Amazon seemed to confirm its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the first New York City Council hearing concerning the tech giant’s HQ2 in Queens, but Mayor Bill de Blasio says he hasn’t heard anything about the relationship between the two.
The mayor appeared for his weekly WNYC AskTheMayor segment on Friday. Hhost Brian Lehrer brought up how for some city council members, Amazon providing facial recognition technology used by ICE as a deal breaker in terms of welcoming the company into Queens. “Why not for you?” Lehrer asked the mayor.
“I haven’t seen any detail about what Amazon is doing with ICE, or not doing,” de Blasio said. “I’d be happy to look into that and of course, look, I have a huge critique of ICE, I think ICE should be abolished in its current form. I think ICE isn’t working. I think we need a new border and customs agency, an immigration agency that does not at punitively towards innocent people who are part of our communities.’
Is Amazon giving its facial recognition technology to ICE?
Amazon’s possible relationship with ICE has been in the news for months. An October Washington Post article reported that Amazon met with ICE officials over the summer about using its facial-recognition technology as a way for the agency to target or identify immigrants.
Amazon Vice President of Public Policy Brian Huseman was asked about Amazon’s contract to provide facial recognition technology to ICE at the City Council’s first Amazon hearing.
“We provide our Rekognition service to a variety of government agencies, and we think that the federal government should have access to the best available technology,” Huseman said.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman released a statement following the hearing, saying that “Amazon shouldn’t be selling the Trump administration unproven, dangerous, and biased face recognition technology that is ripe for abuse. As the company prepares to move to Queens, a home to so many vibrant immigrant communities, Amazon has no business cashing in ICE’s targeting and harassment of New Yorkers.”
Brian Huseman, Vice President of Public Policy at Amazon, testifies during the City Council hearing on Amazon’s HQ2 Project. Photo: William Alatriste/New York City Council Flickr
In July, the ACLU tested the Amazon facial recognition software, called “Rekognition,” and concluded that it falsely matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other individuals who have been arrested for a crime.
Council Member Brad Lander brought this up at the Amazon hearing, saying to Amazon Vice President of Public Policy Brian Huseman that “what we hear in this room is that in pursuit of profit, Amazon is a willing partner in Trump’s deportation machine, which will very likely lead to the deportation of immigrants in Queens, exactly the people you claim to want as your neighbors.”
“We have not been able to replicate the findings of the ACLU study,” Huseman responded.
Speaking on WNYC, de Blasio said that the “bigger question” is not just about what Amazon is doing, but about what the tech community is doing with the government and what technology they are providing for what purpose.
“I think that goes beyond the question of a specific economic development deal. Of course we want 25,000 jobs for New York City — going up as high as 40,000 jobs — but on the question of the entire tech community nad how they should be held accountable for what they do in the security world and what it means for our privacy and what it means for our data being protected and what it means for the kind of society we’re going to have, that is a much bigger issue than I care about deeply. That’s going to require a lot more information and, bluntly, federal legislation and federal oversight to change how things are done.”
