Amazon to ban police forces across the world from using its controversial facial recognition biometric tech ‘for one year’

Amid criticism of ‘hypocrisy’ over racial profiling, the e-commerce giant said the move will help politicians take time to decide on future laws governing the use of biometrics
More than 450 staff petitioned Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to stop selling Rekognition in 2018
Amazon

Amazon has announced a one-year global ban on “police use” of its cloud-based facial recognition technology.

The company had been widely criticised for its “hypocritical” support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is calling for police reform, while allowing forces to deploy a controversial surveillance technology tainted by accusations of potential racial bias.

Amazon's deep learning biometric software, called Rekognition, is so advanced it is able to detect individuals’ emotions - even in crowds - including fear, anger, disgust and surprise.

Rekognition is also promoted by Amazon for its ability to accurately detect gender and age.

But human rights campaigners have long complained such face-scanning software disproportionately targets non-white people, and the move comes nearly two years after 450 Amazon staff petitioned chief executive Jeff Bezos to stop selling their system to police.

Facial recognition works by scanning points on a target's face and cross-referencing these details with a suspects' database
Shutterstock

Now the tech firm has announced “one-year moratorium on police use”, confirmed to the Standard as being "global", while US politicians debate enacting new laws governing how the technology is used.

The move comes after Amazon was accused of double standards after calling for an end to “the inequitable and brutal treatment of black people” following the death in police custody of George Floyd, an African American man, while selling Rekognition, which human rights groups said “is readily available to violate rights and target communities of colour”.

Amazon said: “We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge.

“We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules.”

It will continue to allow Rekognition’s use by organisations fighting human trafficking, the statement added.

The e-commerce giant's facial recognition moratorium does not cover its Ring CCTV smart doorbells, which has also criticised for the profiling and racist language among some users who post their footage of "suspicious" people on the linked Neighbours app.

Facial recognition works by scanning data points to create a digital web across the target’s face as seen on CCTV before cross-referencing that with suspects’ features stored in a database.

The whole process is virtually instantaneous and can be undertaken on multiple crowd targets simultaneously.

However, the Washington Post reported that a landmark study of facial recognition systems last year by a federal laboratory found that "Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men", depending on algorithm and search type.

Amazon’s announcement comes after IBM also announced it would stop selling facial recognition software if it was being used for “mass surveillance (and) racial profiling”.

However, there are still large numbers of tech firms selling equally powerful technology specialising in many types of recognition type, including clothes, body type and leg gait.

Last month, a Chinese tech firm announced it had developed software able to unmask protesters who covering their faces for disguise or coronavirus protection.

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