Amazon announces one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition after George Floyd protests

On Wednesday, June 10, 2020, Amazon announced a one-year moratorium on police use of its Rekognition facial recognition software, shocking civil rights activists and researchers who had spent two years fighting to stop the company from selling surveillance technology to law enforcement. The announcement came amid nationwide protests following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, and pressure from police-reform advocates concerned about facial recognition technology’s documented racial bias and inaccuracy, particularly against people with darker skin. Amazon stated it hoped the moratorium would “give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules” governing the technology’s use.

Context: George Floyd Protests and Racial Justice Movement

The moratorium came just 16 days after Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for approximately nine minutes, sparking a historic movement to fight institutional racism and end police brutality. Protests erupted in cities across America and around the world, with demonstrators demanding police accountability and an end to discriminatory law enforcement practices.

Congressional Democrats were developing police reform legislation inspired by the protests, and the role of surveillance technology in enabling discriminatory policing became a focal point. The documented racial bias in facial recognition systems—which performed worse on people with darker skin—made the technology a prime target for reform advocates connecting technology to patterns of over-policing in communities of color.

The Announcement and Industry Response

Amazon’s announcement on June 10, 2020 imposed a one-year moratorium specifically on police use of Rekognition. The company stated: “We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.”

Amazon’s decision followed IBM’s announcement just days earlier that it would discontinue its general-purpose facial recognition system. The next day after Amazon’s announcement, Microsoft declared that it would stop selling its facial recognition system to police departments until federal law regulated the technology. The rapid succession of announcements suggested coordinated industry response to the George Floyd protests and mounting pressure from civil rights organizations.

However, Amazon’s moratorium included significant exceptions: law enforcement could still use Rekognition to assist in rescuing human trafficking victims and locating missing children. Additionally, the ban applied specifically to police, but other government agencies could still use the technology.

Two-Year Fight by Civil Rights Organizations

The moratorium represented a victory for civil rights organizations that had spent two years fighting Amazon’s sales of Rekognition to law enforcement. As MIT Technology Review documented, the campaign included:

• The ACLU’s July 2018 test showing Rekognition misidentified 28 members of Congress as criminals, with nearly 40% of false matches being people of color
• Revelations in October 2018 that Amazon had pitched Rekognition to ICE during the family separation crisis
• Protests from hundreds of Amazon employees who wrote to Jeff Bezos demanding the company stop selling to ICE and police
• Congressional scrutiny and demands for meetings with Amazon leadership
• Ongoing research documenting racial bias in facial recognition systems

ACLU Response: Victory but Insufficient

The ACLU welcomed Amazon’s moratorium but emphasized it was insufficient. In its statement, the ACLU noted that “face recognition technology fuels the over-policing of Black and Brown communities” and called for a complete end to law enforcement use of facial recognition rather than a temporary pause.

Civil rights organizations pointed out several limitations of the moratorium:

• It was temporary (one year) rather than permanent
• It applied only to police, not other government agencies
• It included exceptions for specific use cases
• It did nothing to address Amazon’s other surveillance products, including Ring doorbell partnerships with police departments
• It placed responsibility on Congress to act, rather than Amazon permanently withdrawing from the law enforcement surveillance market

Congressional Inaction and Amazon’s Continued Availability

Amazon’s stated hope that the moratorium would give Congress time to “implement appropriate rules” reflected a broader tech industry strategy of calling for regulation while continuing to develop and market controversial technologies. The one-year timeframe created pressure on Congress to act while Amazon maintained its technical capabilities and market position.

However, Congressional action on facial recognition regulation remained stalled amid partisan divisions over police reform and surveillance technology. This inaction would lead Amazon to extend the moratorium indefinitely in May 2021, continuing to sell Rekognition to non-police government agencies while maintaining that police use should be subject to federal regulation that never materialized.

Significance: Temporary Response to Sustained Pressure

The moratorium represented Amazon’s attempt to address public outrage about police surveillance technology amid historic protests against police violence, while preserving the company’s options to resume law enforcement sales in the future. By framing the moratorium as temporary and conditional on Congressional action, Amazon avoided permanently withdrawing from the law enforcement surveillance market.

The announcement demonstrated that sustained pressure from civil rights organizations, employee activism, Congressional scrutiny, and public protests could force major tech companies to at least temporarily limit sales of surveillance technology to law enforcement. However, the limitations of the moratorium—its temporary nature, exceptions, and narrow scope—illustrated the difficulty of holding tech companies accountable for surveillance products through voluntary corporate policies rather than binding regulation.

Broader Industry Impact

Amazon’s moratorium, along with similar announcements from IBM and Microsoft, marked a turning point in the facial recognition industry. The near-simultaneous withdrawals of major tech companies from the law enforcement facial recognition market represented an acknowledgment—however grudging and temporary—that the technology’s racial bias and potential for abuse made it unsuitable for police use without significant regulation and oversight.

The moratorium also highlighted the limitations of the tech industry’s self-regulatory approach to controversial technologies. By making the pause temporary and calling for government regulation while continuing to develop the technology, Amazon and its competitors positioned themselves to resume law enforcement sales once the political moment passed—which indeed proved prescient as Congressional police reform efforts ultimately stalled without producing comprehensive facial recognition regulation.

The episode illustrated how the surveillance technology industry responded to moments of political crisis: temporary concessions that preserved long-term business opportunities, shifting responsibility for oversight to government regulators while lobbying against strict regulations, and strategic communications that emphasized concern for civil rights while maintaining the infrastructure and capabilities to resume controversial sales when pressure subsided.