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The FTC is concerned that evidence related to its massive lawsuit against Amazon has been lost and claims that Jeff Bezos was a ‘heavy user’ of the Signal app.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claims top Amazon executives used Signal’s disappearing message feature to delete potential evidence related to its ongoing antitrust lawsuit.
The FTC claim these executives – including founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos – have used Signal for years to discuss sensitive business matters “including antitrust”. These executives allegedly used Signals’ disappearing messages feature which “irrevocably destroys messages”, even after the company was informed that the FTC was investigating the company.
The larger lawsuit claims Amazon uses a mix of “anticompetitive and unfair strategies” to illegally maintain monopoly power. This complaint alleges that Amazon’s practices prevent competitors from growing and stops new ones from emerging.
The FTC claims Amazon executives deleted many Signal messages during its “pre-complaint investigation” and that the tech giant did not instruct its employees to preserve Signal messages until more than fifteen months after Amazon knew the investigation was underway.
The FTC filing contains a screenshot of two Amazon executives who appear to be turning on Signal’s disappearing messages feature once they began communicating on it in 2019. One executive asks “are you feeling encrypted?” before the feature is activated.
“It is highly likely that relevant information has been destroyed as a result of Amazon’s actions and inactions,” the FTC’s lawyers said in a filing. “Plaintiffs should be allowed discovery into Amazon’s document preservation efforts (or the lack thereof) so that they can determine the full extent of the possible spoliation.”
The FTC claims public reporting “corroborates” that Amazon executives used Signal to discuss antitrust issues and that the company “did not take adequate steps” to preserve Signal messages.
The US agency also claims Bezos was a “heavy Signal user” who instructed other employees to use the app. Other executives who allegedly used Signal include CEO Andy Jassy, general counsel David Zapolsky and former CEO of worldwide operations Dave Clark.
“These executives played key roles in developing and implementing Amazon’s anti-discounting and fulfilment strategies that are at issue in this case,” the FTC said.
The FTC is asking a district court in Seattle to order Amazon to produce all documents relevant to this accusation.
Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle called the FTC claims “baseless” and said that Amazon voluntarily disclosed the fact employees use Signal to the FTC “years ago”. He also said the FTC “thoroughly collected Signal conversations from its employees’ phones and allowed agency staff to inspect those conversations”.
“The FTC has a complete picture of Amazon’s decision-making in this case including 1.7m documents from sources like email, internal messaging applications and laptops (among other sources) and over 100 terabytes of data,” Doyle said.
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Updated 29 April 2024, 3.37pm: This article was updated to include a comment from Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle.
