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On May 10, 40 propaganda groups issued an open letter Request a permanent ban U.S. police’s instructions on the use of Amazon’s facial recognition software Rekognition.This letter is addressed to the current and new CEOs Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy, and this letter was sent a few weeks ago Amazon’s year-long suspension The contract sold to law enforcement has expired.
This letter is in stark contrast to the solidarity of Bezos and Jassy to black life issue activists during the racial justice protests last summer after the murder of George Floyd, the report said Law enforcement has used other Amazon products to identify protesters.
May 17, Amazon Announce It will extend its ban indefinitely and engage in self-discipline purgatory with competitors IBM and Microsoft. This move is a tribute to the political forces of groups fighting to contain the technology and acknowledges that a new legislative battlefield has begun to emerge. Many people believe that substantive federal legislation may be introduced soon.
“People are exhausted”
The past year is The key to face recognition, Including leading to False arrestAnd prohibit Nearly two cities and seven states All of America. But the momentum around facial recognition has shifted for some time.
In 2018, artificial intelligence researchers published A study Compare the accuracy of commercial facial recognition software from IBM, Microsoft and Face++. Their work found that the technology has a huge accuracy gap between men with lighter skin and women with darker skin. IBM’s system scored the worst, with an error rate of 34.4% between the two groups.
Also in 2018, ACLU tested Amazon’s recognition And found that it mistakenly mistaken 28 members of Congress for criminals-too much attention to people of color.mechanism Wrote his own open letter to Amazon, Asking the company to prohibit the government from using the technology, Congressional Black Caucus-But Amazon did not make any changes.
“If we are to achieve racial equality in the criminal justice system… one of the simplest and clearest things you can do is to stop using facial recognition technology.”
Michael Ruan (ACLU)
However, in the racial justice campaign against police brutality last summer, Amazon’s announcement to stop police from using Rekognition surprised many people, despite the exception of federal law enforcement such as ICE. The company stated in the announcement that it hopes that this suspension “may give Congress enough time to formulate appropriate rules.”
Evan Greer (Evan Greer) is the director of the technology advocacy organization “Fight for the Future”, which firmly believes in the abolition of facial recognition technology and said that more and more public support for its regulation. She said that this week’s postponement shows that “Amazon is responding to the tremendous pressure they are experiencing, not just facial recognition. In the nationwide racial justice uprisings that have occurred in the past year and a half, I really say A great appreciation.”
“Political Reality”
Despite the pressure on large technology providers, the reality is that most law enforcement and government users do not buy facial recognition software from companies such as Amazon. Therefore, although advocacy groups can impose suspensions and prohibitions, they do not necessarily prevent the use of these technologies. At the same time, Congress has not passed any federal legislation to restrict the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement, government or commercial entities, and the latter will regulate smaller medical service providers.
However, some people hope that federal legislation will come soon, either through direct action by Congress on facial recognition, an executive order from the president, or through the fragmented implementation of the upcoming appropriation and police reform bill.
Kate Ruan, senior legislative adviser to the American Civil Liberties Association, said: “I think the best case is that Congress will suspend its use.” Only after more legislative work can new uses be allowed.
Several federal bills have been proposed that will dominate face recognition.
- This Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Suspension Act Require any federal entity to ban the software and withhold any federal grants from state and local governments that have not issued their own bans. It was proposed by four Democratic members of Congress and introduced to the Senate last year.
- This George Floyd, “Policing Act” Will prevent the use of facial recognition on human cameras. The bill has been passed in the House of Representatives and is expected to reach the Senate next week. President Biden has asked that the bill be passed before the anniversary of George Floyd’s death on May 25.
- This Fourth Amendment Non-Sale Law It is a bipartisan bill introduced by 18 senators that restricts the government’s cooperation with technology providers that undermine the terms of service. In fact, this will largely prevent the government from accessing systems engaged in web scraping, E.g. Clearview AI.
Mutale Nkonde, the founder and CEO of the non-profit organization AI for People, believes that we are likely to see more federal legislation before next year’s midterm elections.
Nkonde said: “I do think there will be a federal regulation that will govern all algorithmic systems, including facial recognition.” “I think this is a political reality.”
Nkonde said that the concept of impact assessment is based on civil rights to assess technical systems, which is becoming more and more popular in policy circles on both sides of the aisle.
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