💡 About face

Several tech companies have stopped selling facial recognition to the police. Here is what we should ask now.

First IBM announced that it would stop selling facial recognition technologies. Earlier this week Arvind Krishna, the boss, said:

IBM firmly opposes and will not condone the uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms.

We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.

Then Amazon, likely the market leader, followed by saying it would enforce a year-long moratorium on the use of its platform, Rekognition by the US police forces:

We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a ban on police use of their surveillance technologies until federal regulation is in place.

Image credit: Buolamwini & Gebru

Some large technology companies hav…