Microsoft To End Investments In Facial Recognition Companies After AnyVision Was Accused Of Helping Israeli Govt Surveil The West Bank.
Microsoft is selling its stake in Israeli facial recognition company AnyVision, Edeson Online News reports.
The move comes after Microsoft commissioned an independent investigation into claims that the company's technology was used by the Israeli government to surveil Palestinian people in the West Bank.
Microsoft initially invested $74 million in AnyVision last June through its M12 investment arm. After allegations of the Israeli government using the company's technology for surveillance of Palestinians arose in press reports last October, Microsoft enlisted former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his team at law firm Covington & Burling to investigate the claims to determine whether AnyVision was in conflict with with Microsoft's ethical principles regarding facial recognition.
Microsoft says it will no longer invest in third-party facial recognition companies following a controversy around its funding of Israeli startup AnyVision, which critics and human rights activists say powered a surveillance program in the West Bank following an NBC News report about the company’s relationship with the Israeli government.
While Microsoft is stepping away from funding facial recognition firms, it does still have a facial recognition technology of its own through its Azure cloud computing platform. The Face API, as it’s called, allows any developer to “embed facial recognition into your apps for a seamless and highly secured user experience.” However, the company’s chief legal officer, Brad Smith, said last year that Microsoft would never sell facial recognition for surveillance purposes, and Smith has gone on the record saying it’s denied law enforcement access to the technology over concerns it would contribute to civil and human rights abuses.
How does facial recognition work? Facial recognition is a way of recognizing a human face through technology. A facial recognition system uses biometrics to map facial features from a photograph or video. It compares the information with a database of known faces to find a match.
What is facial recognition ?
Facial recognition technology's indiscriminate and large-scale recording, storing and analysing of our images undermines this right because it means we can no longer do anything in public without the state knowing about it.
