Amazon should stop selling facial recognition tools to police, say civil liberties advocates

Civil liberties advocates are calling on Amazon to cease providing facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies.

“We demand that Amazon stop powering a government surveillance infrastructure that poses a grave threat to customers and communities across the country”, a coalition let by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

At issue is a tool known as “Rekognition” that allows users to compare anonymous faces against other images to try and establish identity. An explanatory post on Amazon’s website notes that it offers “security and surveillance applications” that include “crime prevention” by identifying “persons of interest”.

According to emails obtained by the ACLU, multiple law enforcement agencies have harnessed the tool in their investigative work. In one email, a Washington County, Oregon sheriff’s official details building a searchable database of some 300,000 faces. Law enforcement can then search the jail’s booking photos for hits against still-unidentified suspects.

“I am hoping to expand our backend of images to every law enforcement agency in the metro Portland area. And possibly even to all of Oregon and beyond”, the unidentified official wrote.

The ACLU letter warns the technology could be abused to harass activists or monitor undocumented immigrants, saying it could “effectively eliminate” the ability to “walk down the street without being watched by the government”.

“Amazon must act swiftly to stand up for civil rights and civil liberties, including those of its own customers, and take Rekognition off the table for governments”, the letter says.

Amazon said in a statement that company expects customers to “comply with the law and be responsible” with its products. It said Rekognition had been used to locate missing children and people who had been abducted.

“Our quality of life would be much worse today if we outlawed new technology because some people could choose to abuse the technology”, the statement said. “Imagine if customers couldn’t buy a computer because it was possible to use that computer for illegal purposes?”

Collaboration between the government and tech firms that furnish powerful tools is spurring rising protest.

A number of Google employed have signed an open letter opposing their company deciding to provide artificial intelligence to a Pentagon initiative known as Project Maven, and some have reportedly resigned over Google’s refusal to sever ties.