Amazon's Ban on Police Use of Its Face Recognition Software

Last Wednesday, June 10, the tech giant Amazon announced that it was banning police agencies from using its face recognition technology Rekognition for a year.  The company gave no official reason for its timing, although it comes less than two weeks after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police force. 

Critics have charged that face recognition technology in general, and Rekognition in particular, has biases when it comes to race or gender.  According to an Associated Press report, in the past Amazon has defended its software against the results of studies by MIT researchers who showed that such software marketed by Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM sometimes made mistakes that put darker-skinned people and women at a disadvantage.  (Microsoft and IBM pledged to address the deficiencies as a result.)  Amazon's product is a fairly minor player in a field that includes products from Japan and Europe as well, which many police agencies use.  Both Amazon and other producers have called for federal regulation of face recognition technology amid concerns of abuse and bias.

Another portion of the human anatomy has been used for identification by police and security agencies for decades, largely without recent controversy:  the unique patterns on fingertips.  But at least so far, fingerprints cannot be sensed remotely, and taking them usually requires the cooperation or at least physical contact with the individual being examined.  With the proper optical technology, one can image a face from a distance of a kilometer or more, leading to the possibility of mass identification in crowds with software that can unambiguously connect faces to persons.

Speaking from an engineering ethics viewpoint, we can identify the parties in this controversy as follows.  There are the firms that make face-recognition technology.  There are the customers and potential customers for such technology, which include but are not limited to law-enforcement agencies, governments in general, and also private firms wanting to make personalized advertisement appeals, for example.  There are regulatory agencies with the potential ability to regulate such technology.  And then there is the general public, a subset of whom are criminals, but the vast majority of whom are just ordinary people trying to live their lives in these lately rather extraordinary times. 

The dangers of misusing face-recognition technology are many, even if it works perfectly.  In China, for example, it is already being used in combination with other techniques to monitor movements and activities of the general public in what we in the U. S. would consider gross violations of privacy.  But even if the agency using the technology was entirely benign (and if there are real human beings running it, it won't be entirely benign), flaws in the technology such as a preferential tendency to make false positive identifications of darker-skinned people will lead to injustices such as innocent persons being identified, and possibly arrested and worse, in connection with wrongs they did not commit. 

So concerns like these are probably behind the motivation that made Amazon ban its Rekognition software from police use for a year.  Such concerns comprise at least one reason that face-recognition firms have called for federal regulation of the technology as well.

However, it does seem rather perverse for a company to defend a product they made for police departments, only to turn around and take it away from them for a year.  And here I wish to tread lightly, because in today's "cancel culture," anything you say can be used against you, as the police used to say (and maybe still say, for all I know).  Only you used to have to be formally charged with a crime for that to be the case, but no longer.  Anyway, here goes.

The publicity surrounding George Floyd's death has led to both intense outrage expressed in print, in words, and in massive demonstrations, as well as to criminal acts such as looting and rioting.  Understandably, a lot of the hostility inspired by Floyd's death has been directed against law enforcement agencies ranging from local police organizations up to and including the federal government.  Recently, some have called for "defunding" police forces, the interpretation of which varies, but at a minimum means a punishing cut in financial support.

Order is a fundamental need for any functioning society.  It is not the ultimate good of society, which lies elsewhere, but it is needed as much as food and water.  Because there are always a few people who will not follow the rules simply because someone in authority tells them to, most functioning societies of any size have law-enforcement agencies. 

The modern concept of law includes the principle that it applies equally to everybody.  Sometimes the police fall short in trying to achieve that ideal, and certain groups that include minorities receive unfair treatment.  Every reasonable means should be used to try to remedy such wrongs, and to get closer to the ideal of equal treatment under the law. 

But to penalize entire organizations for the wrong acts of a few of their members is to erode the very thing we are trying to achieve, namely, equal treatment under the law.  A crippled (or, perish the thought, abolished) police force will lead to increased disorder, and a reaction that may well institute a much harsher order than any of us want. 

Speaking specifically of Amazon and Rekognition, if the software really didn't work that well, Amazon should never have sold it to the police in the first place.  Taking it away for a year looks suspiciously like the time I took away my 10-year-old nephew's toys for a day to punish him for not minding his aunt and uncle.  And one can certainly question the right of a private company to punish police departments, which are under the authority of those governmental divisions that control them, not Amazon. 

Sources:  The Associated Press article about Amazon's banning Rekognition from police use appeared in numerous news outlets, including the Tampa Bay Times on June 12 at https://www.tampabay.com/news/2020/06/10/amazon-bans-police-use-of-its-face-recognition-for-a-year/.  The argument about the rule of law was inspired by an interview I heard with Princeton professor Robert P. George on the Sheila Liaugminas Relevant Radio network show "A Closer Look."

Cops and Cameras

When Michael Brown was shot and killed a little after noon on August 9 in Ferguson, Missouri by police officer Darren Wilson, several eyewitnesses saw what happened.  Autopsy results have been released that reveal Brown was shot six times.  Word that Brown was unarmed at the time spread fast and for several days, Ferguson was the scene of angry protests by day and unrest by night, to which police responded with tear gas and curfews.  On August 18, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon called in the state's national guard troops, which were withdrawn after three days of increasing calm.  But tensions are still high, and depending on who you ask, you will hear either that Officer Wilson was defending himself against a potentially deadly physical assault by Brown, or that Brown was guilty of nothing more than being black and walking down the street when an out-of-control white cop killed him.

