Target: Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon
Goal: Support moratorium on deployment of facial recognition technology that incorrectly identifies minorities as criminals.
Amazon’s controversial facial recognition technology mismatched over 100 mugshots with politicians in a study, which brought intensive scrutiny to the technology’s use by police departments. This ForceChange petition called attention to the disproportionately negative impact the tech can have on people of color. Thanks in large part to such unified condemnation, Amazon has taken this potentially dangerous tool of racial profiling out of law enforcement.
The announcement will put at least a one-year ban on the use of facial recognition artificial intelligence by police departments in identifying suspects. Research consistently shows inaccurate matches occur much more often with darker-skinned individuals. A person’s gender and age also seem to affect the accuracy of matches in an abundance of cases.
Sign this petition to applaud a positive step in curbing dystopian, potentially life-damaging technology.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Mr. Bezos,
You announced a one-year moratorium on the implementation of your facial recognition technology by law enforcement and expressed hopes for further Congressional oversight. These actions show that you recognize the danger this technology potentially poses to segments of the American population. An outright stoppage of the technology would have disabled the positive contributions it can offer in human trafficking and missing persons cases.
The moratorium will ensure police have access to this technology at its best while preventing its admitted flaws from putting an innocent person behind bars. The past decade has exposed far too many wrongful convictions. Thank you for not compounding this critical crisis.
Please champion fair and equal treatment for all people.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Amazon
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