Amazon is selling face-recognition tech to police departments
The company’s computer vision system, called Rekognition, is being sold to police around the US, according to documents disclosed yesterday by the ACLU.
The news: The New York Times reports that soon after Rekognition was released in 2016, the company began marketing it to police departments as a crime-fighting tool.
The argument: The ACLU and two dozen other civil rights organizations published an open letter addressed to Jeff Bezos asking Amazon to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement groups. The letter says that the system is “primed for abuse in the hands of governments.”
Context: Surveillance laws have not kept up with changing technology, leaving companies to figure out where to draw the line in their efforts to turn AI tools into profitable lines of business. If they choose poorly, they’re more likely than ever to face backlash—sometimes even from their own employee's.
The news: The New York Times reports that soon after Rekognition was released in 2016, the company began marketing it to police departments as a crime-fighting tool.
The argument: The ACLU and two dozen other civil rights organizations published an open letter addressed to Jeff Bezos asking Amazon to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement groups. The letter says that the system is “primed for abuse in the hands of governments.”
Context: Surveillance laws have not kept up with changing technology, leaving companies to figure out where to draw the line in their efforts to turn AI tools into profitable lines of business. If they choose poorly, they’re more likely than ever to face backlash—sometimes even from their own employee's.
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