May 27, 2019
Amazon defeated Rekognition revolt by a large margin
An attempted shareholder revolt over Amazon's sale of facial recognition technology to the police mustered less than 3% of votes cast at the firm's annual general meeting. The tech firm had said it was aware of civil rights concerns but had not received any reports of law enforcement clients misusing its Rekognition tool. For its part, Amazon has said that it should be up to lawmakers rather than individual companies to decide what restrictions should be put in place. The proposal to ban governments from making use of Rekognition garnered close to 8.3 million votes, but that figure was dwarfed by the 327 million votes placed in opposition. A second vote was also held, calling on Amazon to commission an independent study into the risks posed to the general public's privacy rights and to specifically address concerns that Rekognition could lead to the disproportionate surveillance of people of colour, immigrants and activists.
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