Police trial of Amazon facial recognition tech doesn’t seem to be going very well

Amazon’s facial recognition technology, Rekognition, continues to cause controversy.

In documents recently obtained by BuzzFeed News, we now have a behind-the-scenes look at how Orlando police have been using the technology. After the city let the original pilot program expire after public outcry, Orlando started a second pilot program with an “increased” number of face-scanning cameras. 

Amazon’s Rekognition is described broadly as a visual analysis tool. But, deployed by law enforcement, it can scan faces caught on camera and match them against faces in criminal databases. The ACLU called the technology “primed for abuse in the hands of governments” and warned that it “poses a grave threat to communities, including people of color and immigrants.” Read more…

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