Amazon Needs to Stop Providing Facial Recognition Tech for the Government
The benefits do not outweigh its privacy risks and dangers
Co-authored with Woodrow Hartzog
Imagine a technology that is potently, uniquely dangerous — something so inherently toxic that it deserves to be completely rejected, banned, and stigmatized. Something so pernicious that regulation cannot adequately protect citizens from its effects.
That technology is already here. It is facial recognition technology, and its dangers are so great that it must be rejected entirely.
Society isn’t used to viewing facial recognition technology this way. Instead, we’ve been led to believe that advances in facial recognition technology will improve everything from law enforcement to the economy, education, cybersecurity, health care, and our personal lives. Unfortunately, we’ve been led astray.
Procedural Pessimism
After an outcry from employees and advocates, Google recently announced it will not renew a controversial project with the Pentagon called Project Maven. It also released a set of principles that will govern how it develops artificial intelligence. Some principles focus on widely shared ideals, like avoiding bias and incorporating privacy by…
