Amazon.com Inc. is selling its facial recognition system “Rekognition” to the cops, fueling fears of a surveillance state in which omnipresent eyes will always be watching.

The revelation follows a release of documents by the American Civil Liberties Union pertaining to Amazon marketing its software to police.

Amazon’s pitch to law enforcement is that Rekognition can scan individuals or crowds of people in one image and run that image through a database of tens of millions of faces. The image can be taken from a body-cam or an external camera.

The ACLU called the use of such technology a violation of civil liberties and civil rights, an oppressive counterstrike against needed public activism. Amazon said in its marketing materials that the software being used for police surveillance is a “common use case,” saying it can scan “all faces in group photos, crowded events, and public places such as airports.”

A six-month investigation by ACLU shows how Amazon is already helping government agencies in various states to deploy the software.

“Today’s documents show that Amazon worked with the city of Orlando, Florida, and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon to roll out Rekognition,” the ACLU said on its website. “Orlando has since deployed Rekognition to search for people in footage drawn from the city’s video surveillance cameras, according to Amazon.”

A coalition of mostly civil rights groups have signed a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos. The letter lambasts Amazon for stating that it is a people-centered company, saying that selling such invasive technology to police is a contradiction of that ethos. Moreover, such technology is being deployed without any public debate regarding ethics.

“The details about Amazon’s program illustrate the proliferation of cutting-edge technologies deep into American society — often without public vetting or debate” 1/2: https://t.co/MxdFXPurGs

— Nicholas Dawes (@NicDawes) May 22, 2018

“Amazon Rekognition is primed for abuse in the hands of governments,” the letter said in the final paragraph. “This product poses a grave threat to communities, including people of color and immigrants, and to the trust and respect Amazon has worked to build.”

Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties director for the ACLU of California, said that once systems such as this are turned on, it’s hard to undo the damage. “We need to stop supercharged surveillance before it is used to track protesters, target immigrants, and spy on entire neighborhoods,” she said.

Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice, said facial recognition technology has already been shown to discriminate against black people and minorities. “We know that putting this technology into the hands of already brutal and unaccountable law enforcement agencies places both democracy and dissidence at great risk,” he said.

Image:  Sheila Scarborough via flickr