(Apologies for Cross-posting)
Invitation to Sign an Open Letter from Academics and Researchers to Amazon
Amazon
workers
have come out against Rekognition, an AI-driven face recognition
technology offered through Amazon's AWS cloud service. This type of
low-cost face recognition technology
threatens
to make every individual identifiable in any private or public space
with cameras, and opens up a host of severe threats to civil
liberties and human rights. The workers have been
joined
by Amazon shareholders, and
a
coalition of over 70 civil rights and human rights groups.
While Rekognition is not (yet) a military application, it is being
sold to police departments, and US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and Amazon provides essential cloud services (with
embedded AI features) also to the
Palantir company which
in turn provides AI services to police departments and the US
military, including an
$879M
contract for the US Army's new intelligence IT system.
Amazon's
response to these protests has been weak, saying people shouldn't use
its Amazon Rekognition software illegally, but offering no mechanism
for oversight as to how their services are used.
And so we are asking you to sign on to an Open Letter to Amazon
management, calling on them to stop providing their Rekognition
system to governments and law enforcement, to stop providing AI cloud
services to companies that provide such services to police
departments and militaries, including Palantir, and to establish
ethical guidelines and transparency and accountability measures for
the AI services that they do provide.
You can read the full letter and add your signature here:
https://www.icrac.net/open-letter-to-amazon-against-police-and-government-use-of-rekognition/
Sincerely,
Peter Asaro, Kelly Gates, Woodrow Hartzog, Lilly Irani, Evan
Selinger, and Lucy Suchman
__
Peter M. Asaro, PhD | THE NEW SCHOOL
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
DIRECTOR OF THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN MEDIA STUDIES
SCHOOL OF MEDIA STUDIES
THE NEW SCHOOL
79 5th Avenue, Room 1619, New York, NY 10003, USA
p | 212 229 8903 x 3902, asarop@newschool.edu
f | 212 229 5357
The New School
asarop@newschool.edu
www.peterasaro.org
@PeterAsaro
AFFILIATE SCHOLAR
CENTER FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY
STANFORD LAW
SCHOOL
AFFILIATE MEMBER
4TU CENTRE FOR ETHICS AND TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE
___
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