This blog was originally published by the ACLU of Northern California at aclunc.org.

Amazon, which got its start selling books and still bills itself as “Earth’s most customer-centric company,” has officially entered the surveillance business.

The company has developed a powerful and dangerous new facial recognition system and is actively helping governments deploy it. Amazon calls the service “Rekognition.”

Marketing materials and documents obtained by ACLU affiliates in three states reveal a product that can be readily used to violate civil liberties and civil rights. Powered by artificial intelligence, Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces, according to Amazon.

Amazon is marketing Rekognition for government surveillance. According to its marketing materials, it views deployment by law enforcement agencies as a “common use case” for this technology. Among other features, the company’s materials describe “person tracking” as an “easy and accurate” way to investigate and monitor people. Amazon says Rekognition can be used to identify “people of interest” raising the possibility that those labeled suspicious by governments — such as undocumented immigrants or Black activists — will be seen as fair game for Rekognition surveillance. It also says Rekognition can monitor “all faces in group photos, crowded events, and public places such as airports” — at a time when Americans are joining public protests at unprecedented levels.

Amazon’s Rekognition raises profound civil liberties and civil rights concerns. Today, the ACLU and a coalition of civil rights organizations demanded that Amazon stop allowing governments to use Rekognition.

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Amazon not only markets Rekognition as a law enforcement service, it is helping governments deploy it. Amazon lists the city of Orlando, Florida, and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon among its customers. Upon learning this, the ACLU Foundations of California coordinated with the ACLU of Oregon and the ACLU of Florida on public records requests to learn more.

The documents we obtained indicate that the Washington County Sheriff and the City of Orlando became Rekognition customers in 2017. Washington County has since built a database of at least 300,000 mugshot photos to use in coordination with Rekognition. It also built a mobile app for its deputies to quickly scan for a match against the county’s database by submitting images obtained from surveillance or other sources.

Amazon is providing company resources to help government agencies deploy Rekognition. In emails between Amazon and Washington County employees, the company offers the expertise of the Rekognition product team, troubleshoots problems encountered by the county, and provides “best practices” advice on how to deploy the service. In what Orlando’s police chief praises as a “first-of-its-kind public-private partnership,” Amazon promised free consulting services to build a Rekognition “proof of concept” for the city. Rekognition face surveillance is now operating across Orlando in real-time, according to Amazon, allowing the company to search for “people of interest” as footage rolls in from “cameras all over the city.”

In the records, Amazon also solicits feedback and ideas for “potential enhancements” to Rekognition’s capabilities for governments. Washington County even signed a non-disclosure agreement created by Amazon to get “insight into the Rekognition roadmap” and provide additional feedback about the product. The county later cited this NDA to justify withholding documents in response to the ACLU’s public records request.

The documents also revealed that Amazon offered to connect Washington County with other Amazon customers interested in Rekognition — as well as a body camera manufacturer. Indeed, Amazon’s promotional materials previously recommended that law enforcement use Rekognition to identify people in police body camera footage. The company removed mention of police body cameras from its site after the ACLU raised concerns in discussions Amazon. That appears to be the extent of its response to our concerns; this and other profoundly troubling surveillance practices are still permissible under the company’s policies.

With Rekognition, a government can now build a system to automate the identification and tracking of anyone. If police body cameras, for example, were outfitted with facial recognition, devices intended for officer transparency and accountability would further transform into surveillance machines aimed at the public. With this technology, police would be able to determine who attends protests. ICE could seek to continuously monitor immigrants as they embark on new lives. Cities might routinely track their own residents, whether they have reason to suspect criminal activity or not. As with other surveillance technologies, these systems are certain to be disproportionately aimed at minority communities.

Because of Rekognition’s capacity for abuse, we asked Washington County and Orlando for any records showing that their communities had been provided an opportunity to discuss the service before its acquisition. We also asked them about rules governing how the powerful surveillance system could be used and ensuring rights would be protected. Neither locality identified such records. In fact, Washington County began using Rekognition even as employees raised questions internally. In one email, a Washington County employee expressed the concern that the “ACLU might consider this the government getting in bed with big data.” That employee’s prediction was correct.

People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government. By automating mass surveillance, facial recognition systems like Rekognition threaten this freedom, posing a particular threat to communities already unjustly targeted in the current political climate. Once powerful surveillance systems like these are built and deployed, the harm will be extremely difficult to undo.

