IBM Halts Facial Recognition Tech For Surveillance To Stop Racial Profiling

The US is going through a pretty dark time. Rising COVID-19 cases wreaking havoc on people¡¯s lives wasn¡¯t enough, people in the nation are fighting against what happened with George Floyd.

This has turned to a mass movement with not just people and celebrities, but several tech companies and their CEOs speaking up about it.

Reuters

Some companies are also taking a drastic step in their functioning to help not contribute/eliminate promoting racism through its products or services. The most recent one was with tech giant IBM.

In a letter addressed to the Congress, (including US Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris). IBM¡¯s CEO Arvind Krishna spoke about the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others and stated that the company will work with officials to combat racism.

Krishna suggested a major change in the policies is needed in the form of responsible use of technology, police reforms etc. And to contribute to this, he revealed that IBM will no longer offer general-purpose facial recognition technology that is often used for mass surveillance.

We've already seen how facial recognition was being misused in China and Hong Kong and how protestors were trying to dodge it, so this news must be welcoming for privacy watchdogs.

IBM

Krishna said in the letter, ¡°IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency. We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.¡±

In case you didn¡¯t know, Krishna recently got the reigns of the organization after the exit of Ginni Rometty in April this year. He was the brains behind the massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat last year.

This definitely is huge. Recently, Bezos too voiced his opinions on #BlackLivesMatter and how he is ready to lose customers who support racism. What¡¯s also interesting is the fact that he owns Rekognition -- a surveillance tool that has come in the news for wrong reasons last year.

Will Bezos too join IBM in not allowing Rekognition to be used by law enforcement for surveillance? Only time will tell.