ACLU Asks Amazon to Exit Government ‘Surveillance Business’

Amazon’s new facial recognition system, Rekognition, can be used by law enforcement to violate civil liberties and rights, American Civil Liberties Union representatives blogged Tuesday. They said Rekognition can identify as many as 100 people in a single image in real time, producing data that can be cross referenced on databases of tens of millions of faces. The company “has officially entered the surveillance business,” ACLU said, asking Amazon to stop government entities from using the system. Orlando, Florida, and Oregon’s Washington County Sheriff’s Office are among users, the ACLU said. An Amazon spokeswoman said company policy requires that customers comply with the law, and quality of life would be "much worse" if new technology were outlawed because some abuse it: "Imagine if customers couldn’t buy a computer because it was possible to use that computer for illegal purposes?"