{"id":34553,"date":"2018-05-25T11:10:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T16:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34553"},"modified":"2018-05-25T11:10:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T16:10:55","slug":"congressional-democrats-demand-answers-about-amazons-facial-recognition-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34553","title":{"rendered":"Congressional Democrats Demand Answers About Amazon’s Facial Recognition Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo illustration: Getty Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DEMAND ANSWERS ABOUT AMAZON\u2019S FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY<\/a><\/h3>\n
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REPS. KEITH ELLISON,<\/u> D-Minn., and Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., sent a letter<\/a> to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Friday morning, demanding answers about how the tech giant\u2019s facial recognition technology is being used by law enforcement agencies around the country.<\/p>\n

The letter, provided to The Intercept ahead of its public release, lists a total of 12 requests for information regarding Amazon\u2019s facial recognition service, branded as \u201cRekognition,\u201d including the names of any law enforcement or government agencies that use the system and data on how the service could enable, or itself engage in, discrimination, including racial and gender bias.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe disproportionally high arrest rates for members of the black community make the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement problematic,\u201d the letter reads, \u201cbecause it could serve to reinforce this trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to an Ellison aide, the letter is an attempt to enact at least a baseline level of congressional oversight for the tech giant \u2014 an attempt that comes less than two months after congressional hearings that tried to do the same for Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ellison Cleaver Letter to Jeff Bezos\u00a0<\/span>3 pages<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Amazon came under fire earlier this week after the American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates,\u00a0as well as 35 other civil liberties organizations, released a public letter<\/a> expressing concerns about how Amazon markets its technology to law enforcement agencies. The ACLU letter coincided with the release of a trove of documents<\/a>, which the organization obtained through public records requests and after a six-month investigation, that shed light on the company\u2019s relationship and correspondence with law enforcement agencies in Oregon and Florida.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo illustration: Getty Images CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DEMAND ANSWERS ABOUT AMAZON\u2019S FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY REPS. KEITH ELLISON, D-Minn., and Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Friday morning, demanding answers about how the tech giant\u2019s facial recognition technology is being used by law enforcement agencies around the country. The letter, provided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[977,20246,15811,20245,5570,765,5567,1796],"class_list":["post-34553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-amazon","tag-facial-recognition-technology","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-maha-ahmed","tag-mass-surveillance","tag-surveillance","tag-the-intercept","tag-us-congress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34554,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34553\/revisions\/34554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}