If Rekognition is not reined in, its use is certain to spread. The records we obtained show that law enforcement agencies in California and Arizona have contacted Washington County asking about Rekognition. So have multiple “fusion centers,” which collect information about people for dissemination across agencies at the local and federal level.

Amazon has publicly opposed secretive government surveillance. Its CEO, Jeff Bezos, has himself criticized Trump Administration’s discriminatory Muslim ban. But actions speak louder than words, and Amazon’s efforts to deploy this technology run counter to its proclaimed values and risk harm to the company’s customers and their communities.

Matt Cagle is a Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. Nicole A. Ozer is the Technology and Civil Liberties Director for the ACLU of California.

Learn more: Read the press release on this story here.

A student goes public about the headline-making violence and discrimination LGBT youth endure at North Bend High School.

North Bend has been my home for my entire life. I was born in this town and raised here by two loving parents who always did their best to teach me right from wrong. And so, for the past couple years, I have been trying so hard to end school-sanctioned discrimination of LGBT students at North Bend High School.

I faced harassment and discrimination so many times at school, from both students and staff members. And my partner at the time, Liv, was physically attacked at and around school by people who also yelled anti-gay slurs at her. The other open LGBT students I knew also had terrible experiences, including one of my best friends who the principal forced to read the bible at school as a punishment.

Read more: LGBTQ Students Face Heartbreaking Treatment at Oregon High School

My parents raised me to always be honest. They told me that if you tell the truth, people will trust you, people will believe you, and people will follow you. They raised me to know that if you’re an honest person, you’re a strong person. And they always told me that if you’re strong enough to stand up when someone else isn’t, you should stand up for them. That’s why I filed my complaints with the Oregon Department of Education.

Simply put: All students deserve to feel safe at school. We all just want to learn and be ourselves. We deserve better from the North Bend School District.

Now let me tell you about just a small portion of what happened during my time at North Bend High School.

The first day of my junior year, I walked into school holding Liv’s hand. Liv was my girlfriend at the time and is still my partner in this fight to end discrimination. It was intimidating and scary being the only openly gay couple in the entire school. I didn’t know how anybody was going to react, or what they were going to say or do. There were odd stares and whispered slurs behind our backs, but I grew more confident when I learned to not care what people think.

But then then things started happening where I felt my physical safety was in jeopardy, and the principal’s response - nothing - was disheartening.

I’ll always remember when Liv and I were headed to off campus for lunch one day. We were walking in the school’s back parking lot when all of a sudden the principal’s son sped right toward us in his car. We thought he was going to hit us. Instead, he drove right up next to us, yelled out “faggot!” and veered away. It was terrifying.

At that moment, it just kind of switched something in me. I realized that discrimination and people’s opinions here are really so strong that somebody could get hurt. I could get hurt just for being myself. I eventually reported this but was not surprised when nothing happened. He’s popular, a football player, and his father is the same administrator who repeatedly failed to take my complaints seriously, the same administrator who forced my best friend to read the Bible. I even reported online harassment to the principal after another student made fun of how I looked and told me to kill myself. Instead of protecting me, the principal made me sign the bullying policy. It was as if I was in trouble for reporting feeling unsafe. It seemed like he really didn’t care about my safety.

I reported discriminatory incidents to the principal so many times, way more than I can mention here. Nothing ever changed. The discrimination wasn’t an isolated incident and it didn’t just come from students. When I told the principal that my civics teacher called me out in front of the whole class and said same-sex marriage was “pretty much the same thing” as marrying a dog, the principal told me “everybody has the right to their own opinion.” The next day, the teacher apologized, but as I walked away, he said “don’t go marrying your dog.”

After so many complaints to the administration and so little change, we needed another tactic. We decided to tell the Oregon Department of Education what was going on. And that’s led us to here, trying to hold the school district accountable, no matter how hard they try to deny there is a widespread problem.

Liv and I may be the public faces in this case but it’s about way more than us. While I have graduated and won’t experience any change firsthand, I’m still fighting because I know there are other LGBT students who don’t feel safe at school. And there will be more to come.

School administrators can no longer be indifferent to physical and verbal harassment of LGBT students by students and staff. Authority figures shouldn’t use religion to mistreat vulnerable students. And the administrators, staff, teachers, and students in North Bend all need real training on LGBT rights.

I want young LGBT students everywhere to know that they’re not alone, that there’s something you can do to better your situation. If you can do something even miniscule, something tiny, to better your situation or someone else’s situation, you should do that. You have the ability to make change and it’s really rewarding. There are people out there who will support you so, when you’re ready, you should speak up.