Amazon pitched help to border agency

SEATTLE — Amazon officials earlier this year pitched the company’s contentious facial recognition software to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to documents uncovered by the Project on Government Oversight.

The disclosure comes as Amazon’s product and similar tools built by other companies come under scrutiny from civil-liberties groups, legislators and even some of their own employees because of the technology’s potential for misuse.

The relationship between high-tech firms and the immigration agency has also been a flash point since the outcry over the agency’s enforcement of President Donald Trump’s policy to separate migrant parents and children arriving at the U.S. border. Employee groups at Microsoft, Google and Amazon have all raised concerns about their companies’ relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Defense Department projects.

Built by the Amazon Web Services unit and first released in 2016, Rekognition uses complex algorithms to identify objects, including faces, in still images or video.

The American Civil Liberties Union earlier this year highlighted the use of Amazon’s Rekognition software by a sheriff’s office in Oregon and a police department in Florida, and called on the company to stop selling the tool to government entities. The civil-liberties group later said a test it ran using Amazon’s Rekognition incorrectly identified 28 members of Congress as a match to images in a mug shot database.

The Project on Government Oversight, using a Freedom of Information Act request, uncovered two new documents that show an apparent Amazon sales pitch to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, details of which were published by The Daily Beast.