Amazon is crafting legislation that it plans to submit to Congress and will be used one day to regulate the use of facial recognition.
At the e-commerce company's huge hardware event on Wednesday, Sept. 25, in Seattle, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told reporters that its public policy team is in the process of drafting a proposed set of rules to prevent the technology from being used to harm the public.
"It's a perfect example of something that has really positive uses, so you don't want to put the brakes on it," Bezos said about facial recognition. "At the same time, there's lots of potential for abuses with that kind of technology, and so you do want regulations."
Concerns Over Potential Abuse Of Facial Recognition
Fears over unregulated facial recognition have been raised by privacy advocates. In the United States, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have agreed that the technology is a threat, calling out its potential to be used for mass surveillance and invasion of privacy and reinforce discrimination.
Last year, Microsoft raised concerns over facial recognition and call on the government to begin regulation of the technology.
Skepticism Over Amazon's Facial Recognition Regulation
On Thursday, Sept. 26, civic rights groups responded to Bezos' statements, applauding the e-commerce company for finally recognizing the dangers of facial recognition. However, Amazon needs to do more than just craft regulations.
"If Amazon is really interested in preventing these dangers, the first thing it should do is stop pushing surveillance tools into our communities without regard for the impact," said Neema Singh Guliani, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Amazon itself has developed products and services that utilize facial recognition technology. The controversial facial recognition tool Rekognition used by law enforcement to spot petty crimes is from the e-commerce company. Even employees and investors have called on Amazon to refrain from selling Rekognition to governments unless there is sufficient data to prove that the facial recognition tool will not be used to violate human and civil rights.
Amazon was also criticized for considering the addition of facial recognition in tools developed by its video doorbell company Ring. In patent applications for Ring devices, facial recognition was proposed to be used to identify suspicious individuals and call the police.
