More on this: why your right to be faceless may be slipping away Washington County Sheriff’s Office City of Orlando The City of Orlando, on the other hand, sought to develop a better means for the Florida city’s law enforcement to search for individuals using its existing surveillance camera database.
Open Letter to Jeff Bezos
Even within a week of the service being used in Washington County, the Sheriff’s Office was able to identify and arrest a previously unknown suspect for theft. The City of Orlando planned to use Rekognition analyse footage from cameras in venues, city owned transportation cameras, body-worn cameras and even drones. Any of this could rightly concern privacy-conscious ordinary citizens, and the City of Orlando was aware of the potential privacy implications even as it pressed ahead with implementation. In a reported meeting to discuss the implementation of Rekognition, it was noted that the City of Orlando would need extra resource to deal with public record requests. It also noted a requirement for a policy to “address private and sensitive information.” This kind of mass surveillance – co-developed by a tech brand that’s an everyday household name – is little short of unprecedented. As we continually lose our right to be faceless, it poses important and pressing questions about the role and scope of law enforcement at a local and national level.
