Amazon said it would extend the ban it imposed last year on the US police's use of facial recognition programs, as the company had stopped this practice for one year starting in June 2020, and its announcement came at the height of protests across the United States against Police brutality towards people of color, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a black man, during his arrest in Minnesota.
Civil liberties advocates have long warned that inaccurate facial matches by law enforcement could lead to unfair arrests, as well as a loss of privacy and curtailment of freedom of expression. The company has not commented on the reason behind this decision.
Last year, she said she hoped Congress would establish rules to ensure the ethical use of the technology, despite not enforcing such a law. Amazon provides face matching with the Rekognition service from its cloud computing department, and Amazon said customers who rely on the software to find Victims of human trafficking still had access to facial recognition capabilities.