29 NOV

Congress: Amazon didn’t give “sufficient answers” about facial recognition

Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, in May 2018.

Seven members of the House of Representatives and one United States senator have now sent a second letter to Amazon’s CEO, asking for more clarification about the company’s use of facial-recognition technology.

Although two House members in the group sent a similar letter to CEO Jeff Bezos back in July, the larger group now says that Amazon “failed to provide sufficient answers” about its commercial facial-recognition program, known as Rekognition. Prior to the July letter, the American Civil Liberties Union used the service in a demonstration of its inadequacy—the service falsely matched 28 members of Congress with mugshots.

The new letter, issued on Thursday, was signed by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), among others. The document states that the legislators have “serious concerns that this type of product has significant accuracy issues, places disproportionate burdens on communities of color, and could stifle Americans’ willingness to exercise their First Amendment rights in public.”

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Post Author: martin

Martin is an enthusiastic programmer, a webdeveloper and a young entrepreneur. He is intereted into computers for a long time. In the age of 10 he has programmed his first website and since then he has been working on web technologies until now. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of BriefNews.eu and PCHealthBoost.info Online Magazines. His colleagues appreciate him as a passionate workhorse, a fan of new technologies, an eternal optimist and a dreamer, but especially the soul of the team for whom he can do anything in the world.