The company has announced that its system can detect fear. That’s no comfort to those who are afraid of what part this company is playing in helping police build surveillance networks. We’ll let you know which company has added fear to the facial recognition mix. Also, why some lawmakers and privacy advocates are not thrilled with the company’s system. The company has announced that the system can now recognize fear. While touting the system’s improved accuracy in recognizing emotions, the company said fear had joined happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust, calm and confusion to its creepy emotional list. Bizarrely, the spokesperson wrapped up the spiel by saying how fun it would be to use Rekognition on people at amusement parks. OK. The fear component certainly isn’t going to do anything to endear Rekognition to people already opposed to it. The organization has warned that the facial recognition tool is unreliable and shows a bias toward people of color. To prove its point, ACLU has used Rekognition to compare photos of members of Congress with criminal mugshots. The ACLU found more than two-dozen false positives. Of the 28 false positives, six of the images were those from the Congressional Black Caucus. Even though people of color only comprise around 20% of Congress, they made up more than 40% of the false positives. In just four years, the Ring program reportedly has expanded to more than 225 cities across the nation. The program is alarming advocates for privacy and civil liberties who fear police requests for Ring footage will result in a surveillance network that operates without a formal warrant.
