The Amazon facial recognition tool is being used by law enforcement agencies to find criminals.
In 2016 Amazon released their facial recognition tool, Rekognition, and has been updated last fall to be able to identify people in videos. There is no official figure to show how many agencies are using the new technology. The Rekognition software is said to also be able to identify objects and scenes.
The Rekognition software is the same used by Pinterest for image search through storing users data, also filtering through inappropriate content.
The technology tracks every user, including users that have not committed crime for tracking purposes. There are analysts saying the technology could be used in the future by police, through using phone cameras and facial recognition technology to catch criminals.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon uses the program to look for matches, comparing to their database of booking mug shots. They emphasize that they are only using the facial-recognition technology to identify suspects in criminal investigations only, not focusing on non-criminal activities.
Through the monitoring of jail phone calls, the police were able to identify a woman calling the facility who evaded a warrant for her arrest. They were unable to identify the woman on the call, but found video of her on the Facebook account of the man who she called in jail. The police took a photo of the woman and was able to identify her through the facial recognition software, in which they arrested her for a felony warrant.
There are concerns with the new technology in regard to data privacy, which is a big topic many technology companies face after the 2016 Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Many fear that this technology can be used by criminals to assist in committing crimes.
Dozens of civil rights organizations are addressing Amazon CEO, Jeff Benzos, to stop selling the facial recognition technology to the government. The letter was cosigned by 41 activist groups and entities including the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Education, Freedom of the Press Foundation and Human Rights Watch.
This technology has proven useful to police investigations but are causing concern for privacy issues. Check out the video above to learn more about facial recognition.
