Amazon Bans Police Use Of Its Facial Recognition Technology For A Year

Amazon stops police use of facial recognition

Amazon.com Inc said Wednesday that it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, reversing its longstanding support for selling the technology to the police. Gavino Garay has more.

Amazon.com Inc said Wednesday that it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, stopping a business it long defended as many protested law enforcement brutality against people in Colour.

The decision culminates a two-year battle between Amazon and civil liberties activists, who have expressed concern that inaccurate clashes could lead to unfair arrests.

The death of George Floyd, a black man who died under the knees of a white police officer last month, has fueled concerns that facial recognition is being used unfairly against protesters.

Critics have pointed to a previous study showing that Amazon's "Rekognition" service struggled to identify the gender of people with darker skin, an investigation that Amazon has contested.

The company, which sells cloud computing technology through its Amazon Web Services division, said in a statement that it pushed for regulations to be put in place to ensure that the software is used ethically.

"We hope that this one-year moratorium can give Congress enough time to implement the appropriate rules, and we are ready to help if requested," Amazon said.

Congress has been weighing possible regulation of the technology for months. On Monday, IBM wrote to lawmakers to tell them it is no longer offering general facial recognition, while rival Microsoft Corp has rejected some backed sales and regulations, but not a moratorium.

Nicole Ozer, director of technology and civil liberties for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, credited Amazon while calling for a more "general" moratorium.

"Facial recognition technology gives governments the unprecedented power to spy on us," Ozer said in a statement. "We urge Microsoft and other companies to join IBM, Google and Amazon to move to the right side of the story."

Microsoft spokesmen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon, due to its prominence and defense of facial recognition, has faced the brunt of criticism, giving symbolic meaning to its ad. Still, companies like Idemia and NEC Corp are known to have more government facial recognition businesses. Rekognition's private sector sales accounted for about $ 3 million of Amazon's $ 25.7 billion in cloud revenue in 2018, according to news site The Information.

A Rekognition law enforcement user said Amazon was "throwing us under the bus." Agencies have generally said they use facial recognition for post-crime investigations, not for real-time monitoring.

"After saying over and over again that they support us and how we use the technology, they are making it seem like they suddenly don't think we are using it properly," said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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