Tech giant ‘exiles’ customer from smart home after racism accusation

Amazon last month locked a customer out of his smart home devices after receiving a false report that he had made a racist remark.

Microsoft engineer Brandon Jackson earlier this month said Amazon imposed the “digital exile” after one of the company’s drivers — who is the same race as Jackson — misheard a remark and filed a racism complaint against him. 

“This wasn’t just a simple inconvenience, though,” Jackson explained in a blog post. “I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions.”

On May 24th, an Amazon driver delivered a package to Jackson’s home. Jackson was not there, and his Eufy security camera registered the driver’s presence. 

“Excuse me, may I help you?” the camera asked. The driver, who was wearing headphones at the time, apparently misheard the camera and reported back to Amazon that he had heard a racist remark.

Jackson returned home to find his devices unresponsive. When he called the corporation, an Amazon customer service representative told Jackson to check his email. In his inbox, the engineer found an email from an Amazon executive directing Jackson to call him.

When he did, the executive asked Jackson if he knew why he had been locked out of his devices. Jackson said he didn’t, and the executive became “somewhat accusatory”.

Amazon then launched an investigation into whether Jackson’s security camera had made a racist remark. As this happened over Memorial Day weekend, Jackson remained under digital lockdown for a full week before Amazon investigators concluded there had been no racial crime and unlocked his system. He was not informed of the resolution.

While Jackson criticizes how the company handled the situation, he is generally not opposed to a corporation taking action against a customer accused of racism.

“Let me be clear: I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers,” he wrote. “However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation.”

“It seems more sensible to impose a temporary delivery restriction or purchasing ban on my account. Submitting video evidence from multiple angles right after my initial call with the executive appeared to have little impact on their decision to disable my account,” he continued.