The collective outrage over the murder of George Floyd has led to nationwide protests, renewed calls for police reform, and uncharacteristically swift support for racial equity from Silicon Valley leaders.
The backlash has been swift as well. Critics are calling out many companies now pledging support for Black Lives Matter, accusing them of failing to stop racist language on their platforms and, in some cases, enabling the over-policing and surveillance that protesters now march against.
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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took to Instagram last week to share an essay by the writer Shenequa Golding, commenting on the “long reach” of racial trauma. The next day, the official Amazon account tweeted a message “in solidarity with the black community.” Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy tweeted last week, “What will it take for us to refuse to accept these unjust killings of black people?”
But Amazon furnishes surveillance tools to police, including the widely criticized facial recognition product, Rekognition. The tool misidentifies darker-skinned people more often than lighter-skinned people, according to a report from AI researcher Joy Buolamwini. In 2018, the ACLU found the tool misidentified members of Congress as criminals, misidentifying black officials more often than white ones.
“Amazon tweeting support of ‘the fight against systematic racism and injustice’ is a textbook case of substituting virtue signaling for virtue,” said Evan Selinger, privacy scholar and professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “Not only have civil rights groups criticized Amazon for promoting a facial recognition tool to law enforcement that poses dire threats to minorities, but so have concerned shareholders.”
Jassy has defended Rekognition, even as employees and numerous racial justice organizations opposed its sale to police. In an all-hands meeting in 2018, Jassy told employees, “if we find people are violating folks’ constitutional rights, they won’t be able to use the services any longer … In a democracy it is also often the role and the responsibilities of the government to help specify what the guidelines and regulations should be about technology.”
There are no laws against police use of these surveillance tools, but Jassy’s comments speak to a flawed idea that inhibits efforts at police reform: These tools are acceptable because they aren't illegal. In the wake of the protests, Trump reportedly told law enforcement, “you have to track” rioters, renewing concerns that police would use surveillance technology as part of their response to protest.
Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Similarly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Sunday voiced Google’s “support for racial equality in solidarity with the Black community.” But, Google, too, has been criticized for supporting invasive policing tactics.
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Civil rights organizations have called out Google’s practice of enabling “geofencing warrants.” These warrants permit police to request from Google data on devices in the area surrounding a crime. Google initially supplies anonymous information for phones within the area specified by the warrant. After police narrow their suspects, Google supplies usernames and location data for the specific devices.
There’s scant evidence that geofencing targets communities of color specifically, but many have criticized the dragnet created when devices far outside of crime scenes are included. Geofencing warrants are often written using GPS coordinates, not street names and addresses. Critics say many are overbroad and include many more people than those reasonably near the scene of a crime.
It’s not clear how often police request geofencing warrants, but Google’s self-reported data on government requests show a big surge in search warrants, to roughly 20,000 last year from 10,000 in 2017. Starting in January, Google has charged police up to $245 for data requests.
“Because of insufficient Fourth Amendment protections, GPS, text, social media, or search data from your Android phone might end up as evidence in a court case,” said Liz O’Sullivan, technology director of the privacy nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or STOP. “There is a lot more that big tech companies could be doing to protect the public interest, but instead we see gobs of lobbying money spent opposing legislation that might actually promote justice.”
Google did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication. In a statement after publication of this article, Richard Salgado, Google's director of law enforcement and information security, said, "We vigorously protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement. We developed a process specifically for these requests that is designed to honor our legal obligations while narrowing the scope of data disclosed."
Some companies are being called out for developing products criticized for enabling over-policing and surveillance of nonwhite communities. For example, when the official accounts for Salesforce and Github tweeted support for Black Lives Matter, many people online pointed out the company's contracts with Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Nextdoor, a community-based social networking app, tweeted its support for Black Lives Matter, prompting immediate criticism. For years, Nextdoor’s leadership has faced accusations that its users racially profile people of color and accuse them of crimes.
In a statement to WIRED, Nextdoor said racial profiling on the app declined after it began using algorithms to detect racist speech and required more detailed information if a user wants to report someone as suspicious. “Just one incident is too many, and we remain committed to the hard work,” the company said.
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Criticism extended beyond concerns over working with police. On Monday, Reddit cofounder and CEO Steve Huffman voiced his support for Black Lives Matter in an open letter to employees. Hours later, former CEO Ellen K. Pao accused Huffman of ignoring the racist trolls on the platform and, more seriously, of profiting from white supremacy.
“You don't get to say BLM when Reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all day long,” she tweeted. As interim CEO in 2015, Pao pushed to ban some of the most flagrant subreddits, prompting backlash from longtime users. When Huffman succeeded her as CEO, he instead opted for a more hands off approach in which “communities … set appropriate standards around language for themselves.” A spokesperson for Reddit said the company has banned racist subreddits and that Reddit now displays a warning screen to visitors of its most infamous subreddit, r/thedonald, a pro-Trump forum.
Likewise, Facebook continued to face criticism after executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, met with civil rights leaders Monday night. Zuckerberg on Monday said Facebook would donate $10 million to racial justice organizations and noted that the original video of Floyd’s death was posted to Facebook. But Zuckerberg has declined to take action against President Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” message, cross-posted from Twitter, where it was flagged with a warning label. Outraged employees organized a virtual walkout and spoke publicly against the decision.
In a statement after Monday’s meeting, the leaders of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Color of Change connected the violence against protesters and Zuckerberg’s decision. The Facebook CEO “did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression, and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump’s call for violence against protesters,” the statement read.
In a statement a Facebook spokesperson said the company was “grateful that leaders in the civil rights community took the time to share candid, honest feedback with Mark and Sheryl” Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer.
“I think we might look at it as what is sometimes called ‘performative wokeness’ by these companies, and issuing a statement that they ‘stand with the Black community’ is the absolute least they can do,” said Chris Gilliard, an independent researcher studying surveillance and racism.
“Many of these companies generate profit either by the exploitation of Black labor and/or by amplifying hate and extremism that directly harms Black folks,” he says. “If Amazon truly felt that Black lives matter, they would change the way they treat their workforce, stop selling Rekognition, and discontinue selling Ring doorbells. If Facebook truly stood with the Black community, they would eradicate the rampant white supremacy on their platform.”
Because there aren’t robust rules governing the fair use of emerging policing tools, company policy is very important. In lieu of government regulation, how executives write and interpret their companies’ relationships with law enforcement can vary widely, either to align with reform-focused civil rights movements or against them.
Updated, 6-3-20, 12:50pm ET: This article has been updated to include a comment from Google.