This week, Amazon has the chance to prove that it can do what it takes by itself

On Wednesday at a meeting of shareholders of Amazon, investors will vote on proposals calling for increased monitoring of facial recognition efforts of the technology giant. But there are a number of caveats.

Two proposals concern facial recognition technology: prohibiting Amazon from selling this technology to government agencies, unless the board of directors decides, following an independent investigation, that it would not be a violation of human rights. the man, according to a document filed by the Security and Exchange Commission. The second calls for an independent investigation and a report on Amazon's facial recognition technology, Rekognition, detailing "the extent to which such technology can threaten, threaten or violate privacy or civil rights, the extent to which these technologies may be marketed and sold to certain users. foreign governments, and the financial or operational risks associated with these problems. "

Amazon's recognition system has been controversial. The workers asked her to end her contracts with the police and many external studies revealed that she had trouble identifying people of color. And yet, an investigation conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union last year revealed that the company had pushed this technology heavily against law enforcement and government agencies, the first of which acknowledged that it had not used the technology. technology recommended by Amazon.

The shareholder proposals mark the growing public concern about this powerful monitoring tool and its deployment in a (mostly) lawless and unregulated space, especially the private sector. one of the most powerful companies in the world. But Wednesday's vote will likely be an essentially procedural call to action, even if the votes are favorable.

Bezos, even after his divorce, still retains a 12% stake in the company. At the beginning of this year, he maintained his position as Amazon's largest shareholder. Bezos has been vocal about his interest in working with government agencies, which makes his vote in favor of these proposals unlikely. At a summit last year, Bezos reportedly defended Amazon's contract with the defense ministry, while suggesting that governments were best equipped to solve widespread national problems. "We want people to be able to pursue things they think are important and we want governments to do important things," Bezos said, Verge reported. He added, "There are things that only governments can do, just because of their size. My stock of Amazon is tiny compared to the resources of the US federal government. "

But the Bezos stock in this case is almost a direct line to resources for the US federal government – if he wanted to support the proposals calling for more oversight and transparency around Amazon's facial recognition technology, a first step crucial for society. If no ethics committee has been put in place, government agencies would not be able to easily capture the technologies of society. According to the first proposal, the technician would need a third party to determine that he would not violate any human or civil right before he could sell it to a government agency.

"This piece of equipment that Amazon has fostered and developed and is really spreading at this point does not seem to us in the best interests of the common good," said Sister Pat Mahoney, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph Amazon. investor who submitted the first proposal, told the New York Times. "Facial recognition everywhere makes everyone live in a police state."

We asked Amazon to comment on these proposals and, if they would get a majority vote, whether the company would honor those calls for action. But as has been mentioned, these votes are not binding and Amazon does not have to consider or adopt them. And even if they did, the proposals would not completely ban face recognition technologies – they call for more surveillance, which is great, but there is still room for technology to be exploited. That is why it is becoming increasingly urgent to effectively prohibit the simultaneous use of all of these laws and federal regulations, to which the Microsoft President and Microsoft's senior legal counsel, Brad Smith, has more meaning than to rely on companies to decide to control themselves.

"We live in a country of laws and the government must play an important role in the regulation of facial recognition technology," Smith wrote in a blog post last year. "In general, it seems more appropriate to ask an elected government to regulate business than to ask unelected businesses to regulate such a government."