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In July 2021, Ethical Consumer viewed Amazon's website and found that it developed facial recognition technology.

According to a Reuters article Amazon had in May 2021 announced that it would extend its one year ban on US police forces from using its facial recognition, as rules for its ethical use had still not been put in place. The article also quoted Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy project director at the American Civil Liberties Union, as saying:

"Face recognition technology fuels the over-policing of Black and Brown communities, and has already led to the false arrests and wrongful incarcerations of multiple Black men".

Campaigners such as digital rights group Fight for the Future considered that facial recognition technology posed a major threat to humanity and should be banned outright.

On the use of facial recognition for surveillance, UK campaign group Big Brother Watch stated: “Live facial recognition in public spaces is a mass surveillance method and a huge expansion of the surveillance state. It inverts the vital democratic principle of suspicion preceding surveillance, treating populations like suspects.”

The company lost half a mark under the Human Rights category.