Amazon bans police use of its face recognition for a year amid Black Lives Matter protests

Amazon on Wednesday banned police use of its face-recognition techlogy for a year, making it latest tech giant to step back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin. Seattle-based company did t say why it took action w. Ongoing protests following death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice in U.S. and how police use techlogy to track people.

Floyd died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into handcuffed black man's neck for several minutes even after Floyd stopped moving and pleing for air. Law enforcement ncies use facial recognition to identify suspects, but critics say it can be misused. A number of U.S. cities have banned its use by police and or government ncies, led by San Francisco last year.

On Tuesday, IBM said it would get out of facial recognition business, ting concerns about how techlogy can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling. Civil rights groups and Amazon's own employees have pushed company to stop selling its techlogy, called Rekognition, to government ncies, saying that it could be used to inve people's privacy and target mirities. In a blog post Wednesday, Amazon said that it hoped Congress would put in place stronger regulations for facial recognition.

Amazon's decision is an important symbolic step, but this doesn't really change face recognition landscape in United States since it's t a major player, said Clare Garvie, a researcher at Georgetown University's Center on Privacy and Techlogy. Her public records research found only two U.S. ncies using or testing Rekognition. Washington County Sheriff's Office in Oregon has been most public about using it. Orlando police department tested it, but chose t to implement it, she said.

Studies led by MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini found racial and disparities in facial recognition software. Those findings spurred Microsoft and IBM to improve ir systems, but irked Amazon, which last year publicly attacked her research methods. A group of artificial intelligence scholars, including a winner of computer science's top prize, last year launched a spirited defense of her work and called on Amazon to stop selling its facial recognition software to police. A study last year by a U.S. ncy affirmed concerns about techlogy's flaws.

National Institute of Standards and Techlogy tested leing facial recognition systems though t from Amazon, which didn't submit its algorithms and found that y often performed unevenly based on a person's race, or . Buolamwini on Wednesday called Amazon's anuncement a welcomed though unexpected anuncement. Microsoft also needs to take a stand, she wrote in an emailed statement. More importantly our lawmakers need to step up to rein in harmful deployments of techlogies.

Microsoft has been vocal about need to regulate facial recognition to prevent human rights abuses but hasn't said it wouldn't sell it to law enforcement. company didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Amazon began attracting attention from American Civil Liberties Union and privacy vocates after it introduced Rekognition in 2016 and began pitching it to law enforcement. But experts like Garvie say many U.S. ncies rely on facial recognition techlogy built by companies that are t as well kwn, such as Tokyo-based NEC, Chicago-based Motorola Solutions or European companies Idemia, Gemalto and Cognitec.

Amazon isn't abandoning facial recognition altoger. company said organizations, such as those that use Rekognition to help find children who are missing or sexually exploited, will still have access to techlogy. This week's anuncements by Amazon and IBM follow a push by Democratic lawmakers to pass a sweeping police reform pack in Congress that could include restrictions on use of facial recognition, especially in police body cameras. Though t commonly used in U.S., possibility of cameras that could monitor crowds and identify people in real time have attracted bipartisan concern.

tech industry has fought against outright bans of facial recognition, but some companies have called for federal laws that could set guidelines for responsible use of techlogy. It is becoming clear that absence of consistent national rules will delay getting this valuable techlogy into hands of law enforcement, slowing down investigations and making communities less safe, said Daniel Castro, vice president of industry-backed Information Techlogy and Invation Foundation, which has vocated for facial recognition providers. ngel Daz, an attorney at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said he welcomed Amazon's moratorium but said it should have come sooner given numerous studies showing that techlogy is racially biased. We agree that Congress needs to act, but local communities should also be empowered to voice ir concerns and decide if and how y want this techlogy deployed at all, he said.