Amazon’s Growing Role in Law Enforcement Technology

In a significant shift from its consumer-focused image, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been actively expanding its presence in the law enforcement technology market. Public records reveal that Amazon has been aggressively marketing AI-powered surveillance systems, gun detection technology, and real-time crime center solutions to police departments across the United States. This push into the $11 billion police tech market represents a strategic diversification for the tech giant, which is leveraging its vast cloud infrastructure to support a growing ecosystem of surveillance partners. Through a combination of direct outreach and strategic partnerships with specialized startups, Amazon has positioned itself as a central hub connecting law enforcement agencies with cutting-edge surveillance technologies, raising important questions about privacy and the increasing corporatization of public safety.

The company’s approach to the law enforcement market is multifaceted, combining its own technologies with those of numerous partners. Amazon’s law enforcement and school safety team, led by a former police officer from Washington state, has been actively courting agencies through emails, conferences, and private events. In San Diego County, for example, Amazon pitched a prototype AI tool capable of detecting weapons in live surveillance footage and sending text alerts to officers. While the county ultimately chose a different provider for its drone surveillance operations, that provider—Nomad Media—runs its software on AWS cloud infrastructure and uses Amazon’s Rekognition service for object detection. This partnership model allows Amazon to profit even when agencies choose third-party solutions, as long as those solutions are built on AWS technology. Nomad CEO Adam Miller acknowledged this symbiotic relationship, noting that his company “uses a tremendous number of their AWS services” and often goes to market alongside Amazon.

The range of surveillance technologies being promoted through Amazon’s platform is extensive and sophisticated. The company has been marketing car tracking systems from Flock Safety, a startup valued at $7.5 billion; AI tools from Lucidus Tech (now owned by Flock) that can analyze billions of records on U.S. citizens; applications designed for real-time crime centers from companies like C3 AI and Revir Technologies; gun detection software from ZeroEyes; AI-powered police report writing tools from Abel Police and Mark43; surveillance analysis technology from Veritone; and prison communication monitoring systems from Leo Technologies. The marketing approach has been aggressive, with Amazon’s representatives making bold claims about these technologies’ capabilities. In one email to the San Diego County Sheriff’s office regarding Lucidus, Amazon’s law enforcement lead described it as “one of the most amazing tools that I have seen for law enforcement” and suggested that the jail intelligence group would “lose their minds” over its capabilities—a system that reportedly contained more than 120 billion records on individuals, including social security numbers, addresses, and emails.

Amazon’s expansion into law enforcement technology has drawn criticism from privacy advocates who worry about the implications of a corporate giant facilitating widespread surveillance. The ACLU’s senior policy analyst Jay Stanley expressed dismay at seeing “one of the largest and most powerful companies pushing authoritarian surveillance tech,” adding that he hadn’t realized “Amazon was serving as a midwife for AI law enforcement technologies.” The company has previously faced criticism for its facial recognition tools, which have been shown to perform poorly when identifying non-white faces, and for partnerships allowing police to access footage from Ring doorbell cameras. Despite implementing a moratorium on selling Rekognition to police departments in 2020, concerns were raised when Amazon began selling it to the Justice Department last year. Amazon has defended its practices, stating that it recommends police only act on Rekognition face matches with a 95% or higher confidence score and that partnerships like the one between Ring and Axon are designed to “foster a vital connection between our neighbors and public safety agencies.”

From the perspective of law enforcement agencies and technology partners, Amazon’s involvement brings legitimacy and accessibility to new surveillance tools. Ashish Kakkad, chief information officer at San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, told Forbes that his agency views Amazon as an easy conduit to technologies they might not otherwise discover, one that adds a “level of credibility” to the offerings. Similarly, Abel Police cofounder Daniel Francis praised AWS as “wonderful,” noting that they’ve facilitated “multiple introductions to agencies” which has driven interest in Abel’s tool for automatically generating police reports from bodycam footage. Thanks to an introduction from Amazon’s law enforcement lead, Abel Police is now preparing to run a pilot program with San Diego County. This sentiment was echoed by executives at Veritone and Nomad, who highlighted Amazon’s help in connecting them with potential customers both domestically and internationally, with Veritone CEO Ryan Steelberg describing it as “a more collaborative effort for AWS, really pushing hard to try to gain market share in the public sector space.”

Beyond connecting vendors with agencies, Amazon has been actively promoting real-time crime centers and offering assistance with securing government funding. The company has hosted events like the Justice and Public Safety Innovation Day, where it offered tours of existing police surveillance centers to demonstrate their operation. Amazon was also involved in “Project Sherlock,” a C3 AI initiative to centralize surveillance feeds across multiple agencies in San Mateo County, California, which generated over $11 million in revenue despite being delayed. When approaching the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, Amazon’s representative offered to help identify grant opportunities, specifically highlighting California’s $242 million Organized Retail Theft Prevention Grant Program and expressing a desire to “help you get all of it for this modernization stuff.” As Amazon prepares to attend the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Denver this October, where AI is a central focus, it’s taking a more subtle approach to marketing—sponsoring the event’s Wellness Lounge where officers can relax before exploring the various surveillance technologies on display, many of which run on Amazon’s servers. This strategic positioning underscores Amazon’s commitment to becoming an indispensable player in the rapidly evolving landscape of law enforcement technology, blurring the lines between public safety and corporate interests in ways that will likely continue to raise important questions about privacy, surveillance, and the role of tech giants in shaping the future of policing.