A group of nineteen Amazon shareholders is asking CEO Jeff Bezos to stop selling and marketing pattern-recognition technology to governments after civil liberties groups warned of the potential for abuse. Earlier in 2018, a group of advocacy organisations led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a letterdetailing how Amazon was marketing its Rekognition tool to American law enforcement agencies. In addition to positioning the technology as helping to find suspects by allowing law enforcement to sift through images of faces, Amazon has also said it could be used to pre-emptively identify “persons of interest” and prevent crimes. “While Rekognition may be intended to enhance some law enforcement activities, we are deeply concerned it may ultimately violate civil and human rights”, the letter said. “We are concerned the technology would be used to unfairly and disproportionately target and surveil people of colour, immigrants, and civil society organisations”.

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Independent