Amazon employees call for a cut to ICE ties

EMPLOYEES at Amazon.com are calling on Chief Executive Jeff Bezos to end the sale of facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies and to discontinue partnerships with firms that work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In a letter, a group of Amazon workers said they are also trou- bled by a recent report from the ACLU, revealing the company’s sale and marketing of Rekognition, its facial recognition technology, to police departments and government agencies. Workers at Amazon are protesting the recently halted Trump administration policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border.

“We don’t have to wait to find out how these technologies will be used. We already know that in the midst of historic mil i t a r i z a t i o n o f p o l i c e, renewed targeting of Black activists, and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human rights abuses – this will be another powerful tool for the surveillance state, and ultimately serve to harm the most marginalized,” the letter states.

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

According to the ACLU report, Amazon had been offering surveillance tech and consulting services to law enforcement agencies for only a fistful of dollars. The report prompted a coalition of civil rights groups to demand that Amazon “stop powering a government surveillance infrastructure”. And the details of Amazon’s program highlighted the spread of powerful technologies into American life, often without public input or debate.

Amazon employees are also calling for the company to end its cloud hosting services with Palantir, the Silicon Valley data analysis firm co-founded by billionaire investor and Facebook board member Peter Thiel.