In November 2025, the Department of Homeland Security released the “Mobile Identify” facial recognition app on Google’s app store, making it available to state and local law enforcement agencies deputized to work with ICE. The Trump Tyranny Tracker reported on November 4 that the …
On October 7, 2025, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced suspension of all biometric testing, ranking, and research activities—including the world-renowned Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT), Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE), and IREX evaluations—due to the …
In September 2025 alone, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded $1.4 billion in new surveillance technology contracts, representing the highest monthly total in at least 18 years. These contracts provide ICE with extensive surveillance capabilities including facial recognition algorithms, …
On May 18, 2021, Amazon extended its global ban on police use of Rekognition facial recognition software indefinitely “until further notice,” prolonging what was originally announced as a one-year moratorium in June 2020. The extension came just weeks before the original moratorium was …
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 …
On June 27, 2019, Axon announced it would not commercialize facial recognition technology for body cameras following recommendations from its AI and Policing Technology Ethics Board. The board’s first major report concluded that “facial recognition simply isn’t good enough right …
On July 26, 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released results of an independently verified test demonstrating that Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress with mugshots from a database of arrest photos. The test, which cost …
In June 2018, at the height of the Trump administration’s family separation crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, Amazon Web Services officials met with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) representatives in Redwood City, California to pitch Rekognition facial recognition technology for …
Amazon Web Services announced the launch of Amazon Rekognition at its re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas on November 30, 2016. The cloud-based facial recognition service marked Amazon’s entry into surveillance technology, offering image and video analysis capabilities including face …