AWS says it’s keeping its word on cops’ use of Rekognition, docs differ

Amazon executives maintain that the company has kept its voluntary 2020 moratorium on selling facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies worldwide.

A multi-front lawsuit in the UK brought against Amazon by a former employee claims otherwise. The company says it does not let police use its Rekognition face comparison feature.

Plaintiff Charles Forrest, says that not only has Amazon violated its promise by selling Rekognition biometric services to UK law enforcement, executives have indirectly sold facial recognition services to Russia in contravention of U.S. trade law.

While that is the more notable accusation for many organizations, the possibility that Amazon might try to skirt its own moratorium significantly impacts biometrics buyers and competitors looking for an edge.

As it stands, Amazon’s moratorium, initially a one-year ban, was extended indefinitely in May 2021.

Other large technology firms, including Microsoft, also have announced differing moratoriums in the last few years. Microsoft bans U.S. police from using generative AI for facial recognition as part of its Azure OpenAI service.

Amazon’s initial message about Forrest’s allegation was muddled, centering on the fact that a moratorium of its own making is not a legal obligation. There seemed to be the implication that breaking a promise might be less of an offense than breaking a law.

But today, an AWS spokesman commenting via email on background said: “We are denying the claim that we breached our moratorium on the police use of our facial recognition technology.”

Documents from Forrest’s case supplied to Biometric Update – which have not yet been verified – state that the UK’s “Police National Database has already deployed this Amazon Facial Recognition technology … against its entire dataset of millions of UK Police mugshots.”

According to the documents, the service is also used in UK police body cameras and “a UK Young Offenders Institute.”

Some of the points made in the plaintiff’s documents are overly broad, seeming to necessarily link AWS with Rekognition. AWS markets many services that do not always have to be purchased together.

Forrest, in 2022, began alleging that Amazon was selling facial recognition to Russian intelligence officials. The company has denied it has done so. According to court documents, he took sick leave after Amazon reportedly retaliated against Forrest.

According to the documents, Amazon dismissed him for alleged performance-related issues, which prompted Forrest to sue under the UK’s whistleblower statute.

An employment tribunal considering the dismissal was to issue a finding June 14, but it has yet to do so and there’s no announcement about why.

Article Topics

Amazon Rekognition  |  Amazon Web Services (AWS)  |  biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  police  |  UK