Amazon bans police use of its face recognition for a year

By JOSEPH PISANI and MATT O’BRIEN Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon says it will ban police use of its facial recognition technology for a year in order to give Congress time to come up with ways to regulate the technology. The Seattle-based company did not say why it was doing so, but ongoing protests after the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice and how police use technology to track people. Amazon’s announcement comes a day after IBM said it would get out of the facial recognition business, concerned about how the technology can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling.