Amazon Files Lawsuit to Prevent Washington Post from Obtaining Satellite Project Documents

Amazon has sued to stop The Washington Post from getting documents related to Bezos’s satellite project.

Amazon has sued to stop The Washington Post from getting documents pertaining to an internet satellite venture, further enhancing the image of Jeff Bezos’s conflict of interest in his extensive personal and corporate activities.

Although the department conducting the investigation determined that the records should be made public, the tech giant claims in a lawsuit filed Monday against a Washington state agency that the records are exempt from a public records request because they contain proprietary information. The complaint does not list the post as a defendant.

The case was filed in response to growing accusations that Bezos’s ownership of the publication conflicts with his control of Amazon, which gives him an incentive to win over people the newspaper has criticized, specifically President Donald Trump. The Post did not support a presidential candidate for the first time since 1988. At least 250,000 members canceled their subscriptions as a result of Bezos’s move, which coincided with the Los Angeles Times’ decision to not endorse in the 2024 race, receiving harsh criticism from reporters, editors, and readers.

Project Kuiper, an effort to rival Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink system and provide worldwide broadband access via a network of over 3,000 satellites, is the subject of the documents the Post requested. One of the project’s facilities in the state was the subject of four on-site examinations by Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries last year. “Copies of inspection records, investigation notes, interview notes, complaints, and other sic documents related to” the probes were sought by the outlet in November.

Amazon claims in the complaint that among other trade secrets, Washington plans to provide the outlet access to documents that include proprietary satellite designs. According to the business, that knowledge “gives it a competitive edge” over competitors and “derives their independent economic value from being generally unknown to the public at large.”

Only a portion of the requested records that contain trade secrets that are purportedly exempt from records requests are sought to be kept hidden by the corporation. Trade secrets and confidential financial information are exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act.

As previously reported, the complaint claims that Amazon is only attempting to protect a limited subset of documents that the Post requested and that specifically address the technological and design aspects of Project Kuiper’s satellites, satellite constellation, and related technologies. It further claims that any public interest in L&I’s investigations is more than satisfied by the materials for which Amazon is not seeking protection.

The lawsuit also alleges that the integrity of telecommunications networks, public infrastructure, and public safety are all at risk due to the documents’ dissemination. It requests a court order stating that the Post will not have access to certain information in the contested records.

Following the outlet’s lack of endorsement, Bezos justified his choice, stating that he might not be the best owner of the business given “the appearance” of a conflict of interest.

He made this statement during the New York TimesDealBook Summit in December. “If news media are going to try to be objective and independent, the benefits of doing this were very small, and endorsements added to the perceptions of bias.”