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

Why the American Civil Liberties Union is calling out Amazon's facial recognition tool. Amazon pitched its facial-recognition system to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials this summer as a way for the agency to target or identify immigrants, according to newly disclosed emails released this week. The emails, which were first published by the Daily Beast, were revealed as part of a Freedom of Information Act request by the advocacy group Project on Government Oversight, show that officials from ICE and Amazon discussed using the tech giant's controversial Rekognition face-scanning platform to assist with homeland security work. An Amazon Web Services official writes in one of the emails: "We are ready and willing to support the vital (Homeland Security Investigations) mission." Amazon Web Services, which develops and sells cloud computing, told The Washington Post in a statement, "We participated with a number of other technology companies in technology'boot camps' sponsored by McKinsey Company, where a number of technologies were discussed, including Rekognition."