President Donald Trump’s recent Twitter activity includes retweeting his former director of national intelligence call to ban Microsoft Corp. from federal government contracts. This is due to the company’s refusal to sell facial recognition software to the U.S. police department.
Acting DNI Richard Grenell tweet says: “They should now be barred from federal government contracts – there should be consequences for not selling technology to police departments.”
The tweet was in response to ACLU’s post regarding Microsoft refusing to sell its facial recognition software in light of the police’s fight against protesters.
On Thursday, Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said that they wouldn’t sell their facial recognition software to the U.S. police department until the laws governing the use of the technology are in place. “Given that, we’ve decided we will not sell facial recognition to police departments in the U.S. until we have a national law in place grounded in human rights that will govern this technology,” says Smith in a virtual conference with Washington Post posted on Twitter.
As per writing, Microsoft stock is up 1.39 points to $187.63 per share.
