Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress With Mugshots-gctid260905

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https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28

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Amazon's Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress With Mugshots



By Jacob Snow, Technology & Civil Liberties Attorney, ACLU of Northern California

JULY 26, 2018 | 8:00 AM

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Amazon's face surveillance technology is the target of growing opposition nationwide, and today, there are 28 more causes for concern. In a test the ACLU recently conducted of the facial recognition tool, called "Rekognition," the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime. 

The members of Congress who were falsely matched with the mugshot database we used in the test include Republicans and Democrats, men and women, and legislators of all ages, from all across the country.


Our test used AmazonRekognition to compare images of members of Congress with a database of mugshots. The results included 28 incorrect matches. 

The false matches were disproportionately of people of color, including six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, among them civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). These results demonstrate why Congress should join the ACLU in calling for a moratorium on law enforcement use of face surveillance.

To conduct our test, we used the exact same facial recognition system that Amazon offers to the public, which anyone could use to scan for matches between images of faces. And running the entire test cost us $12.33 — less than a large pizza.

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Using Rekognition, we built a face database and search tool using 25,000 publicly available arrest photos. Then we searched that database against public photos of every current member of the House and Senate. We used the default match settings that Amazon sets for Rekognition.


Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) was falsely identified by Amazon Rekognition as someone who had been arrested for a crime. 

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In a recent letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the Congressional Black Caucus expressed concern about the "profound negative unintended consequences" face surveillance could have for Black people, undocumented immigrants, and protesters. Our results validate this concern: Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition's false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress.


People of color were disproportionately falsely matched in our test.

If law enforcement is using Amazon Rekognition, it's not hard to imagine a police officer getting a "match" indicating that a person has a previous concealed-weapon arrest, biasing the officer before an encounter even begins. Or an individual getting a knock on the door from law enforcement, and being questioned or having their home searched, based on a false identification.

An identification — whether accurate or not — could cost people their freedom or even their lives. People of color are already disproportionately harmed by police practices, and it's easy to see how Rekognition could exacerbate that. A recent incident in San Francisco provides a disturbing illustration of that risk. Police stopped a car, handcuffed an elderly Black woman and forced her to kneel at gunpoint — all because an automatic license plate reader improperly identified her car as a stolen vehicle.

Matching people against arrest photos is not a hypothetical exercise. Amazon is aggressively marketing its face surveillance technology to police, boasting that its service can identify up to 100 faces in a single image, track people in real time through surveillance cameras, and scan footage from body cameras. A sheriff's department in Oregon has already started using Amazon Rekognition to compare people's faces against a mugshot database, without any public debate.

Face surveillance also threatens to chill First Amendment-protected activity like engaging in protest or practicing religion, and it can be used to subject immigrants to further abuse from the government.

These dangers are why Amazon employees, shareholders, a coalition of nearly 70 civil rights groups, over 400 members of the academic community, and more than 150,000 members of the public have already spoken up to demand that Amazon stop providing face surveillance to the government.

Congress must take these threats seriously, hit the brakes, and enact a moratorium on law enforcement use of face recognition. This technology shouldn't be used until the harms are fully considered and all necessary steps are taken to prevent them from harming vulnerable communities.
List of Members of Congress Falsely Matched With Arrest PhotosSenate

• John Isakson (R-Georgia)
• Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts)
• Pat Roberts (R-Kansas)

House

• Sanford Bishop (D-Georgia)
• George Butterfield (D-North Carolina)
• Lacy Clay (D-Missouri)
• Mark DeSaulnier (D-California)
• Adriano Espaillat (D-New York)
• Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona)
• Thomas Garrett (R-Virginia)
• Greg Gianforte (R-Montana)
• Jimmy Gomez (D-California)
• Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona)
• Luis Gutiérrez (D-Illinois)
• Steve Knight (R-California)
• Leonard Lance (R-New Jersey)
• John Lewis (D-Georgia)
• Frank LoBiondo (R-New Jersey)
• David Loebsack (D-Iowa)
• David McKinley (R-West Virginia)
• John Moolenaar (R-Michigan)
• Tom Reed (R-New York)
• Bobby Rush (D-Illinois)
• Norma Torres (D-California)
• Marc Veasey (D-Texas)
• Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio)
• Steve Womack (R-Arkansas)
• Lee Zeldin (R-New York)

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AMAZON PROMISES "UNWAVERING" COMMITMENT TO POLICE, MILITARY CLIENTS USING AI TECHNOLOGY

 

Lee Fang

July 30 2018

 

WHILE SOME SILICON Valley giants grapple with the ethics of offering cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to military and law enforcement agencies with histories of abuse, Amazon, apparently, has no reservations.

