In the News

Amazon may have halted the sale of its facial recognition software to police, but the move hasn’t eased pressure on the tech giant. In a letter sent to its CEO Jeff Bezos on Tuesday, Democratic Congressman Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif) blasted Amazon’s handling of its software, Rekognition, calling on the company to provide detailed info about privacy and bias inherent in the program. Amazon… Read more »

Last week, Amazon made a terse announcement that it would institute a “one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology,” known as Rekognition, in response to the wave of global protests against police brutality spurred by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. At least one lawmaker is unsatisfied by the company’s limp new… Read more »

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Jeff Bezos Wednesday pressing the Amazon CEO for information about the company's one-year moratorium on selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement. The e-commerce giant announced last week that its facial recognition tech, Rekognition, will not be sold directly to police for the next 12 months. The… Read more »

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Tuesday asking questions about exactly how the company plans to implement a one-year moratorium on facial recognition sales to police. Amazon announced the moratorium in a brief blog post one week ago today. Rep. Gomez is vice chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which plans to introduce… Read more »

That technology, known as Rekogntiion, has long drawn the ire of racial justice groups and civil liberties advocates, who claim it is biased against black people and should not be sold to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. “Corporations have been quick to share expressions of support for the Black Lives Matter movement following the public outrage over the murders of Black… Read more »

The issue has played out for years in the Los Angeles communities Congressman Jimmy Gomez represents. Activists regularly object to the use of technology that has the potential to exacerbate racial bias. Now, it has exploded anew on the national stage in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests. Gomez, who sits on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told Politico last… Read more »

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), who sits on the House Oversight Committee, told POLITICO he’s drafting legislation separate from the committee’s work that focuses on local and state law enforcement use of the software, instead of federal use. He says that while he supports the broader Democratic package on police reform, the Justice in Policing Act, it alone won’t address his and other… Read more »

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) from Los Angeles serves as the committee vice-chair and became interested in algorithmic bias after seeing a SXSW tech panel in 2017 about a lack of diversity in tech leading to inherently biased systems. But what really shook Gomez into action, he said, was being labeled a criminal by Amazon’s Rekognition in a test by the ACLU in 2018. At the time,… Read more »

Meanwhile, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform already held hearings to examine the use of facial recognition technology. However, Congress has not yet passed any bill regulating the technology. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Ca., told CNBC he is hopeful Congress will pass a bill this year. He also said Amazon's announcement is a "good first step," although it is still… Read more »

Last year, the ACLU sued the FBI, the Department of Justice and other agencies that contract with facial recognition providers to block its use. Former 2020 presidential candidate Julián Castro called the use of facial recognition software for mass surveillance a “dangerous violation of human rights” in a tweet Tuesday. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) echoed the… Read more »