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Amazon's public policy team working on facial recognition legislation: CEO

Amazon.com Inc. Chairman, CEO and President Jeff Bezos told a group of reporters Sept. 25 that the online giant's public policy team is working on legislation to regulate facial recognition.

Bezos acknowledged both the benefits and dangers of the technology in his comments after an Alexa product event in Seattle. "It's a perfect example of something that has really positive uses, so you don’t want to put the brakes on it. At the same time, there’s lots of potential for abuses with that kind of technology and so you do want regulations. It’s a classic dual-use kind of technology," he told reporters. Jason Del Rey, a journalist who writes about Amazon for Recode, posted a video of Bezos speaking on his Twitter account.

An Amazon spokesman confirmed to S&P Global Market Intelligence that Bezos spoke to reporters about the need for facial recognition regulation but declined to comment further.

Amazon is looking to play a lead role in crafting the legislation at a time when several states, municipalities and the U.S. Congress all have pending bills before them related to facial recognition.

The company’s cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services Inc., has a business stake in the surveillance market, having launched its Rekognition facial recognition technology in 2016.

AWS has amassed a base of several customers, including the Washington County Sheriff's Office in Oregon, C-Span, Scripps Networks Interactive and the PopSugar media company, according to the company.

AWS outlined several potential facial recognition policy guidelines in February.

Michael Punke, AWS vice president of global public policy, wrote in a Feb. 7 blog post that those guidelines should include ensuring that law enforcement officials are transparent when using the technology; providing notice when video surveillance is used in public and commercial settings; and recommending a 99% confidence threshold score "when facial recognition technology is used by law enforcement for identification, or in a way that could threaten civil liberties."

Amazon has become one of the top lobbying spenders in Washington, D.C., as the company increasingly confronts issues including antitrust and privacy.