From: Peter Asaro <peterasaro@sbcglobal.net> Sent: June 27, 2018 3:40:42 PM UTC To: liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Subject: [liberationtech] Invitation to Sign Open Letter regarding Amazon's Rekognition
(Apologies for Cross-posting)
Invitation to Sign an Open Letter from Academics and Researchers to
Amazon
While Rekognition is not (yet) a military application, it is being
sold to police departments, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
and Amazon provides essential cloud services (with embedded AI features)
also to the
Palantir
company which in turn provides AI services to police departments and
the US military, including an
$879M contract for the US Army's new intelligence IT system.
Amazon's response to these protests has been weak, saying people
shouldn't use its Amazon Rekognition software illegally, but offering no
mechanism for oversight as to how their services are used.
And so we are asking you to sign on to an Open Letter to Amazon
management, calling on them to stop providing their Rekognition system to
governments and law enforcement, to stop providing AI cloud services to
companies that provide such services to police departments and
militaries, including Palantir, and to establish ethical guidelines and
transparency and accountability measures for the AI services that they do
provide.
You can read the full letter and add your signature here:
