Amazon penalized for monitoring employees excessively

Amazon has been fined €32m (£27m) in France for engaging in "excessive" surveillance of its employees, which included implementing measures that were deemed illegal by the data watchdog. The company's French division, Amazon France Logistique, was found to have recorded data collected by workers' handheld scanners in its warehouses. The data watchdog discovered that Amazon monitored employee activities with such precision that workers were potentially required to justify every break they took. The Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) deemed this practice to be illegal, and also questioned why Amazon needed to retain workers' data for a period of 31 days. The investigation by France's data protection agency was prompted by employee complaints and media reports highlighting concerning working conditions at Amazon warehouses. The BBC has sought a comment from Amazon regarding this matter.