Would a body-mounted video camera on Wilson's chest have made this situation any better?  More generally, should cops carry body-mounted video cameras and use them any time they're dealing with the public?

Ironically, the Ferguson police department had reportedly bought some body-worn cameras, but had not yet deployed them at the time of the shooting.  For police, using a body-mounted camera is not just a simple matter of strapping one more piece of gear onto your shirt.  Some states have laws about recording video without a private person's permission.  And video cameras generate beaucoup quantities of data that have to be dealt with somehow, although various services offer cloud-based solutions to this particular problem.  Finally, the cameras do cost something, but current prices average in the $350 range, about what a service revolver costs.  And unlike revolvers, the price-performance ratio of video cameras continues to fall, which is why they're showing up in more and more places.

The price of video recording has been falling ever since May 22, 1958, when the first color video recording of a live event was made.   On that day, President Eisenhower was scheduled to make a brief address at the new NBC color television studios in Washington, DC.  RCA president David Sarnoff, ever alert to the potential for making technical history, arranged for the event to be recorded by the network's new color video recording system.  The signals were transmitted over the NBC network to Burbank, California, where an experimental magnetic-tape video recorder captured the half-hour ceremony.  Fifty-six years later, what it took a roomful of equipment and dozens of engineers to do then can now be done by one little box strapped to an officer's chest.  But does the fact that we can do such a thing mean that we must do it?

Several news reports have cited the experience of the police force in Rialto, California, where all police officers have been wearing pager-size body cameras for more than a year.  According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, in the year since the cameras were deployed, the use of force by officers went down 60% and complaints by citizens about police misbehavior declined 88%. 

One possible cause for these remarkable improvements is what might be termed the video-placebo effect.  Back in the days when video equipment was relatively expensive, retail stores often bought cheap imitation cameras that looked like real ones but were just dummies—empty boxes.  But the sight of them deterred crime about as well as real ones did.  Simply publicizing the fact that your officers all wear cameras will change the psychology of both the officers and the people they deal with, even if the video evidence isn't used. 

There is, of course, the opposite effect to consider.  Sometimes the presence of cameras creates trouble where it wouldn't otherwise exist.  Most people are familiar with the fact that protesters are attracted to news cameras like flies to honey.  But that sort of thing happens only when publicity is the main goal.  For true criminals, publicity is the last thing they want.  So it is likely that both citizens and cops will act better if body-mounted cameras are used.

The wide availability of video recordings of police actions can tempt users to give in to a concept summarized by the phrase "the camera cannot lie."  While it is true that the camera cannot lie, it can't tell the truth, either.  Truth is a property of the immaterial things called propositions, and hardware and photographs aren't propositions.  They can provide evidence for the truth of propositions, but the evidence must be evaluated and interpreted by fallible human beings.  So if body cameras become as standard a piece of police gear as a badge, lawyers and others concerned with the validity of evidence need to remember the idea that video evidence is like any other kind of evidence, and there's nothing magical or automatically dispute-resolving about it.

Sure, eyewitness accounts of Michael Brown's shooting differed.  That is the nature of eyewitness accounts.  But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that if only Officer Williams had used a body-mounted camera, that everyone could have just watched the video and gone away in total agreement as to what happened and why.  Cameras are helpful in finding out the facts—no doubt about that.  I'm glad that engineering progress has made something that used to be affordable only by million-dollar organizations cheap enough to benefit law enforcement personnel all over the world. 

But like any other type of evidence, video can be misused.  And the procedures for selecting and making such recordings available to both prosecution and defense need to be worked out so that justice is truly served by this new technology.

Sources:  I have consulted reports on the Michael Brown shooting carried by NBC News at http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/michael-brown-shooting-why-ferguson-police-never-filed-incident-report-n186431, and reports on law-enforcement video cameras carried by Mother Jones at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/chest-and-dash-cams-ferguson-police-abuse and the Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/articles/what-happens-when-police-officers-wear-body-cameras-1408320244.  A description of the unrest following the incident was carried by the Daily Telegraph (UK) at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11052845/Michael-Brown-What-the-Ferguson-riots-tell-us-about-race-in-America-today.html

I also referred to the Wikipedia articles on "Shooting of Michael Brown."  For nerds interested in the world's oldest color videorecording, it is viewable at http://www.veoh.com/watch/v191020606nr3MbJG, and a description of how it was recovered from old tapes and restored is at http://www.quadvideotapegroup.com/restoring-the-earliest-known-color-quad-tape-the-dedication-of-wrc-tvnbc-washington-dc/.

Note Regarding Ads:  A few weeks ago, I noted that I was going to experiment with monetization on this blog.  After going through the application process, it was approved, and this morning (Monday 8/25) ads will begin to appear below the latest blog.  I have no control over which ad Google chooses to place in this space.  I am also prohibited from clicking on the ad to see what it might be about, a prohibition I have already violated once out of shock, more or less. (Maybe they will change the ad eventually, but the one I saw this morning showed a gal in a short white dress.  It would not be my first choice for an ad, shall we say.)  So the whole venture of experimenting with ads may come to an abrupt conclusion shortly.  Stay tuned, please, and in the meantime I will investigate the possibility of exercising some control over what sort of ads appear in this space.  But it may be a choice of simply any ad they pick, or no ads at all.