Amazon suspends sale of facial recognition technology to police

Amazon.com Inc. announced on the 10th that it prohibits the US police. USA Use the facial recognition technology developed by the company for one year.

The Associated Press reported that the United States' law enforcement system commonly uses facial recognition technology to identify suspects, but critics point out that existing American technology may make mistakes in identifying "darker skinned" subjects.

Amazon launched Rekognition, a facial recognition technology system in 2016, without explaining why the ban is now announced. Today, protests and rallies are taking place across the United States. The fuse was the death of African-American man George Floyd after he was violently forced by a white police officer on May 25.

Some protesters believe that the George Floyd incident shows that ethnic minorities in the United States have suffered unfair treatment and that the police have abused tracking technology. Critics in the United States have consistently claimed that facial recognition technology can be misused by law enforcement officials. Several cities like San Francisco banned city police and other government agencies from using this technology last year.

Georgetown University researcher Claire Garvey noted that Amazon's decision will not have a substantial impact on the U.S. facial recognition technology market because its market share of the system is not high. She reviewed public records and found that only two government agencies used or tested Amazon's facial recognition system. The Washington County, Oregon Office of Public Safety uses the Amazon system, but the Orlando Police Department in Florida has not officially released the system.

However, Amazon does not intend to completely abandon the facial recognition business, saying that other institutions besides the police may still use this technology to find missing children.

A study led by MIT scholar Joy Buolamwini last year found that the accuracy of existing facial recognition technology in the United States will vary depending on the race and gender of the identified subject. After the research report was released, Microsoft and International Business Machines (IBM) decided to improve their systems.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States Department of Commerce also released a test report last year, confirming that the most popular facial recognition technology algorithms on the American market are truly flawed, and that the recognition accuracy of Different races, genders, and age groups is uneven. The test subject does not include the Rekognition system, because Amazon did not submit algorithm information.

IBM announced on the 9th of this month that it would completely abandon its facial recognition business because it is concerned that this technology is being misused. Microsoft supports tighter regulation of the technology, but has not stated whether it will adopt a prohibition policy similar to Amazon's.

Currently, the United States tech industry generally opposes a complete ban on facial recognition technology, but some companies have called for legislation to make the technology more stringent.

Boa Alan Weini issued an email statement on 10th to welcome Amazon's decision and called on the United States Congress to "strengthen (the legislation) the pace" and strictly regulate the use of such technologies.

Driven by the George Floyd incident and wave of protests, the Democratic Party intends to legislate to promote reform of law enforcement agencies, which may limit the application of facial recognition technology by the police.

Daniel Castro, vice president of The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), has been promoting the promotion of facial recognition technology. He believes that it is precisely due to the lack of a unified national standard that law enforcement departments are unable to apply facial recognition as a "valuable" technology to a large extent, affecting the progress of case investigation and maintaining community security.