Facial recognition software can help you breeze through airport security in seconds or it can have you handcuffed in tie-wraps in a windowless room depending on the colour of your skin or your social media posts. 

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. 

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 detects and follows 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.