Amazon pitched its facial recognition to ICE, released emails show [Updated]

Enlarge (credit: Department of Homeland Security)
Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act filing by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) show that Amazon's government sales unit was actively seeking to provide the Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations with Rekognition, the controversial facial recognition system. The pitch was part of a larger discussion of Amazon Web Services offerings to ICE HSI, an offering including artificial intelligence algorithms and predictive analytics.
Amazon has provided cloud services to DHS in the past, including US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). USCIS uses Amazon cloud storage to store data, including information associated with Alien Registration Numbers (A-Numbers)—numbers also used by ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and other DHS agencies to identify and track immigrants. And DHS has been pushing to do more in AWS. In a 2017 Request for Information (RFI), DHS requested 'information regarding forward-thinking, modern Development, Security and Operations (DEVSECOPs), specifically in association with Big Data, Analytics, PersonCentric, Entity Resolution and Machine Learning... to build, enhance, and support systems in large cloud environments, specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS).'
In a June 15 email to a DHS recipient, Amazon Web Service's federal sales principal for Homeland Security followed up on a conversation about Amazon's artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies that occurred at the Redwood City, California, offices of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The firm had an 'integrated consulting management services' contract with ICE, part of which focused on 'developing ICE [Enforcement and Removal Operations'] modernized vision and strategy.'
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