Amazon Provides Facial Recognition Technology to U.S. Law Enforcement

Amazon is assisting American law enforcement agencies by providing them with its facial recognition service, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU discovered this after requesting information from police departments about their use of such technologies.

The service, called Rekognition, can identify up to 100 people in a single image and compare those faces to tens of millions stored in databases. Currently, the Orlando Police Department and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon are using Rekognition. The sheriff’s office also has a mobile app that allows officers to add images directly to the database.

Amazon offers free consulting to police officers and, according to the ACLU, is fully aware that law enforcement can use Rekognition to track the movements of any individual.

Concerns Over Privacy and Civil Rights

The ACLU is concerned that new facial recognition systems may not be used solely to catch real criminals, but could also target minority communities. The civil liberties union, along with about twenty other human rights organizations, has called on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to stop selling Rekognition and similar systems to government agencies.