<story><title>A one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition</title><url>https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/we-are-implementing-a-one-year-moratorium-on-police-use-of-rekognition</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hnmullany</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a big ACLU supporter, but thought this was poorly done. They never released either the database or the code for this testing, and had configured the recognition level against Amazon&amp;#x27;s recommendations.</text></item><item><author>chishaku</author><text>The ACLU is doing a lot of great work to hold government accountable when it comes to facial recognition tech.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-fbi-face-recognition-secrecy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-fbi-face...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-dhs-face-recognition-secrecy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-dhs-face...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would be great to see Amazon&amp;#x27;s support.&lt;p&gt;The ACLU ran an experiment with Rekognition and these are their findings:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Using Rekognition, we built a face database and search tool using 25,000 publicly available arrest photos. Then we searched that database against public photos of every current member of the House and Senate. We used the default match settings that Amazon sets for Rekognition.&lt;p&gt;... the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime.&lt;p&gt;... Academic research [0] has also already shown that face recognition is less accurate for darker-skinned faces and women. Our results validate this concern: Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition’s false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;privacy-technology&amp;#x2F;surveillance-technologies&amp;#x2F;amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;privacy-technology&amp;#x2F;surveillance-te...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;proceedings.mlr.press&amp;#x2F;v81&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;proceedings.mlr.press&amp;#x2F;v81&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gregsadetsky</author><text>In the ACLU&amp;#x27;s posts, they say that they used the &amp;quot;default match settings&amp;quot;. In their response [0] to Amazon&amp;#x27;s response, the ACLU links to a guide published by Amazon [1] intended to &amp;quot;Identify Persons of Interest for Law Enforcement&amp;quot; that does use `searchFaceRequest?.faceMatchThreshold = 0.85;` (this is still the case today).&lt;p&gt;Fast Company [2] writes about this as well: &amp;quot;The ACLU in both tests used an 80% match confidence threshold, which is Amazon’s default setting, but Amazon says it encourages law enforcement to use a 99% threshold for spotting a match.&amp;quot; That bit of the article links to the CompareFaces API documentation [3] which (still) states &amp;quot;By default, only faces with a similarity score of greater than or equal to 80% are returned in the response&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Have you seen&amp;#x2F;read something else about this?&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-comment-new-amazon-statement-responding-face-recognition-technology-test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-comment-new-amazon-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;machine-learning&amp;#x2F;using-amazon-rekognition-to-identify-persons-of-interest-for-law-enforcement&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;machine-learning&amp;#x2F;using-amazon-r...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&amp;#x2F;90389905&amp;#x2F;aclu-amazon-face-recognition-falsely-matched-ca-lawmakers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&amp;#x2F;90389905&amp;#x2F;aclu-amazon-face-recogn...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;rekognition&amp;#x2F;latest&amp;#x2F;dg&amp;#x2F;API_CompareFaces.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;rekognition&amp;#x2F;latest&amp;#x2F;dg&amp;#x2F;API_Compar...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>A one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition</title><url>https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/we-are-implementing-a-one-year-moratorium-on-police-use-of-rekognition</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hnmullany</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a big ACLU supporter, but thought this was poorly done. They never released either the database or the code for this testing, and had configured the recognition level against Amazon&amp;#x27;s recommendations.</text></item><item><author>chishaku</author><text>The ACLU is doing a lot of great work to hold government accountable when it comes to facial recognition tech.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-fbi-face-recognition-secrecy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-fbi-face...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-dhs-face-recognition-secrecy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;press-releases&amp;#x2F;aclu-challenges-dhs-face...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would be great to see Amazon&amp;#x27;s support.&lt;p&gt;The ACLU ran an experiment with Rekognition and these are their findings:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Using Rekognition, we built a face database and search tool using 25,000 publicly available arrest photos. Then we searched that database against public photos of every current member of the House and Senate. We used the default match settings that Amazon sets for Rekognition.&lt;p&gt;... the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime.&lt;p&gt;... Academic research [0] has also already shown that face recognition is less accurate for darker-skinned faces and women. Our results validate this concern: Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition’s false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;privacy-technology&amp;#x2F;surveillance-technologies&amp;#x2F;amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.aclu.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;privacy-technology&amp;#x2F;surveillance-te...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;proceedings.mlr.press&amp;#x2F;v81&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;proceedings.mlr.press&amp;#x2F;v81&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a&amp;#x2F;buolamwini18a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>HaloZero</author><text>I agree. I wish the ACLU would re-run the results at 99%. But Amazon&amp;#x27;s example post about law enforcement has it set to 85%.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this 99% thing is communicated properly at Amazon if it&amp;#x27;s getting through blog posts like this.&lt;p&gt;So I think a valid criticism is that we need to make sure that it&amp;#x27;s higher.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;machine-learning&amp;#x2F;using-amazon-rekognition-to-identify-persons-of-interest-for-law-enforcement&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;machine-learning&amp;#x2F;using-amazon-r...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>