Last year Amazon banned police in the United States from using its facial recognition software. The ban was set at around 12 months, and as we near that deadline, Amazon has once again issued a ban on police from using its Rekognition platform.
Instead of another year-long ban, however, Amazon has imposed an indefinite one, stating that it will be in place “until further notice”.
While facial recognition software has many positive applications, it can also be used for more nefarious practices. In the case of policing, it can potentially be used as a tool to discriminate already marginalised segments of society, hence the extension of the ban.
It is something that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has commended Amazon for doing.
“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,” noted Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy project director at the ACLU.
“We are glad that Amazon will extend its moratorium on law enforcement use of the company’s face recognition technology. Now, the Biden administration and legislatures across the country must further protect communities from the dangers of this technology by ending its use by law enforcement entirely, regardless which company is selling it,” he adds.
As Reuters points out, the Rekognition platform is being put to good use in tackling other societal ills while the police ban is in place. This as some customers who make use of the platform via the company’s cloud services are helping to identify human trafficking victims.
While that is indeed positive, Rekognition has also come under criticism in the past, with it reportedly struggling to differentiate sex in darker skinned faces. As such, it shows that AI still needs plenty of training in terms of removing bias.
Either way, the fact that Amazon has chosen to indefinitely ban access to its software by police is good to see, and we’re hoping more companies working on this type of technology think critically of how it will be applied in the real world and potentially abused.
Now the company needs to apply the same empathy to its treatment of warehouse workers.
[Image – Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash]
