WaPo | Amazon has been essentially giving away facial
recognition tools to law enforcement agencies in Oregon and Orlando,
according to documents obtained by American Civil Liberties Union of
Northern California, paving the way for a rollout of technology that is
causing concern among civil rights groups.
Amazon
is providing the technology, known as Rekognition, as well as
consulting services, according to the documents, which the ACLU obtained
through a Freedom of Information Act request.
A coalition of civil rights groups, in a letter released Tuesday,
called on Amazon to stop selling the program to law enforcement because
it could lead to the expansion of surveillance of vulnerable
communities.
“We demand that Amazon stop
powering a government surveillance infrastructure that poses a grave
threat to customers and communities across the country,” the groups
wrote in the letter.
Amazon spokeswoman Nina
Lindsey did not directly address the concerns of civil rights
groups. “Amazon requires that customers comply with the law and be
responsible when they use AWS services,” she said, referring to Amazon
Web Services, the company’s cloud software division that houses the
facial recognition program. “When we find that AWS services are being
abused by a customer, we suspend that customer’s right to use our
services.”
She
said that the technology has many useful purposes, including finding
abducted people. Amusement parks have used it to locate lost children.
During the royal wedding this past weekend, clients used Rekognition to
identify wedding attendees, she said. (Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos
is the owner of The Washington Post.)
The
details about Amazon’s program illustrate the proliferation of
cutting-edge technologies deep into American society — often without
public vetting or debate. Axon, the maker of Taser electroshock weapons
and the wearable body cameras for police, has voiced interest in pursuing face recognition
for its body-worn cameras, prompting a similar backlash from civil
rights groups. Hundreds of Google employees protested last month to
demand that the company stop providing artificial intelligence to the
Pentagon to help analyze drone footage.
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