In a letter posted to an internal company Wiki page and later obtained by The Hill, a group of Amazon employees have asked company executives to discontinue its sale of the company’s Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies. They also asked the company to stop providing services to a company called Palantir — a data analytics concern that provides “mission critical software” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in support of their detention and deportation efforts.
Amazon Employees Join ACLU, Investors in Protest of Amazon’s Sale of Tech to Police
A group of Amazon employees have asked company executives to discontinue its sale of the company’s Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies.
June 22, 2018
A group of Amazon employees have asked company executives to discontinue its sale of the company’s Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies.
1 min to read
“We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights. As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used,” the document said.
The letter, addressed directly to Amazon CEO Jeff Besos, said. “Along with much of the world we watched in horror recently as U.S. authorities tore children away from their parents … we are deeply concerned that Amazon is implicated, providing infrastructure and services that enable ICE and DHS.”
The employees' action follows closely on the heels of another effort by the ACLU and a group of company investors.
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