Amazon pitched face ID to ICE

Software that agency can use to target migrants raises alarm.

Amazon.com Inc. pitched its facial recognition system in the summer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials as a way for the agency to target or identify immigrants, a move that could shove the tech giant further into a growing debate over the technology industry’s work with the government.

The June meeting in Silicon Valley, revealed in emails as part of a Freedom of Information Act request by the advocacy group Project on Government Oversight, was attended by officials from ICE and Amazon Web Services who talked about implementing the tech giant’s Rekognition face-scanning platform to assist with Homeland Security investigations.

An Amazon Web Service official specializing in federal sales contracts, whose name was redacted in the emails, wrote that the conversation involved “predictive analytics” and “Rekognition Video tagging/analysis” that could enable ICE to identify people’s faces from afar — a technology that immigration officials have voiced interest in for use on the southern border.

“We are ready and willing to support the vital [Homeland Security Investigations] mission,” the Amazon official wrote. Officials from Amazon and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Amazon has marketed the technology to police departments as a way to target and identify criminals, and it is deployed in Oregon and Florida. Civil rights and privacy advocates worry the unproven technology’s expansion could have a chilling effect on public protests or embolden government and police efforts to supercharge mass surveillance.

In June, Amazon workers urged the company to reject work that could be used for government surveillance. Hundreds of anonymous workers wrote Bezos a letter roughly one week after the meeting, saying: “We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights.”