ACLU: Amazon shouldn't sell face-recognition tech to police
ACLU: Amazon shouldn't sell face-recognition tech to
police
By GENE JOHNSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS SEATTLE — May 22, 2018,
12:52 PM ET
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."
The tool, called Rekognition, is already being used by at
least 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.
But privacy advocates have been concerned about expanding
the use of facial recognition to body cameras worn by officers or safety and
traffic cameras that monitor public areas, allowing police to identify and
track people in real time.
The tech giant's entry into the market could vastly
accelerate such developments, the privacy advocates fear, with potentially dire
consequences for minorities who are already arrested at disproportionate rates,
immigrants who may be in the country illegally or political protesters.
"People should be free to walk down the street
without being watched by the government," the groups wrote in a letter to
Amazon on Tuesday. "Facial recognition in American communities threatens
this freedom."
Amazon released Rekognition in late 2016, and the
sheriff's office in Washington County, west of Portland, became one of its
first law enforcement agency customers. A year later, deputies were using it
about 20 times per day — for example, to identify burglary suspects in store
surveillance footage. Last month, the agency adopted policies governing its
use, noting that officers in the field can use real-time face recognition to
identify suspects who are unwilling or unable to provide their own ID, or if
someone's life is in danger.
"We are not mass-collecting. We are not putting a
camera out on a street corner," said Deputy Jeff Talbot, a spokesman for
the sheriff's office. "We want our local community to be aware of what
we're doing, how we're using it to solve crimes — what it is and, just as
importantly, what it is not."
It cost the sheriff's office just $400 to load 305,000
booking photos into the system and $6 per month in fees to continue the
service, according to an email obtained by the ACLU under a public records
request.
Amazon Web Services did not answer emailed questions
about how many law enforcement agencies are using Rekognition, but in a written
statement the company said it requires all of its customers to comply with the
law and to be responsible in the use of its products.
The statement said some agencies have used the program to
find abducted people, and amusement parks have used it to find lost children.
British broadcaster Sky News used Rekognition to help viewers identify
celebrities at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last
weekend.
Last year, the Orlando, Florida, Police Department
announced it would begin a pilot program relying on Amazon's technology to
"use existing City resources to provide real-time detection and
notification of persons-of-interest, further increasing public safety."
Orlando has a network of public safety cameras, and in a
presentation posted to YouTube this month, Ranju Das, who leads Amazon
Rekognition, said Amazon would receive feeds from the cameras, search them
against photos of people being sought by law enforcement and notify police of
any hits.
"It's about recognizing people, it's about tracking
people, and then it's about doing this in real time, so that the law
enforcement officers ... can be then alerted in real time to events that are
happening," he said.
The Orlando Police Department declined to make anyone
available for an interview about the program, but said in an email to The
Associated Press that the department "is not using the technology in an
investigative capacity or in any public spaces at this time."
"The purpose of a pilot program such as this, is to
address any concerns that arise as the new technology is tested," the
statement said. "Any use of the system will be in accordance with current
and applicable law. We are always looking for new solutions to further our
ability to keep the residents and visitors of Orlando safe."
The letter to Amazon followed public records requests
from ACLU chapters in California, Oregon and Florida. More than two dozen
organizations signed it, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human
Rights Watch.
Clare Garvie, an associate at the Center on Privacy and
Technology at Georgetown University Law Center, said part of the problem with
real-time face recognition is its potential impact on free-speech rights.
While police might be able to videotape public
demonstrations, face recognition is not merely an extension of photography but
a biometric measurement — more akin to police walking through a demonstration
and demanding identification from everyone there.
Amazon's technology isn't that different from what face
recognition companies are already selling to law enforcement agencies. But its
vast reach and its interest in recruiting more police departments to take part
raise concerns, she said.
"This raises very real questions about the ability
to remain anonymous in public spaces," Garvie said.
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