Amazon mentioned on Tuesday it’s extending till additional discover a moratorium it imposed final 12 months on police use of its facial recognition software program.
The firm had halted the observe for one 12 months beginning in June 2020. Its announcement got here on the peak of protests throughout the United States in opposition to police brutality towards folks of color, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, throughout an arrest in Minnesota.
Civil liberties advocates have lengthy warned that wrong face matches by regulation enforcement may result in unjust arrests, in addition to to a loss of privateness and chilled freedom of expression.
Amazon’s extension, which Reuters was first to report, underscores how facial recognition stays a delicate difficulty for giant corporations. The world’s largest on-line retailer didn’t remark on the explanation for its choice.
Last 12 months, it mentioned it hoped Congress would put in place guidelines to make sure moral use of the know-how, although no such regulation has materialised.
Amazon additionally confronted calls this month from activists who needed its software program ban to be everlasting.
Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy venture director on the American Civil Liberties Union, expressed assist for Amazon’s transfer and referred to as on federal and state governments to ban regulation enforcement’s use of the software program.
“Face recognition technology fuels the over-policing of Black and Brown communities, and has already led to the false arrests and wrongful incarcerations of multiple Black men,” he mentioned in an announcement.
Amazon gives face-matching with Rekognition, a service from its cloud computing division. Customers relying on this system to search out human trafficking victims have nonetheless had entry to the facial recognition capabilities, Amazon has mentioned.
Critics have famous analysis born out of a venture referred to as Gender Shades, which confirmed Rekognition struggled to find out the intercourse of people with darker pores and skin tones. Amazon has contested this.
Due to Amazon’s prominence and prior protection of facial recognition, its moratorium has carried significance. Rival Microsoft Corp mentioned shortly after Amazon’s announcement final June that it might await US federal regulation earlier than promoting its face recognition software program to police.
Pharmacy chain Rite Aid Corp additionally stopped use of the know-how at its shops, it mentioned the next month.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
