On Friday , 20 groups of Amazon shareholders send CEO Jeff Bezos a letter pressuring him to blockade selling the caller ’s side recognition software program to law enforcement , CNN report . Called Rekognition , the software package come under greater examination last calendar month when the ACLU publishedrevealing inner documentsrelated to its habit by constabulary . legion civil rights organizationsco - signed a letterdemanding Amazon hold on assisting government surveillance , and several members of Congress have express concerns about the partnership .
“ We are worry the technology would be used to below the belt and disproportionately place and surveil people of colour , immigrants , and civil companionship organizations , ” the stockholder , which reportedly let in Social Equity Group and Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment , wrote . “ We are touch sale may be expanded to alien governments , include authoritarian regimes . ”
Amazon has publicly advertize how police have used its grimace recognition software to identify the great unwashed of interest to law enforcement . On Amazon ’s internet site , a system analyst with Oregon ’s Washington County explicate how Rekognition wasfed a database of 300,000 halt photosto match against faces visualise in surveillance images . It ’s important to take down that being arrested is typically what stimulate a person to stop up in a database , not being convicted of a offence . If an arrestee is finally found innocent , there ’s no guaranteetheir photo will be cleared from these databases for next matching .
In May , the ACLU releasedtroubling national documents , including an email from a Washington County official telling Amazon they were using Rekognition to discover “ unconscious or gone somebody ” as well as “ possible witnesses . ” Another papers showed the package distinguish a picture of O.J. Simpson as a 93.53 percent mates with a white arrestee .
Backlash was fleet , particularly from nonage member of Congress . The Congressional Black Caucussent a letterto Bezos noting that because “ communities of color are more heavily and aggressive police than white community , ” they are concerned about “ unseasonable decisions will be made due to the skew data set produced by [ … ] unconstitutional policing pattern . ” If a city disproportionately arrests people of coloration , it ’s belike its mugshot database is mostly mass of color , including those eventually solve of crime .
Face acknowledgement becoming a police force cock used more often on people of color is alarming for many reasons , least of all being that it ’s less precise on them . voice Keith Ellison and Emanuel Cleaver , both smuggled , also sent a letterto Amazon , name concerns of the engineering ’s truth , citing anMIT studywhich regain enormous racial disparities in the truth of face credit technology .
“ A series of studies have shown that face recognition technology is consistently less accurate in identifying the face of African Americans and women as compared to Caucasians and men , ” write Ellison and Cleaver . “ The disproportionally mellow apprehension rate for member of the black community make the purpose of facial identification technology by constabulary enforcement tough , because it could serve to reinforce this movement . ”
Rekognition can analyze images from any source , entail appearing in simulacrum or video from any law surveillance tool — including CCTV , consistence tv camera , and drone pipe — could potentially mean being match against databases . The seclusion concerns are obvious and very actual as the U.S. employs face recognition inairports , bordersand evenschools .
We strive out to Amazon for commentary and will update this story if we get word back .
[ CNN Money ]
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