During a company - wide meeting today , Amazon addressed its kinship with police enforcement delegacy , including Immigrations Customs and Enforcement — its first unmediated response to employee concerns raisedin Juneabout the party ’s often successful attempts to render cloud infrastructure and facial realisation software package for these government authorization .
According to two current Amazon workers , questions for today were pre - screened and there were no microphone for an in - person Q&A. Still , a interrogative regarding these uses of the caller ’s facial recognition software , call Rekognition , made it into the curriculum :
“ What is being done in response to the care voiced by both Amazon employees and polite rights groups regarding Amazon selling facial recognition technology to political science and police force organizations , include ICE ? ” take the question , according to a transcript of the remarks place out to an Amazon employee posting listing , obtained by Gizmodo . According to this transcript , CEO Jeff Bezos passed the question to Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy . His response is somewhat garbled in the transcript , but the thrusting is that the Amazon ’s Terms of Service for its facial realisation Cartesian product is sufficient to protect hoi polloi from misuse .
His remarks are below :
Thank you , so we ’re refer to Amazon Rekognition , which is AWS ’ deeply learning picture recognition , facial recognition , and video recognition service . And , you know , with over five hundred thousand employee like we have at Amazon , I imagine we ’re going to have people who have opinion that are very panoptic ranging , which is gravid , but we finger really bang-up and really strongly about the value that amazon recognition ( sic ) is providing our customers of all sizes and all type of industries in law enforcement and out of law of nature enforcement .
You see it in the value mass are actually getting even after just about a twelvemonth year and a half of the service where Rekognition is actively been used to help stop human trafficking , to reunify missing tiddler with parent for educational applications , for security and multi factor assay-mark .
There ’s a luck of note value being enjoyed from amazon recognition ( sic ) . Now now , of course , with any form of technology , you have to make certain that it ’s being used responsibly and that ’s true with new and existing engineering just think about all the evil that could be done with figurer or waiter and has been done and you guess about what a unlike home our earth would be if we did n’t let the great unwashed to have computers , so you do n’t want to get rid of that engineering science . You require to make certain that people use the engineering responsibly , and we have a readiness of terms and religious service in AWS . And with all our Service , include recognition ( sic ) , where if people rape those terms of services and do n’t use them responsibly , they wo n’t be capable to utilise our help any longer . In fact , if we chance people are violate sept constitutional rights , they wo n’t be able to use the service any longer . I also think by the fashion , in a democracy is also often the role and the responsibilities of the governance to help specify what the guidelines and regulations should be about technology . And if and when that happens , we will abide by those as well . Thank you .
The Project on Government Oversightrevealed earlier this yearthat Amazon approached ICE regarding use of Rekognition . methamphetamine hydrochloride has antecedently told Gizmodo that it does not have contracts with Amazon that specifically pertain to facial recognition . Though ICE does have contracts with data - mining firm Palantir , which uses AWS as its cloud computing political platform . employee specifically cited Amazon ’s work with Palantir in their letter to the troupe ’s leadership .
The company has also been actively commercialise the facial realization technology to law , already partner with law enforcement agencies in Oregon and Florida , as detailed in documents obtain by the ACLU .
An Amazon employee who demand to persist anon. for veneration or reprisal tell Gizmodo that Jassy ’s response did n’t address the fear of workers adequately . “ Should we sell a service to a customer we know is buy the farm to use it unethically just because the customer is a government ? One of the Amazon leading principles is ‘ Insist on the Highest Standards , ’ but ‘ is this blatantly illegal ? ’ is the lowest potential standard . ”
“ If Amazon does n’t know how client are using the technology , how can it experience if client are violating its ‘ Terms of Service ’ ? Amazon ’s leadership team is doubling down on a biased and dangerous technology that it ’s own workers are warn against , and that itacknowledgesit ca n’t adequately control , ” Kade Crockford , Director of the ACLU ’s Technology for Liberty Program , told Gizmodo . “ Surveillance technology in the hands of police is often wrong used to target immigrants , biotic community of colour , and political protesters . A ‘ Terms of Service ’ wo n’t change that . ”
We ’ve reached out to Amazon for commentary and will update if we hear back .
Updates : venial typographical wrongdoing in the transcription have been change to reflect Amazon ’s official transcript . We ’ve also added remark from the ACLU
AmazonAndy JassyFacial RecognitionJeff Bezos
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