Amazon is marketing its facial recognition software to Florida police departments that are currently partnered with its home surveillance company, Ring—arrangements that allow police to request access to video footage captured by homeowners.
Emails uncovered by an ABC News investigative team in Tampa Bay (WFTS) reportedly show that Amazon has been pushing police departments to adopt its controversial face recognition software, Rekognition, while also helping them acquire access to footage taken by Ring’s doorbell cameras via its Neighbors app.
Ring has repeatedly told reporters that neither its devices nor the law enforcement portal through which police request access to Ring footage use facial recognition. (“Ring does not use facial recognition technology,” a spokesperson told Gizmodo last month.) But Ring’s denials do not appear to rule out the possibility that police may, at some point, obtain doorbell footage and analyze the faces in it using a separate Amazon product.
WFTS said it attempted multiple times to contact Ring, which was acquired by Amazon in 2018, in the week leading up to its report. The company did not respond.
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last year showed that Amazon had been handing out its Rekognition tool to police free of charge. The group says the technology, which researchers and critics call unreliable and racially biased, poses a “grave threat” to communities.
“People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government. Facial recognition in American communities threatens this freedom. In over policed communities of color, it could effectively eliminate it,” the ACLU and other groups wrote in a letter to the Amazon.
In August, BuzzFeed News reported that, despite Ring’s insistence that it does not use face recognition technology, the company’s Ukraine arm appeared to be developing a face recognition tool. A 2018 presentation unearthed by reporters even shows that, at least at the time, Ring Ukraine had a “head of face recognition research” on staff.
Police departments partnered with Ring are given the ability to request footage directly from Ring customers, but cannot, the company says, obtain it otherwise without a warrant. It remains unclear whether Ring notifies customers of warrants, even in cases where the customer is not suspected of a crime. (Gizmodo has posed this question to Ring on multiple occasions and received no response.)
Gizmodo reported in July that Ring’s contracts with law enforcement agencies forbid police from making public statements about the company and its products without Ring’s permission. Further Gizmodo reporting found that Ring was seeking access to real-time 911 caller data to use as content for its Neighbors app.
In some cases, Ring has barred police departments from using the term “surveillance” to describe its products, stating explicitly in one email that doing so “can flag user privacy concerns.”
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