A top Google executive recently sent a shot across the bow of its competitors regarding face surveillance. Kent Walker, the company’s general counsel and senior vice president of global affairs, made it clear that Google — unlike Amazon and Microsoft — will not sell a face recognition product until the technology’s potential for abuse is addressed.
Face recognition, powered by artificial intelligence, could allow the government to supercharge surveillance by automating identification and tracking. Authorities could use it to track protesters, target vulnerable communities (such as immigrants), and create digital policing in communities that are already subject to pervasive police monitoring.
So how are the world’s biggest technology companies responding to this serious threat to privacy, safety and civil rights?
► Google at least appears to be taking the risks seriously with its recent announcement.
► Microsoft, unfortunately, is just talking the talk.
► And Amazon is completely running amok.
All three companies need to take responsibility for uses of their technology. Now, a nationwide coalition of civil rights organizations have demanded that they not sell face surveillance to the government.
What about Social Media?
And then there’s Facebook. Recently a new “game” has been making the rounds asking Facebook users to post a facial picture of themselves from 10 years ago alongside a current facial pic from today. Seems innocent enough, unless you consider the ramifications.
Posting multiple pictures of yourself along with a defined period of time between the pics allows computer systems to compare as well as project how we might look say 10, 20 or even 50 years from now. How valuable will that information (data) be when facial recognition is in use around the world.
Last spring, the American Civil Liberties Union exposed how Amazon is aggressively trying to sell its face surveillance product “Rekognition” to government agencies. The company’s marketing materials read like a user manual for the type of authoritarian surveillance we currently see used in China.
Amazon encourages governments to use its technology to track “persons of interest” and monitor public spaces, comparing everyone to databases with tens of millions of faces. Amazon even suggested pairing face recognition with police body cameras, a move that would transform devices meant for police accountability into roving mass-surveillance devices.
It’s difficult to find any “live action” videos of Rekognition in action but, think back a few years to a TV series called “Person of Interest” where the “Machine” and a group named the Samaritan’s were using this type of technology. The video surveillance depicted in the series is pretty much what Amazon’s surveillance is today.
Police departments want to use facial recognition
The dangers couldn’t be clearer. In an eye-opening test, Amazon’s Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress against a mugshot database. Tellingly, congressional members of color were disproportionately misidentified, including civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. And that test wasn’t based on a hypothetical: Law enforcement has already been using Rekognition to match pictures against arrest-photo databases.
Following these revelations, federal lawmakers spoke up about the risks of face surveillance, and civil rights groups, company shareholders, and hundreds of Amazon employees have called on Amazon to stop selling the technology to governments. But instead of heeding these concerns and taking their product off the table for governments, the company is trying to sell Rekognition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI.
Amazon’s statements and actions provide a stark contrast with Google’s approach. While Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos acknowledged his company’s products might be put to “bad uses,” he said the solution was to wait for society’s eventual “immune response” to take care of the problems.
Google, on the other hand, has charted a distinctly different course with technologies based on artificial intelligence, with CEO Sundar Pichai urging his industry to realize that “it just can’t build it and then fix it.”
What’s Microsoft response?
So where is Microsoft in all this? The company has explicitly recognized the dangers of face surveillance in its statements, but its proposed solution doesn’t add up.
In a blog post, Microsoft President Brad Smith correctly identifies the threats the technology poses to privacy, free speech and other human rights, observing that today’s technology makes a surveillance state possible.
But then, after outlining the threats, Smith proposes relying on inadequate safeguards that have failed in the past with technologies far less dangerous than face surveillance. He expresses excessive faith in notifying people of face surveillance systems — but what good is that in a world where face recognition is so widespread that nobody can opt out?
The choices made now will determine whether the next generation will have to fear being tracked by the government for attending a protest or going to their place of worship — or simply living their lives.
That’s why so many people have been sounding the alarm. Microsoft has heard it, but seems to be in denial. Amazon needs to get its fingers out of its ears and start really listening. Google has heard it and is on the right track — the rest of the industry should follow its lead.
Finally. Social Media is constantly upping its game collecting personal data and information on users. Imagine having all of your personal photos, pictures and memories being filtered through a system like Rekognition. Sounds just a little scary, doesn’t it?
Thanks to multiple sources – The Verge, USA Today, ZD Net, Wired and Technology Today.
