Amazon Maintains Its Stand On Facial Recognition Tech

Amazon has decided to stick to its new technology of facial recognition in spite of concern showed by civil rights groups and various investors. Amazon also felt that there should be proper national legislation to decide in what way this latest technology should be used or not used. Vice President of Global Public Policy in Amazon’s Web Services, Michael Punke supported Rekognition that the company has asked to offer since 2016. Punke explained various advantages of this latest technology, like – easily finding out criminals, identify missing users etc. In fact, in the 2 years of the use of Rekognition, there has been no case of misuse of law.

Investors, civil rights group and numbers of Amazon employees have requested the company to cease the sale of Rekognition to agencies and firms of the government. They fear that Rekognition might be used legally to invade people’s rights. The number of law enforcement groups using this technology by Amazon is not yet known. However, Oregon and Florida’s police departments have been using this for long. In defense of Rekognition, a spokesperson from the company mentioned that without seeking permission from the users, their identities and related details are not revealed.

Amazon also assured that the technology is note beyond law and the governments are quite loyal in not using the facial recognition to spy on people. It also makes sure to protect the civil rights of the citizens. Amazon is one of the leading tech firms to show their support in such legislation. Microsoft also has talked in favor of facial recognition technology and the laws of regulation.

Rekognition is indeed very useful but has its own set of errors. It comes with limitations in denying identifying certain groups of people. In January, Rekognition faced negative criticism due to failure in identifying faces of dark skinned people and recognize number of female faces.