| Friend,
On May 18, we got some good news in the fight against Amazon’s dangerous facial-recognition technology. In response to over a year of pressure from groups like Free Press and our allies at MediaJustice, the company announced that it’s renewed its ban on selling facial-recognition technology to police.1
In June of 2020, Amazon committed to a one-year ban on police use of its facial-recognition software. Now that ban has been extended indefinitely. This is good news and proof that public pressure is working, but the work doesn’t stop here. This extension is still only temporary. Demand that Amazon permanently cut all ties with police and ICE.
Before last June, Amazon aggressively sold its facial-recognition software to police departments and ICE. This enabled police to identify protesters at a time when police were (and still are) wrongfully targeting, arresting, beating and killing people who were standing up for racial justice and Black lives.
But even with the moratorium on police use of its facial-recognition technology, Amazon continues to provide police access to an almost nationwide surveillance network of our homes and communities — powered by Amazon Ring cameras and the Neighbors app. The company also has a special relationship with ICE, which uses Amazon’s cloud-computing software to streamline detentions, deportations, family separations and the collection of immigrants’ biometric data — including their faces, fingerprints and iris scans.
Simply extending the moratorium on police use of facial-recognition technology is not enough. Amazon must cut all ties with police and ICE today.
It was public pressure that got Amazon to extend its moratorium on police use of its facial-recognition tech. And with more public pressure we can get the company to permanently end its relationships with police and ICE.
Thanks for all you do,
Lucia and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net
P.S. Tell Amazon to permanently cut ties with police and ICE — and to stop enabling racist policing.
1. “Amazon Extends Ban on Police Use of Its Facial Recognition Technology Indefinitely,” The Washington Post, May 18, 2021  |