When asked about the culture "gap" between Amazon employees — who have protested the sale of facial recognition technology to law enforcement — and the company's "executive level" interests, Teresa Carlson, vice president of the worldwide public sector of Amazon Web Services, was frank. "We are committed to our customer, and we are unwaveringly committed to the U.S. government and the governments we work with around the world," Carlson declared at the Aspen Security Forum on July 20 in Colorado.

Carlson's remarks, largely unreported outside of a mention in a technology trade journal, mark the lengthiest public discussion in recent months of Amazon's role as a technology provider for military and law enforcement, which has been a source of substantial controversy for the company.

Amazon workers recently circulated a letter to chief executive Jeff Bezos protesting the sale of Amazon's facial recognition software, called Rekognition, to law enforcement; the letter cited the Department of Homeland Security's "increasingly inhumane treatment of refugees and immigrants." The American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about the sale of Amazon's technology, charging that Rekognition could allow police to constantly monitor and harass ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Microsoft and Salesforce have similarly faced internal pressure from employees to end work on behalf of DHS, with workers outraged that their companies enable U.S. immigration policies.

"Employees need a voice," said Carlson, regarding the recent criticism. "I can't speak for any other company, but we want to work with our government," she added. "We feel compelled. ... We believe government should have the same capability — our war fighters out there in the field, our civil servants — should have those same capabilities." Carlson acknowledged that "you're always gonna have bad actors," but went on to laud the positive applications of the software.

When asked by New York Times reporter Cecilia Kang if Amazon has "drawn any red lines, any standards, guidelines, on what you will and you will not do in terms of defense work," Carlson demurred.

 

"We have not drawn any lines there," Carlson responded. "We are unwaveringly in support of our law enforcement, defense, and intelligence community." She went on to admit that Amazon often doesn't "know everything they're actually utilizing the tool for," but insisted that the U.S. government should have the most "innovative and cutting-edge tools" available so that it isn't bested by its "adversaries." Carlson raised "ethical-use rights" as a mechanism by which Amazon could reclaim its technology if it were used illegally, though it's not clear how that would impact legal activities, like those undertaken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to which its employees object.

Amazon, known for its web server service and e-commerce business, is quickly moving into the defense and homeland security space, offering an array of machine learning capabilities to the Pentagon and police agencies around the country. The company currently manages a major cloud computing solution for U.S. intelligence agencies, and is bidding on a $10 billion contract to provide similar cloud solutions to the Defense Department.

Leaked emails obtained by The Intercept revealed that Amazon provided "some work loads" on the controversial Project Maven initiative launchedby the Defense Department last year. The contract is the Pentagon's first major effort to integrate Silicon Valley-developed machine learning technology into the military's capabilities. The initiative applies AI technology to help analysts identify images captured by drones on the battlefield by automatically cataloguing people, buildings, and events.

The targeting efforts will be used for Predator and Reaper drones to strike targets in "in the Middle East," according to Defense One. Critics chargethat the use of advanced AI technology in drone warfare will only encourage the practice of "pattern-of-life strikes that target people based not on known activities but on probabilities drawn from long range surveillance footage." President Donald Trump has reportedly increased the pace of drone strikes to four to five times the rate of President Barack Obama, who had increased the drone strike rate to 10 times that of President George W. Bush.

Google won a Project Maven contract but attempted to conceal the company's involvement. It was eventually reported by Gizmodo and The Intercept in March. In response, several employees at Google quit in protest, and thounited snakesnds signed a letter demanding that the company end its ties with the military. Many expressed shock that Google appeared to have violated its old mantra, "Don't be evil," by working with the military, and had misled its own employees when it claimed that any work with the Pentagon would not be used for lethal purposes — a goal explicitly stated by top Air Force brass.

Google has since said that it will not renew its work on Project Maven when the contract expires next year, and it has worked to develop a set of ethical principles for the use of AI technology. The company, however, has not sworn off future defense-related contracts.

Last week, Amazon faced another wave of criticism after a study by the ACLU found that its facial recognition software falsely identified 28 members of Congress, a majority of whom were people of color.

An unnamed Amazon spokesperson told the Verge, united snakes Today, and other publications that the results from the congressional study were a result of poor calibration. The spokesperson said the technology could not be used with a "reasonable level of certainty" with the accuracy threshold set by the ACLU for its experiment.