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Article

12 Jun 2020

Author:
Access Now,
Author:
Access Now

Amazon halts police use of Rekognition; Access Now calls for creation of human rights team at the company

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Amazon announced Wednesday that it would place a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, Rekognition. The brief statement comes just two days after IBM announced in a letter to Congress that it would no longer offer general purpose facial recognition software... “The move by Amazon, as sudden as it appears, comes after years of pressure by civil society groups, investors, and other advocates calling on the company to stop selling Rekognition to law enforcement,” said Isedua Oribhabor, U.S. Policy Analyst at Access Now... During Amazon’s Annual General Meeting on May 27, shareholders voted on multiple proposals relating to Rekognition and other surveillance technology the company produces. Though the shareholder proposals did not pass, this move indicates that Amazon is responding to the concerns of its shareholders and of civil society... “Hitting the pause button is a small step in the right direction, but is not enough,” said Oribhabor. “At a minimum, Amazon must create a cross-functional human rights team and perform human rights impact assessments to truly evaluate the effects that its tech products have on... human rights.

... “Although strong regulation and safeguards can mitigate certain harms, we need to accept that certain uses of technology, such as biometric recognition systems that enable mass surveillance, are so incompatible with the protection of fundamental rights that these systems simply should not be used,” said Daniel Leufer, Mozilla Fellow at Access Now... Facial recognition and other surveillance software pose serious risks for human rights including freedom of assembly and privacy, some of which can be mitigated only by comprehensive and robust privacy and data protection laws in the United States.

Part of the following timelines

Shareholders & civil society groups urge Amazon to halt sale of facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies

USA: Investors file resolutions with companies at risk for human rights violations due to govt. contracts related to immigration

USA: Amazon CEO announces support for facial recognition regulation while own product faces privacy & discrimination-related concerns

USA: Company executives speak out against racism following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor & Tony McDade by police