Facial recognition tech can help you breeze through
airport security in seconds or it can have you handcuffed in
tie-wraps in a windowless room, it can all hinge upon the
colour of your skin or what you choose to post on social
media.
AnyVision, a cutting-edge facial recognition startup funded by
Microsoft, is using its technology to facilitate repressive
governments - China, Russia, and Israel so far - hunt down
and silence ordinary people.
The AnyVision-Microsoft scandal has erupted in the US media. And
since early 2019, many Microsoft workers are demanding that their
company hold itself to higher standards and give them a say on how
their work is used. Fearing the backlash, Microsoft has now
hired former United States Attorney General Eric Holder to
investigate whether AnyVision violated Microsoft’s ethics
guidelines.
You can help push Microsoft to drop this toxic
profit-at-any-cost facial recognition startup, and support the tech
workers fighting from the inside.
Tell
Microsoft to uphold democratic freedoms by dropping
AnyVision.
Non-discrimination, fairness, and consent - are among the six
principles Microsoft adopted for facial recognition. AnyVision has
described its system as nonvoluntary because people being
watched don’t need to register for them to be detected
automatically.
In the occupied Palestinian territories, AnyVision can detect and
follow any Palestinian who has said something negative about
Israel on Facebook, deciding whether or not that person can
cross border controls.
It’s a racially-biased algorithm and it is being
used in AnyVision’s worldwide network of 115 000 cameras.
Microsoft
must distance itself from blatantly discriminatory technology and
divest from AnyVision.
We know that when SumOfUs members like you act, Big Tech takes
notice. When 86,000 SumOfUs members around the world
demanded that Google drop its controversial Dragonfly Project, a
censored search engine tool for China, Google listened and abandoned
it!
SumOfus is joining Jewish Voices for Peace in its push back
against Microsoft. JVP has been instrumental in shedding light on
AnyVision’s population-controlling piece of tech.
Big Tech giants are feeling public pressure as their own workers
hold them accountable. They can no longer pretend to be progressive
while supporting repressive governments.
Yes,
we fight with Microsoft workers in asking it to dissociate itself
from AnyVision.
