Amazon and Microsoft have not followed. That's in addition to Amazon's Ring doorbell camera system, which has video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 police departments. Amazon has won £460million of public contracts in the past four years, despite questions over its tax bill. ""I think broadly, tech companies want to have it both ways," said Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital advocacy nonprofit Fight for Our Future. We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. In the meantime, it's important for residents to think twice about any technologies that facilitate the proliferation of police surveillance on the streets where we protest, canvas for political candidates, and move freely every day.Ring seems to have anticipated public concerns about a large network of cameras, promoted by police, whose footage is stored by a large corporation.It took reporting from multiple news outlets for the public to learn about the extent of these partnerships, which have rapidly spread without sufficient community input and local government control. "We can't survive without these technologies," said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, who serves as a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police's research council. "Some of these companies will get pressure internally from their employees, but also from the general public that is not going to believe their empty statements," Gonzalez said.An IBM spokesperson told Protocol the company has "robust processes in place to ensure that our client engagements do not conflict with our values and long-standing opposition to all forms of discrimination." The decision whether to plug the police department into thousands of new surveillance cameras should be made through an open, democratic process, and not just by corporate sales staff and police executives.This raises the very serious question: do police think you need a camera on your front door because your property is in danger, or are they encouraged by Amazon to try to make a sale? IBM is the first major technology company to walk away from facial recognition technology amid nationwide protests for racial justice and police reform. "You have city councils and mayors who are now being forced to focus on over-policing and police violence as an issue," Greer said. The technology industry is facing pressure to respond to the police-brutality crisis because of its growing wealth and influence, its lack of diversity and its financial ties with law enforcement agencies.Mijente's Gonzalez believes this could be a moment when police contracts become a liability for companies, because of what she sees as the profound need for change and the unresponsiveness of the agencies. "Someone's going to sell it to the police to make money," he said.A protest leader calls for people to back up during a June 1 demonstration in Washington, D.C. But unlike mainstream tech companies, these vendors are specialists created to serve this market and may not face the same pressures from employees or investors.Since last weekend, Microsoft has been tweeting statements from its black employees in response to the killing of George Floyd and the resulting protests, and it issued a statement from CEO Satya Nadella saying there is "no place for hate and racism in our society." But the company did not mention whether the national conversation could lead it to reassess its work with police forces.Groups like Fight for our Future and Mijente are hoping to hasten that trend by pressuring reform-minded local governments to cut ties with companies like Amazon and Microsoft, an extension of their calls to defund and crack down on police departments.
Gilliard, for one, is doubtful. "Canceling these partnerships should be on the list of things that they are doing. ""I think it's absurd, really," said Chris Gilliard, a professor at Macomb Community College, who focuses on digital surveillance and other forms of "digital redlining." The online giant has got 39 taxpayer-funded deals since 2015, GMB union research claims. He predicted that police departments would "find another vendor" to sell them similar tools if the largest companies stepped back from their contracts.