Yahoo Finance Amazon criticised for 'disturbing' plan to add facial recognition technology to doorbells
Amazon has been criticised for patenting a doorbell which would use facial recognition technology to track “suspicious” people.
In November, Amazon applied to patent new software for its line of Ring video doorbells, which include a motion-activated video camera and microphone and are connected to the internet.
The patent filing by Amazon describes a new system which would record videos of people captured on camera near a front door. The doorbell would then upload images of people’s faces to a “database of suspicious persons.”
Amazon has also sought to patent a system which would ask the homeowner if the person caught on camera by their front door is “authorised” to be there. If they are, the person is adding to a database of authorised people.
However, if the homeowner says that the person is not an authorised guest, then their image is added to a database of suspicious people.
The filing also mentions the use of biometric techniques to verify the identity of guests, including technologies such as scent recognition, fingerprints and skin texture analysis.
The patent application has been described as “disturbing” and “nightmarish” by Jacob Snow, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mr Snow wrote this week that the patent application describes a “dangerous future” which would involve a “massive decentralised surveillance network.”
The attorney called on Amazon to drop its application to patent the facial recognition technology. “It’s time for Amazon to take responsibility and stop chasing profit at the expense of safety and civil rights,” he wrote.
The use of facial recognition in the UK has proven controversial, and the Information Commissioner’s Office recently launched an investigation into the technology.
Earlier this year, the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote that “how facial recognition technology is used in public spaces can be particularly intrusive. It’s a real step change in the way law-abiding people are monitored as they go about their daily lives.”
