Perils of face-recognition

The technology has heightened privacy concerns

Three information-technology giants ― IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon ― have decided to stop selling their respective face-recognition (FR) systems to American police departments and federal agencies. This decision was driven by opposition from employee-shareholders. The deployment of FR at protests against the killing of George Floyd may have hastened these self-imposed moratoriums, but it may trigger retaliatory action. US President Donald Trump has tweeted in favour of a ban on awarding government contracts to Microsoft. Amazon was already on his hate list, because Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post newspaper and Amazon has