Washington Post, July 26, 2018: Amazon’s facial-recognition tool misidentified 28 lawmakers as people arrested for a crime, study finds
The ACLU said its findings show that Amazon’s so-called Rekognition technology — already in use at law-enforcement agencies in Oregon and Orlando — is hampered by inaccuracies that disproportionately put people of color at risk and should prompt regulators to halt “law enforcement use of face surveillance.”
Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.
For its test, the ACLU of Northern California created a database of 25,000 publicly available arrest photos, though the civil liberties watchdog did not give details about where it obtained the images or the kinds of individuals in the photos. It then used Amazon’s Rekognition software to compare that database against photos of every member of the U.S. House and Senate.
Ultimately, Amazon’s technology flagged photos of 28 members of Congress as likely matches with the ACLU’s collection of mugshots. Among the misidentified lawmakers were Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has called for federal privacy legislation, and six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including civil-rights icon Lewis.
