Facial recognition is already in broad use by law enforcement. This past week, the FBI used facial recognition to identify the man who opened fire on the offices of Maryland newspaper Capital Gazette, killing five people.
Amazon’s “Rekognition” tool has been piloted in the Orlando, FL and Washington County, OR police departments, and the company is looking to expand its use. Private companies like Moscow-based NtechLab have developed “ethnicity recognition” tools with the intention for it to be used by law enforcement to, in essence, automate racial profiling. This isn’t just happening in the U.S.: in China, facial recognition is used to monitor citizen activity as a part of its extensive “social credit” system, which affects people’s ability to get loans and use certain public services, like bike rentals.