Facial recognition has the potential to introduce continuous, mass surveillance throughout the United States. Vulnerable communities — including Black people, religious minorities, and other communities of color — are especially likely to be harmed by facial recognition’s deployment. Amazon is perhaps one of the most infamous participants in facial recognition software development. But on Wednesday, Amazon shareholders failed to pass two resolutions concerning the company’s facial recognition software, Rekognition. Although the proposals were non-binding — meaning Amazon could have rejected the vote’s results — passing them would have still sent a message. The first proposal was about stopping sales of Rekognition to the government, and the second demanded an independent review of the program’s civil and human rights impacts. Unfortunately, the vote doesn’t come as a huge surprise. As noted by TechCrunch , CEO Jeff Bezos retains 12 percent of the company’s stock. He also has the...

California law enforcement will not be using Microsoft’s facial recognition technology after the company turned down sales over concerns of human rights violations, according to Reuters. California law enforcement wanted to install Microsoft’s system into cars and body cameras. The company denied the request, citing that the facial recognition tools had only been fed images of white males, which would lead to disproportionate questioning of women and minorities. Microsoft has been vocal about fears on how facial recognition AI can be used to over-police underrepresented groups. In December, Microsoft President Brad Smith called for more government regulation on facial recognition technologies during a speech. In January, the ACLU and a list of other civil rights groups called for big tech companies to stop selling facial recognition technology to governments. Amazon later joined Microsoft in the push for more legislation. It is unclear which California city wanted to use Microsoft’s...