Florida has stopped testing Amazon’s facial recognition program after rights groups raised concerns that the service could be used in ways that could violate civil liberties.
Orlando ended a pilot program last week after its contract with Amazon.com Inc to use its Rekognition service expired.
‘Partnering with innovative companies to test new technology – while also ensuring we uphold privacy laws and in no way violate the rights of others – is critical to us as we work to further keep our community safe,’ the city and the Orlando Police Department said in a joint statement Monday.
Orlando was one of several U.S. jurisdictions that Amazon has pitched its service to since unveiling it in late 2016 as a way to detect offensive content and secure public safety.
With the Rekognition software, you can analyze the attributes of faces in images and videos you provide to determine things like happiness, age range and more according to Amazon’s website
Similar to other facial recognition software, you can identify people in a photo, however, the city of Orlando determined the ability to abuse the software can become an issue for privacy rights
Last month, more than 40 civil rights groups sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos saying technology from the company´s cloud computing unit was ripe for abuse. The letter underscored how new tools for identifying and tracking people could be used to empower surveillance states.
On Monday, the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sent a similar letter to city leaders, saying that people ‘should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government’.
During the pilot program, Orlando did not use the technology in an investigation and did not use any photographs of members of the public, Police Sergeant Eduardo Bernal told USA Today.
The power of the technology has been on display in Oregon, where law enforcement uploaded 300,000 mug shots dating to 2001 into Amazon´s cloud and indexed them in Rekognition, according to an Amazon blog post.
Orlando’s contract with the company ended last week and it was not renewed over privacy concerns
Rekognition identified four faces with more than 80 percent similarity to an image of an unidentified hardware store thief; a Facebook search subsequently helped with the case, the post said.
Amazon said it requires customers to abide by the law and be responsible when using Rekognition.
The world´s largest online retailer is not alone: Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc´s Google offer recognition services as well. Identifying faces has also become a common feature in consumer products from Apple Inc and Facebook Inc.