Investigation
Falsely matched 28 members of Congress
2018The ACLU showed Amazon's Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress to mugshots — disproportionately people of color — while Amazon marketed it to police.
Amazon Rekognition
Cloud face recognition police piloted — and the ACLU broke.
Rekognition is Amazon's cloud image-analysis API offering facial recognition. The ACLU showed it falsely matched 28 members of Congress to mugshots; Amazon later paused police use amid bias concerns.
What it does
- ▸Face detection & matching
- ▸Celebrity/object detection
- ▸Video analysis
- ▸Scalable API
Where it's deployed
- ◍Police pilots (e.g., Oregon)
- ◍Moratorium on police use (2020–)
Agencies using it
Local LE
Abuses & incidents
Ban / Halt
Police-use moratorium
2020Amid bias findings and protests, Amazon paused police use of Rekognition — a moratorium it later extended indefinitely.
- ↳Amazon pauses police use of Rekognition — Reuters, 2020