Ex-employee Amazon accused the company of the transfer of Russia's recognition technology

The ex-employee of Amazon accused the company of violating the sanctions of Great Britain. Charles Forrest filed a lawsuit against his former Amazon Web Services employer, trying to challenge his dismissal. According to Forrest, he was unfairly fired after he expressed concern about the alleged violations by Amazon. These included “illegal supply of the recognition technology of Amazon Rekognition to Russian services” after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent introduction of sanctions against Moscow.

The plaintiff claims that Amazon in 2020 concluded a deal with the Russian company Visionlabs, which involves providing it with access to his technology for recognizing persons "through, apparently, a dummy company based in the Netherlands." He emphasizes that this technology was used after the invasion.

According to Forrest, in May 2023 he also announced the alleged illegal activity in the special committee on defense of the House of Communities of Great Britain and in the Office for Combating serious fraud. Other issues raised by Forrest include the statement that Amazon violated the voluntarily introduced moratorium on the use by the police of his technology for recognizing persons - the ban that the company introduced after the murder of George Floyd. Even after the ban, as stated in the documents of Forrest, the British police used this technology to process “photographs” and “establishing the personality of the criminal”.

In turn, Amazon denies the charges against the former employee. The company claims that Forrest, who worked in Amazon for four years - until 2023, was dismissed for “rude misconduct” after he “refused to work out his contract hours” and was not present at a number of meetings, and also did not answer some emails.