Amazon met with ICE officials over facial-recognition system that could identify immigrants

Amazon.com Pitching its face-recognition system in the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials as a way to the agency to target or identify immigrants, a move that could shove the tech giant further into a growing debate over the industry's work with the government .

The June meeting in Silicon Valley has been revealed in the United States of America. Project on Government Oversight; the emails were published first in the Daily Beast. They show that officials from ICE and Amazon Web Services discuss the issue of counter-scanning platform to assist with homeland security investigations.

An Amazon Web Services official who specializes in federal sales contracts, and whose name was redacted in the emails, wrote that the conversation involved "predictive analytics" and "Rekognition Video tagging / analysis" that could possibly allow ICE to identify people's faces from afar – a type of technology immigration officials.

"We are ready and willing to support the vital (Homeland Security Investigations) mission," the official Amazon wrote.

Amazon Web Services, the division of the company that develops and sells cloud computing, said in a statement, "We participated with a number of other technology companies in technology 'boot camps' sponsored by McKinsey Company, including Rekognition, "Amazon said it", with whom we have been interested in learning more about how to use our services. "(Amazon's founder, Jeffrey P Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

ICE, which does not currently have a contract with Amazon, said in its statement that its homeland security investigations have a role in the recognition of fraudulent activities, identity theft and child exploitation crimes.

ICE spokesperson Matthew Bourke said that the agency could not say how often it had met with Amazon, but he added that "industry outreach and building relationships with potential contractors is fairly standard within government acquisition." "may use various investigative techniques and techniques to achieve its mission to protect the United States from cross-border crimes and illegal immigration.

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Amazon has marketed the technology to police departments, and it is deployed for officers in Oregon and Florida. Civil rights and privacy advocates worry that the expansion technology could have a chilling effect on public protests or embolden government and police efforts to supercharge mass surveillance.

The June meeting could inspire new unrest among Amazon workers who could have used the $ 850 billion company that could be used for government surveillance. Hundreds of anonymous Amazon workers wrote Bezos a letter in June, roughly one week after the meeting, saying, "We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to the tools that violate human rights."

It will also further fuel Silicon Valley culture clash between corporate leaders pursuing lucrative government contracts and the company's rank-and-file workers, many of whom have outraged over ICE's separation of migrant parents and children at the Mexican border.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) Said in a statement Tuesday that he was "troubled" that ICE had not warned him of the meeting, adding that without clear safeguards, the technology "has the potential for dangerous misuse by the government."

Americans from abuse, "he said.

Microsoft, a giant building technology facial-recognition tools that compete with Amazon, can be part of a major ICE contract. Google has also faced a number of internal resistance to its contributions to the Maven Project, a Defense Department initiative that would allow an artificial intelligence to identify objects in battlefield drone video.

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The Pentagon's $ 10 billion cloud-computing contract, known as JEDI, for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. The company also operates a private cloud service for top-secret intelligence used by the CIA. The agency's deputy director for science and technology, Dawn Meyerriecks, characterized the Amazon-CIA bond during a panel Washington as a "closer partnership than ever before."

Amazon spent $ 3.63 million between July 1 and September 30 to lobby the U.S. government on a range of issues, including "facial recognition technology," according to federal ethics documents published this week.

Bezos has donated money to fund college scholarships for undocumented immigrant students, but it has also been supported by the industry's contributions to national security efforts and other government work.

"If big tech companies are going to turn their backs on the Department of Defense, we are in big trouble," said Bezos at a Wired magazine event last week. were I like them, I want them all, but this is a great country, and they need to be defended. "

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ICE has portrayed facial recognition and other artificial-intelligence software as potentially powerful tools in its pursuit of ways to clamp down on illegal immigration. ICE officials told me last year they wanted an "extreme vetting" system that could automatically mine the social media of foreigners to assess whether they could commit criminal or terrorist acts.

Amazon unveiled Rekognition in 2016 as a way to analyze images and detect faces on a massive scale. Its first marketing is focused on the softer side of the technology, including its ability to look at a dog's face and recognize it as a golden retriever, for instance.

But the technology's growing role in the business of criminal justice and investigating has increased their scrutiny from civil rights groups. The technology has also been found to be less precise among people of color, sparking fears of misidentification.

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Rekognition, for instance, incorrectly matched the faces of 28 members of the United States Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Amazon has said the test's methodology has been flawed.

Some in the tech industry has a number of laws and regulations, and only a few states govern the technology's appropriate use. Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote a blog post in July that said it was "a misdemeanor" and that it could "misuse and abuse" by private companies and public authorities alike.

"An anonymous Amazon employee wrote last week." "We can sell dangerous surveillance systems to police or we can stand up for what's right. We can not do both. "

Tony Romm contributed to this report.