Amazon’s Role in Surveillance of the Black Community

Amazon is one of the leading vendors of facial recognition software in the world. Their Rekognition facial recognition technology has been marketed and sold to police departments all over the U.S.¹

This software is dangerous and biased. It’s deployed disproportionately in communities of color, which leads to greater instances of harassment, wrongful arrest or worse. It’s also been repeatedly proven to disproportionately misidentify people of color. ^{2, 3}

This week, Amazon put out a solidarity statement claiming to stand with the Black community and announced donations to various equity and justice organizations – but these actions ring completely hollow while Amazon’s still making money off facilitating biased policing of that very community. Send a message now over Twitter to pressure Amazon to immediately stop selling this technology to police departments. (not on Twitter or social media? The page has some options for using Facebook or email).

SEND A MESSAGE

Here’s what Amazon posted just the other day on their Twitter and Facebook accounts:⁴

They also announced donations to several organizations in the U.S. working towards equity and justice, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the ACLU.⁵

Since posting the tweet and the announcement, Amazon has ignored replies asking them to make good on their words and dollars by stopping sales of biased and dangerous facial recognition software to police departments.

We shouldn’t let hypocrisy like this stand. Use of their technology by police poses a huge privacy and safety risk to anyone currently protesting on the streets. 

Hundreds of people have already been calling them out. Can you amplify this message so that it finally breaks through? Visit the action page for a sample tweet, Facebook message, or email that can be sent in one click.

SEND A MESSAGE

Thanks for all you do,

Victoria with OpenMedia

P.S. Amazon’s live phone support is currently inactive due to COVID-19. But if you’re able to do so, voicing your concerns in that way, once it’s restored, is another powerful way to add pressure.