It can take grainy photos from a security camera or elsewhere and run them against thousands of photos, like a police department’s database of mug shots, to find a potential match. But it has also taken on a new and controversial life in law enforcement and other areas, which has raised privacy and bias concerns. And studies have shown that facial-recognition systems misidentify people of color more often than white people. Police in the US city of Orlando have ended tests of a controversial Amazon facial recognition technology that had led to protests from Amazon staff and dissent from shareholders. “Facial recognition is a horrifying, inaccurate tool that fuels racial profiling and mass surveillance,” she said. Microsoft calls for regulation of facial recognition, saying it’s too risky to leave to tech industry alone. It overwhelmingly misidentified Congress members who are not white. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed this complaint in a tweet on Wednesday, saying the technology “shouldn’t be anywhere near law enforcement”. “Amazon must fully commit to a blanket moratorium on law enforcement use of face recognition until the dangers can be fully addressed, and it must press Congress and legislatures across the country to do the same. Amazon spent $16.8m on lobbying in 2019. Amazon Rekognition is a cloud-based Software as a service (SaaS) computer vision platform that was launched in 2016. Amazon places 'moratorium' on police use of its facial recognition tech It's responding to protests and Congress with a hold on Rekognition. The decision to pause use of the technology by police surprised critics such as Jake Laperruque, senior counsel at the Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, an accountability group, because Amazon has attacked reports that found flaws with Rekognition. “Amazon must fully commit to a blanket moratorium on law enforcement use of face recognition until the dangers can be fully addressed, and it must press Congress and legislatures across the country to do the same.”. We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. Its Rekognition technology blankets the country. One tech giant that hasn’t announced any changes with the way it sells facial-recognition technology is Microsoft. Amazon is announcing a one-year moratorium on selling law enforcement access to its controversial Rekognition facial recognition platform, the e-commerce giant said on Wednesday. Rekognition is a tool offered by Amazon Web Services, the company’s profitable cloud computing arm, and it’s relatively cheap and easy to use. In April, its top legal executive suggested the company’s senior leaders fend of workplace safety criticism by trying to turn the focus on a black activist warehouse worker it had recently fired, calling the worker in a leaked memo “not smart, or articulate.” After the comments became public, the lawyer, David Zapolsky said in a statement that his comments were “personal and emotional.”, As protests over the killing of Floyd grew, Bezos took to Instagram in the past week, posting two letters from Amazon customers complaining over the company’s decision to run “Black Lives Matter” at the top of its e-commerce site. The only reason Amazon reversed course on Rekognition, he says, is the public outcry over police tactics in the wake of Floyd’s death. “That goes double for people of color, who are more likely to be wrongly identified and subject to FR for no reason,” Wyden said in an emailed statement. But the company has deep ties to policing. Amazon said that running sketches through Rekognition does not violate its rules but that it expects human reviewers to “pay close attention to the confidence of any matches produced this way.” Amazon Pauses Police Use of Its Facial Recognition Software. This surveillance technology must be stopped.”, Amazon says 'Black Lives Matter'. On Monday, IBM said it will get out of the facial-recognition business altogether over concerns about how the technology can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling. ... Amazon Bans Police Use of Rekognition. “It fuels police abuse. Amazon is implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its artificial intelligence software Rekognition amid a growing backlash over the tech company’s ties to law enforcement. Amazon Rekognition can analyze images, and send the emotion and demographic attributes to Amazon Redshift for periodic reporting on trends such as in store locations and similar scenarios. “This surveillance technology’s threat to our civil rights and civil liberties will not disappear in a year,” Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties director with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said in a statement. 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