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Despite previous reports that the program has been ended, the Orlando Police Department in Florida is planning to continue its test of Amazon's real-time facial recognition system. "News of OPD supposedly ending its use of Rekognition on footage captured by a number of CCTV cameras came just a day after the ACLU sent a letter to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer regarding the face recognition program," reports Gizmodo. "But the end date for the initial pilot period had already been selected -- it just happened to coincide with the ACLU's report and the ensuing backlash from civil rights groups." From the report: While the original test period ended, the OPD will soon sit down with Amazon representatives to outline the new pilot, the police department told the Orlando Sentinel. "It's really to prevent the next tragedy," Orlando Police Chief John Mina said. Now, with the program set to continue, Dyer says the practice is not as dystopian as it seems.

Details on the new pilot are sparse. OPD confirmed it will test Rekognition on at least eight cameras, as it did before, though their location isn't known. In the previous trial program, five Rekognition-enabled cameras captured footage at OPD headquarters, while three additional cameras were positioned in downtown Orlando. During its initial testing phase, Rekognition will scan officers' faces against a face database made up of volunteers. The plan, the OPD memo explains, is for officers themselves to walk in front of the cameras and record how accurately the technology recognizes them from different angles, with different clothes, or other variables. It's not known how long this initial testing phase will last, though the city plans to draft proposed regulations before any public rollout begins. It's worth noting that pilot itself requires no public approval and Dyer has wholeheartedly supported Rekognition. "No images of the public will be used for any testing," OPD said in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The city of Orlando, Fla., says it has ended a pilot program in which its police force used Amazon's real-time facial recognition -- a system called "Rekognition" that had triggered complaints from rights and privacy groups when its use was revealed earlier this year. Orlando's deal to open part of its camera systems to Amazon was reported by NPR's Martin Kaste in May, after the ACLU noticed that an Amazon Rekognition executive mentioned the city as a customer.

On Monday, the ACLU of Florida wrote a letter to Mayor Buddy Dyer and the Orlando City Council, demanding that the city "immediately" shut down "any face surveillance deployment or use by city agencies and departments." On the same day, Orlando city and police officials issued a joint statement saying that the test of how its officers might use the Rekognition technology ended last week. The city added, "Staff continues to discuss and evaluate whether to recommend continuation of the pilot at a further date," adding that "the contract with Amazon remains expired." Orlando police say the test was limited to only a fraction of the city's cameras, and that the system was tested by tracking its own officers. The Rekognition deal with Orlando caused a stir after Ranju Das, the head of the Rekognition unit, said in early May: "City of Orlando is a launch partner of ours. It's a smart city; they have cameras all over the city. The authorized cameras are then streaming the data [...] we are a subscriber to the stream, we analyze the video in real time, search against the collection of faces that they have."