Amazon.com Inc. found itself in the eye of a storm in May when it was revealed that it was selling its facial recognition technology, “Rekognition,” to law enforcement. Now the pressure on the company has intensified.

While China seems to be making hay with such technology, the possibility of a “surveillance state” may threaten American’s civil rights and liberties, according to American Civil Liberties Union.

“Amazon is powering dangerous surveillance that poses a grave threat to customers and communities already unjustly targeted in the current political climate,” ACLU said in a petition, explaining that such technology only amplifies bias and inequality in the justice system.

And it’s not just civil-rights advocacy groups. Amazon is about to be handed a coalition letter with 150,000 petition signatures and 70 organizations. The gist of the letter is that Rekognition is not ethical. “People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government,” the letter reads. “Facial recognition in American communities threatens this freedom.”

Amazon will also receive a letter from some of its shareholders asking the company to put an immediate stop to any further development and marketing of surveillance technology to governments and government agencies until it has “placed appropriate guidelines and policies in place to safeguard the rights of our customers, shareholders, other stakeholders and citizens.”

The letter not only discussed the pitfalls of a “Big Brother” type of government surveillance in the U.S. and perhaps more oppressive states, but such a violation of human rights could also have a negative effect on company stock.

Amazon doesn’t seem to be thinking about changing its direction, at least that what it looks like in a blog post earlier in June, written by Matt Wood, general manager of artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services Inc., the company’s cloud computing unit. Wood wrote that there has been no abuse of Rekognition, adding that it will only lead to better security and a safer society.

“AWS takes its responsibilities seriously,” he said. “But we believe it is the wrong approach to impose a ban on promising new technologies because they might be used by bad actors for nefarious purposes in the future.” The benefits outweigh the risks, he added. It remains to be seen if the public sees it that way.

At the same time, Microsoft Corp. is also being criticized for its work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE. Although the company has said its “dismayed” at President Donald Trump’s recent policy to separate children from their families at the border, a Microsoft blog post from January states that the company will be providing technology to ICE for “cloud-based identity and access.”

“This can help employees make more informed decisions faster, with Azure Government enabling them to process data on edge devices or utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification,” said the post.

In a statement, Microsoft didn’t discuss its contract with ICE, concentrating only on its stand against child separation:

In response to questions we want to be clear: Microsoft is not working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Customs and Border Protection on any projects related to separating children from their families at the border, and contrary to some speculation, we are not aware of Azure or Azure services being used for this purpose. As a company, Microsoft is dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border. Family unification has been a fundamental tenet of American policy and law since the end of World War II. As a company Microsoft has worked for over 20 years to combine technology with the rule of law to ensure that children who are refugees and immigrants can remain with their parents. We need to continue to build on this noble tradition rather than change course now. We urge the administration to change its policy and Congress to pass legislation ensuring children are no longer separated from their families.

Google Inc. has been involved in its own battle for some time regarding the ethical use of its technology by the government. In this case, it was the use of artificial intelligence to go through video footage taken by drones over Iraq and Syria. The pressure on Google was enough to announce that it was ending its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.

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