Amazon Workers Urge Bezos to Halt Police Face Recognition Sales
A group of Amazon employees is demanding that CEO Jeff Bezos stop selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies. The workers warn the software will harm marginalized communities and urge the company to drop Palantir from its cloud servers.
A group of Amazon employees sends a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos demanding that the company stop selling its Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement. The workers argue that in the current climate of increased police militarization and immigration enforcement, this technology acts as a powerful surveillance tool that ultimately harms the most marginalized people.
The employees write this plea after an ACLU report reveals that Amazon sells Rekognition to government customers, with Orlando police currently testing the system. Despite assurances that the software only tracks volunteer officers, members of Congress demand transparency, and Amazon faces growing pressure from privacy advocates and investors to end these government contracts.
In addition to ending Rekognition sales, the workers ask Amazon to remove Palantir from its AWS cloud services because Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses the data-mining firm's technology to target immigrants. The employees model their protest after Google workers, who successfully pressured their company to drop a military drone AI contract earlier this year.