Orlando police confirmed they are testing Amazon’s real-time facial recognition on the streets.
The fact that the facial recognition technology was active in public was not willingly shared by the police service. At first, the police department denied and said the trial was confined to its headquarters as the existing pilot was limited to basic testing, and no members of the public were entered for search.
However, after the news was announced by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), police chief John Mina officially admitted at a press conference that three of the city’s IRIS cameras downtown were also equipped with the software. He claims that despite Rekognition’s presence in public cameras, the system can still only track the seven OPD officers who volunteered to test the system. Mina admitted that they could use the system to track persons of interest in the future, but they are “a long way from that.”
Mina continued that they are testing new equipment all the time: new guns, new vests, new shields, new gadgets for police cars, and it doesn’t mean that they are going to go with that particular product. They are only testing whether it works.”
However, there are many concerns about privacy, and how and where information is stored, captured and used. A few civil liberties groups have specific concerns about the right to protest freely and peacefully, without the images of those protesting being captured and the individuals being identified by law.
According to Digital Journal.