AFP, SAN FRANCISCOAmazon.com Inc on Wednesday confirmed that shareholders rejected proposals to prohibit sales of facial recognition technology to governments and study how it might threaten privacy or civil rights. The proposals voted down at Amazon’s annual general meeting were put forth by a group of shareholders, but opposed by the board of directors. Seattle-based Amazon developed facial recognition technology called Rekognition and sells it as part of its cloud services unit. Amazon is mindful of the need to balance the benefits of facial recognition technology with potential risks, the board said in opposition to the proposal. Facial recognition technology uses a scan of a person’s face to create an algorithm that is compared against a database.

Source: Taipei Times May 23, 2019 15:56 UTC