U.S. firms are experimenting with creating better facial recognition technology, however, the American Civil Liberties Union claims that it may threaten American’s privacy because of the ways the technology can be used. The ACLU says that Amazon’s Rekognition service could be used as a tool for warrantless surveillance to identify protesters or immigrants.
The ACLU is not the only civil rights group to protest Amazon’s marketing the technology to police departments, several dozen organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, signed a letter asking Amazon not to sell Rekognition to the government. A portion of the letter reads, “”People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government.”
Two Congressional Democrats have asked Amazon questions about their facial recognition service, including which police departments currently use the technology beyond the already known Oregon Sheriff’s office and Florida police department, which are testing Rekognition.
Rekognition is available with an AWS account. Customers are using the service for other, less controversial, uses, such as for online platforms that want to detect unsafe content before it is uploaded. C-Span uses the service to tag who is speaking or on camera. A genealogy website uses Rekognition to determine which of their ancestors a person resembles.
Instances where the government’s use of facial recognition technology is not controversial include finding missing children and spotting individuals on the FBI’s most-wanted list. It’s the potential for misuse that worries civil liberty organizations.
Even marketing uses have come under fire; a smart billboard in London uses hidden cameras and facial recognition technology to serve the most relevant ads based on the gender and age of pedestrians.
The public isn’t often aware of how often the government already uses facial recognition technology. According to the federal Government Accountability Office, the F.B.I. has a database containing about 400 million faces, many of which are people that have committed no crimes.
