Crime, Schmime!

Dispite numerous fines, and a few criminal prosecutions, senior Amazon executives have been using the encrypted Signal app to communicate with one another.

The FTC, which is investigating Amazon for anti-competitive behavior, is unamused.

Jeff, Lina Khan would like to have a word with you:

The Federal Trade Commission wants to know more about how Amazon — and its executives — use the encrypted messaging app Signal.

The agency accused Amazon of using the app, which can be set to automatically delete messages, to hide information related to the FTC’s ongoing antitrust investigation into the company. After a yearslong probe that started in 2019, the FTC sued Amazon in September, alleging the company used unfair business practices to maintain a monopoly in the e-commerce markets.

In a court filing this week, the FTC moved to “compel” Amazon to share more information about its policies and instructions related to using the Signal app, a messaging service that offers end-to-end encryption to keep texts and phone calls secure. The FTC accused Amazon executives of manually turning on the feature to delete messages in Signal even after the company learned that the FTC was investigating and had told Amazon to keep documents, emails and other messages.

Many of Amazon’s senior leaders used Signal, according to the FTC, including former CEO and current chair Jeff Bezos, CEO Andy Jassy, and general counsel David Zapolsky, as well as Jeff Wilke, former head of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business, and Dave Clark, former worldwide operations chief.

“Amazon is a company that tightly controls what its employees put into writing,” FTC attorneys said in a court filing Thursday. “But Amazon’s senior leadership also used another channel for internal communications and avoided the need to talk carefully by destroying the records of their messages.”

This is deliberate.

The good folks at the FTC need to remember that antitrust laws include criminal penalties, including jail time.