Facial recognition is one of the most authoritarian and invasive forms of surveillance ever created, and its spreading like an epidemic. ... We need to ban this technology outright, treat it like biological or nuclear weapons, and prevent it from proliferating before its too late.

Evan Greer

Categorized in : Tech

We need to draw a line in the sand and ban governments from using this technology before its too late. We know that members of Congress are currently drafting legislation related to facial recognition, and we hope they know that the public will not accept trojan horse regulations that line Jeff Bezos pockets at the expense of all of our basic human rights.

The rapid spread of facial recognition surveillance is one of the most urgent threats to our basic freedom and human rights today. Every single 2020 candidate should be calling for a ban on this invasive, biased and dangerous technology.

Banning facial recognition is not a radical idea. Its common sense. Allowing government agencies to build a face-scanning panopticon with no oversight or accountability is reckless and puts people in danger.

Amazon is going to get someone killed by recklessly marketing this dangerous and invasive surveillance technology to goverments, facial recognition already automates and exacerbates police abuse, profiling and discrimination. Now Amazon is setting us on a path where armed goverment agents could make split-second decisions based on a flawed algorithms cold testimony.

Its time to recognize that Big Tech plus Big Government equals Big Brother. Police departments typically have to answer to city and state elected officials, who are supposed to provide oversight to ensure theyre not abusing their power, amazon has found the perfect loophole: by entering into these partnerships with police theyre building a privately-run, for-profit, surveillance dragnet without any real accountability.

What the government is trying to do here is not going to make us safer, it's going to make us more at risk for these type of attacks and, in fact, more at risk for all types of violent crime.

I think this is very much on President Obama's shoulders, his administration threatened to veto a very similar piece of legislation in 2013, and since then they've done a real about-face on this and are now cheerleading for a bill that's the worst we've seen yet.