Facial Recognition Matched 28 Members Of Congress With Arrest Mugshots

According to Buzz Feed News (July 26, 2018) the ACLU took Amazon's facial recognition tech—which Amazon is aggressively selling to police—and loaded it with 25,000 mugshots.

Then, they ran photos of members of Congress against the mugshots. Amazon's Facial Recognition Tech Falsely Matched 28 Members Of Congress With Arrest Mugshots.

To conduct its test, the ACLU used the standard facial recognition system Amazon offers at a low cost to law enforcement and the public. The ACLU said it spent only $12.33 to build a database of 25,000 publicly available arrest photos and to run a test that included photos of every current member of the US House and Senate. 

"These results demonstrate why Congress should join the ACLU in calling for a moratorium on law enforcement use of face surveillance," said Jacob Snow, an attorney for ACLU of Northern California.

70 civil rights groups, as well as Amazon employees and shareholders, have expressed concerns that facial recognition software has the potential to track innocent people and misidentify them as having committed a crime.

No police department needs mass-surveillance technology. Yes, we ask our law enforcement officers to protect the communities where they work, and we want them to have the tools needed to do their jobs. However, we should never give a police department the capability to conduct mass-surveillance of the community. Doing so lets them move from conducting police work to acting as a police state; and suddenly you have government employees keeping secret hidden files about you on government computer networks with no consequences for their illegal activity.