Microsoft, Amazon Announce Restrictions on Facial Recognition Sales to Police Departments

On its face, June 8–12 was a bad week to be a facial recognition algorithm. IBM said Monday that it's stopping all facial recognition work. On Wednesday,Amazon placed a one-year moratorium on selling its facial recognition tool, Rekognition, to law enforcement.

Yesterday,Microsoft President Brad Smith told the WaPo that his company won't sell facial recognition to police "until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology." And the European Data Protection Board determined that the operations of Clearview AI, the uber-controversial facial recognition startup, are likely illegal in the EU.

But looks can be deceiving

Facial recognition has few legal or regulatory guardrails at a national level in the U.S. Other vendors can step in and pitch tools to cities and law enforcement agencies that had previously been using Rekognition. Tech companies could sell the software to other clients. For those reasons, activists are lobbying for national controls (or bans) on facial recognition.

Bottom line: Congress will determine the future of facial recognition in the U.S.