“A top Google executive recently sent a shot across the bow of its competitors regarding face surveillance. Kent Walker, the company’s general counsel and senior vice president of global affairs, made it clear that Google — unlike Amazon and Microsoft — will not sell a face recognition product until the technology’s potential for abuse is addressed.
Amazon
Amazon’s statements and actions provide a stark contrast with Google’s approach. While Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos acknowledged his company’s products might be put to “bad uses,” he said the solution was to wait for society’s eventual “immune response” to take care of the problems. This is a shocking abdication of responsibility, not to mention a convenient blindness to the “response” that Rekognition has already engendered.
Microsoft
In a blog post, Microsoft President Brad Smith correctly identifies the threats the technology poses to privacy, free speech and other human rights, observing that today’s technology makes a surveillance state possible.
But then, after outlining those grave threats to democracy, Smith proposes relying on inadequate safeguards that have failed in the past with technologies far less dangerous than face surveillance. He expresses excessive faith in notifying people of face surveillance systems — but what good is that in a world where face recognition is so widespread that nobody can opt out?”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/2581992002