing CEO Jeff Bezos with Andy Jassy, the man perhaps most singularly responsible for much of Amazon’s surveillance empire: from marketing facial recognition technology to police departments nationwide to defending contracts with Palantir that power ICE’s detention-deportation machine.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon have managed to find someone even more reckless and venal on issues of privacy, racial justice, complicity in state violence, and surveillance than, well, Jeff Bezos. When incoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was asked last year about Amazon’s decision to sell sweeping surveillance and facial recognition powers to local police departments, he suggested “let’s see if they somehow abuse the technology” before making any hasty assumptions—as if centuries of police violence against Black, indigenous, migrant, and Muslim communities isn’t proof enough.
We won’t fall for this PR exercise—and nor should anyone else. Jassy’s CEO appointment shows us where Amazon’s corporate priorities lie: strengthening and growing their surveillance empire.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
