Amazon, which got its start selling books now bills itself as “Earth’s most customer-centric company”. It has officially entered the surveillance business. The company has developed a powerful and dangerous new facial recognition system. Amazon calls the service “Rekognition” and is actively helping governments deploy it.
More about ‘Rekognition’
Amazon released Rekognition in late 2016. Recently some marketing materials have been obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). As Per the ACLU —” Powered by artificial intelligence, Rekognition can identify, track, and moreover, analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces, according to Amazon. Amazon not only markets Rekognition as a law enforcement service, in addition, it is helping governments deploy it. Amazon lists the city of Orlando, Florida, and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon among its customers.”
The tool, called Rekognition, has already been used by one agency — the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon — to check photographs of unidentified suspects against a database of mug shots from the county jail, which is a common use of such technology around the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy activists are asking Amazon to stop marketing a powerful facial recognition tool to police, saying law enforcement agencies could use the technology to “easily build a system to automate the identification and tracking of anyone.” More than 40 groups sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos saying technology from the company’s cloud computing unit was ripe for abuse. The letter underscores how new tools for identifying and tracking people could be used to empower surveillance states.