Amazon Is Warned About Government Use of Facial Recognition
U.S. civil liberties groups on Tuesday called on Amazon.com Inc. to stop offering facial recognition services to governments, warning that the software could be used to target immigrants and people of color unfairly. More than 40 groups sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos saying technology from the company's cloud computing unit was ripe for abuse. The letter underscores how new tools for identifying and tracking people could be used to empower surveillance states. Amazon has marketed a range of uses for its Rekognition service, unveiled in late 2016. These include detecting offensive content, identifying celebrities and securing public safety. In a blog post last year, Amazon said a new feature let customers "identify people of interest against a collection of millions of faces in near real-time, enabling use cases such as timely and accurate crime prevention." Customers provide…