by Aaron Kesel, Activist Post:

Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, whom this writer has previously referred to as emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, wants to write his own laws on facial recognition technology amid a release of a slew of new products that will each cause various privacy concerns.

Earlier this year, Amazon published its draft guidelines that it feels that U.S. lawmakers should adopt for facial recognition technology.

In those guidelines Amazon Vice President of Global Public Policy Michael Punke stated:

• Facial recognition should always be used in accordance with the law, including laws that protect civil rights.


• When facial recognition technology is used in law enforcement, human review is a necessary component to ensure that the use of a prediction to make a decision does not violate civil rights.


• When facial recognition technology is used by law enforcement for identification, or in a way that could threaten civil liberties, a 99% confidence score threshold is recommended.


• Law enforcement agencies should be transparent in how they use facial recognition technology.


• There should be notice when video surveillance and facial recognition technology are used together in public or commercial settings.

Clearly they aren’t getting it that it’s the technology itself that needs to be thrown into a black hole or the sun, your choice.

Bezos hopes that lawmakers will adopt much of this draft legislation given that his company has recently invested in buying Ring. Amazon has since turned Ring into a domestic surveillance web, being used by police to monitor neighborhoods. Amazon’s partnership with police has raised eyebrows all over from Congress to activists and privacy rights organizations like the EFF, and ACLU.

The comments come after Bezos told reporters following Amazon’s annual Alexa gadget event in Seattle on Wednesday, Vox reported.

“Our public policy team is actually working on facial recognition regulations; it makes a lot of sense to regulate that,” Bezos said in response to a reporter’s question.

“It’s a perfect example of something that has really positive uses, so you don’t want to put the brakes on it,” Bezos added. “But, at the same time, there’s also potential for abuses of that kind of technology, so you do want regulations. It’s a classic dual-use kind of technology.”

Activist Post Recommended Book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Bezos didn’t expand on what he thinks that those “positive uses” are. But emperor Palpatine has previously said he wants to build a city on the moon, complete with robots to deliver Amazon products to moon colonists who decide to live on Bezo-topia. He has also fully rolled out Ring, a neighborhood surveillance network that works with police and encourages citizens to be wary of their neighbors.

So, to say the least, Bezos has an interesting view of our future that conflicts with what the rest of us want. But lawmakers seem to have halted his dream to run a police state and our subsequent nightmare. Earlier this year, legislators called for putting a “time out” on facial recognition technology until regulations are in place. So far, Congress has held two oversight hearings on the topic and there are at least four bills in the works to limit the technology.

On top of that, some cities in the U.S. have outright banned the biometric technology like San Francisco, Somerville, Massachusetts, and Oakland, California, as Activist Post reported.

The rapid growth of this technology has triggered a much-needed debate to slow down the roll out. Activists, politicians, academics and even police forces all over the world are expressing serious concerns over the impact facial recognition could have on our society.

This may be why Amazon has decided to attempt to draft facial recognition laws, as the company has a huge investment in the technology with Ring.

The American Civil Liberties Union responded and said it was a “welcome sign” that Amazon recognizes the dangers of facial recognition, but said the tech giant needs to quit handing its technology Ring and Facial Rekognition out to police if it truly cares about privacy.

“If Amazon is really interested in preventing these dangers, the first thing it should do is stop pushing surveillance tools into our communities without regard for the impact,” the ACLU’s senior legislative counsel, Neema Singh Guliani, said. “Lawmakers should be skeptical of weak industry proposals that sacrifice individuals rights in the interest of profit.”

Even Amazon employees who are against the company selling facial recognition technology to the government have protested the company’s decision. Over 20 groups of shareholders have sent several letters to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos urging him to stop selling the company’s face recognition software to law enforcement.

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