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The online merchant giant Amazon has been accused of doing questionable things many times in the past and displayed behavior that justified those accusations. According to documents that were recently obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, it seems Jeff Bezos’ company been involved in more than just trampling on consumer rights. It has apparently been helping police departments violate the privacy of US citizens.
In the documents that were obtained by the ACLU, it was revealed that the company was providing assistance to the Federal government in creating a massive surveillance system that would then be applied to several counties and states. This is done through an AI technology that Amazon calls Rekognition, which offers advanced facial recognition capabilities.
Of course, the merchant giant has been fairly straightforward about what the platform could be used for; i.e. helping police catch criminals. However, the documents provided more details as to what it is being used for, and it involves mass surveillance.
By integrating Rekognition into every camera in any given city as well as in the body cameras that police officers wear, Amazon has enabled police departments to tag any person of interest and put them under a microscope. After discovering what the company was involved in, the ACLU sent a letter to Bezos, arguing that this move was not at all a benefit to consumers.
It is, in fact, a violation of their rights to privacy and can be abused to promote particular agendas on the part of police departments. It could even be used to target political opponents or dissidents and could be employed to go after vulnerable individuals.
One of the most disturbing facts about its facial recognition platform, however, is that Amazon touts having tens of millions of faces in its database and yet it has not revealed how it came to possess such faces. In any case, the ACLU and many other experts believe that this is just a recipe for disaster and should cease immediately.
