Amazon said on Tuesday that it is banning the use of its facial recognition devices for law enforcement, amid persistent concerns of bias in technology.
The tech giant announced last June that it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its technology, saying the halt could give Congress time to implement safeguards against facial recognition misuse .
The company on Tuesday confirmed the extension of that ban “without further notice”.
Last year’s move came amid widespread protests amid concerns over police vandalism and flawed facial recognition techniques, especially in analyzing the characteristics of African Americans.
Activists also say that technology tools can use algorithms that intentionally or not discriminate against black people.
Activists have targeted the Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit’s “Recognition” facial recognition technology and ring surveillance cameras used for home security. It was not clear to what extent the police have used the system.
Amazon last year called on governments to create “stronger rules to control the ethical use of facial recognition technology”.
Microsoft and IBM made similar announcements after its ban.
Last week, a coalition of activist groups called on Amazon to cease selling its accreditation system permanently, and on Tuesday said the company should commit to dismantling the system.
“Facial recognition technology is too dangerous to apply to the craze of corporations like Amazon,” said Evan Greer of the activist group Fight for the Future, one of the groups involved in the coalition.
Amazon stopped police use of its facial recognition technology, killing a black man, who was killed after George Floyd was killed, at a time of nationwide protests and a renewed focus on racial injustice in America. White died after pressing his knee against a police officer. his neck.
Microsoft and IBM also halted the sale of their software to the police around the same time last year, although most police departments look to lesser-known firms for the technology.
Last week, a coalition of activist groups called on Amazon to cease selling its accreditation system permanently, and on Tuesday said the company should commit to dismantling the system.
“Facial recognition technology is too dangerous to apply to the craze of corporations like Amazon,” said Evan Greer of the activist group Fight for the Future, one of the groups involved in the coalition.
Amazon did not say on Tuesday why its ban was extended or how long it would last.
The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday praised Amazon for extending its moratorium. But it added that “the Biden administration and legislatures across the country must protect communities from the dangers of this technology by completely eliminating its use by law enforcement, no matter which company is selling it.”
Amazon said on Tuesday that it was extending to the next notice that it prohibited police use of its facial recognition software last year.
The company halted the practice for a year starting in June 2020. The announcement came at the height of protests against police brutality toward people of color across the United States during the arrest of a black man, George Floyd. Minnesota.
Advocates of civil liberties have long warned that wrong face matches by law enforcement could lead to unjust arrests, as well as loss of privacy and cold freedom of expression.
Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy project director at the American Civil Liberties Union, expressed support for Amazon’s move and called on federal and state governments to ban law enforcement’s use of the software.
“Facial recognition technology promotes excessive policing of Black and Brown communities, and has already led to false arrests and wrongful incarceration of many Black men,” he said in a statement.
Amazon offers face-to-face with Recognition, a service of its cloud computing division. Amazon has said that customers who rely on the program to find human trafficking victims still have access to facial recognition capabilities.
Critics have noted research originating from a project called Gender Shades, which showed that recognition struggled to determine the sex of individuals with darker skin. Amazon has opposed this.