Tell Amazon, Microsoft and Google: Don’t sell facial recognition technology to any governments!
Petition to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google:
The potential for any government to misuse facial recognition technology to target women, racial minorities, religious minorities and to chill free speech is too great a cost for any tech company. We demand tech companies immediately cease selling facial recognition technology to any and all governments.
George Orwell warned us about this – but tech companies aren’t listening. Instead, the biggest giants in Silicon Valley are developing facial recognition technologies with disastrous and even deadly consequences.
Tell Amazon, Microsoft, and Google: Don’t sell facial recognition technology to any government.
Facial recognition technology could allow law enforcement to identify anyone showing up to a protest, walking into a place of worship, or even casually going about their day within seconds.
And while we may have the impulse to think “well, I have nothing to hide,” here’s some unsettling news: facial recognition is still dangerously inaccurate at telling women and people of color apart from each other. What results are higher proportions of false-positives for anyone who isn’t a white man.1
Even under the best, well-intentioned political climate, facial recognition technology can be disastrously exploited to persecute women, minorities, or anyone who expresses their political opinion. But guess what: we’re not in the best, well-intentioned political climate. We have Trump in office while investigations continue into whether he colluded with the Russian government during his campaign and obstructed justice by covering it up. Elsewhere around the world, we’re witnessing a troubling rise in authoritarianism.
Now is the exact wrong time to equip any government with faulty technology that allows corrupt politicians to violate privacy rights and unfairly target any demographic minority they decide to scapegoat.
That’s why we’re joining with 90 other civil rights organizations to call on tech companies to stand on the right side of history and stop selling facial recognition technology to any government. Join us: tell Amazon, Microsoft and Google to stop selling facial recognition technology to any government.