Amazon designing system for 'dangerous mass surveillance,' employee says

Carolyn Adolph

October 18, 2018 / 10:15 am

caption: A camera with facial recognition capabilities hangs from a wall while being installed at Lockport High School in Lockport, N.Y.

Employees at Amazon have asked the company to stop selling its Rekognition technology to government. Now an employee says workers are disappointed that the company appears to be strengthening its commitment to sell its technology to police, government and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The anonymous post was published in Medium, which confirmed that it was written by an Amazon employee.

“Our concern isn’t one about some future harm caused by some other company,” it said. “Amazon is designing, marketing, and selling a system for dangerous mass surveillance right now.”

The employee objected to Bezos’s recent statement that society would eventually develop an “immune response” to harmful uses of technology. The employee said “if Amazon waits, we think the harm will be difficult to undo.”

“We know from history that new and powerful surveillance tools left unchecked in the hands of the state have been used to target people who have done nothing wrong; in the United States, a lack of public accountability already results in outsized impacts and over-policing of communities of color, immigrants, and people exercising their First Amendment rights. Ignoring these urgent concerns while deploying powerful technologies to government and law enforcement agencies is dangerous and irresponsible.”

Employees at other tech firms have also expressed concerns about their companies' facial recognition technology, with mixed results.

Google chose not renew its contract with the Pentagon to analyze images from drones after disappointed workers complained.

But Microsoft remains in the running for a $10 billion defense contract called JEDI despite worker concerns. Amazon is competing for that contract as well, and the writer said it was disappointing to see company executives say they were committed to working with government in the U.S. and worldwide.

“We will not silently build technology to oppress and kill people, whether in our country or in others,” the writer said.