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Rekognition is a public service and not specific to law enforcement use[1]. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ Discl

Rekognition is a public service and not specific to law enforcement use[1]. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ Disclaimer: I work for AWS.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
>Rekognition is a public service When this is used to track/recognize my face in a crowd what service is it that I'm receiving?
- chadmeister 8y ago
  Targeted Social Engineering Services :)
  - eecc 8y ago
    Using batons and castor oil
- lostlogin 8y ago
  If you are a celebrity: “Celebrity recognition You can quickly identify well known people in your video and image libraries to catalog footage and photos for marketing, advertising, and media industry use cases.” It’s even named with a 1984esque style.
- darawk 8y ago
  You're receiving enhanced public safety.
  - tajen 8y ago
    The public safety of no people having different political opinion, of no people who would want to raise awareness on the problem of Amazon for this instance, because they could cause unsafe words being told to your ears.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Whoa whoa, there. Who said that? Facial recognition is a tool. You seem to be extrapolating some dystopian fantasy from this. The fact that your face can be tracked does not mean your speech will be curtailed, those two things are fairly unrelated. Now, there are real privacy implications to facial recognition and tracking. Serious ones. There are also benefits for law enforcement. Personally, I come down on the side that the privacy is worth more than the benefit to law enforcement. But that doesn't mean that that benefit isn't real.
      - danShumway 8y ago
        > The fact that your face can be tracked does not mean your speech will be curtailed, those two things are fairly unrelated. Anonymity is one of the most effective tools for preserving free speech. If you can't speak anonymously, you're more likely to self censor what you say. If you can't consume information anonymously, you're unlikely to seek out or research unpopular views or ideas. Barring massive social changes that are realistically never going to happen, a world where your identity and actions are always visible is a world without free speech.
        darawk 8y ago
        I agree with some of the principles you're articulating here, but I think the general class of position you're taking here is a bad one. Free speech has an actual meaning. It means the government does not restrict speech. Tracking people does not restrict speech. It may impose a social cost on you for speaking, but it does not prevent you from doing so. Nowhere in the constitution of the United States, nor any constitution that i'm aware of, does it say that you are to be insulated from the social consequences of speaking your mind. Nor do any guarantee the right to anonymity in public spaces. Now, will this have a chilling effect on certain kinds of speech? Most likely, yes. Should we be concerned about that? Probably. But please, do not conflate 'free speech' with 'freedom from social consequences'.
        danShumway 8y ago
- zachm0 8y ago
  You could make a drone that will follow your friends/enemies around and spray them with a super soaker. Use your imagination, the first person to figure out a good answer to your question will probably make a lot of money.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  > When this is used to track/recognize my face in a crowd what service is it that I'm? Fixed that for you.
ljw1001 8y ago
It may be available to be licensed for use in the private sector, but it is hardly a "public service." Without exaggeration, I think it would be closer to the truth to call it a "public menace".
- fisherjeff 8y ago
  I think they may have meant something more like “publicly available service”
  - krick 8y ago
    Sounds almost like "publicly available weapon of mass destruction". Kinda doesn't make me feel at ease with that, for some odd reason…
- Spooky23 8y ago
  That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? With the exception of public figures, they aren’t sharing facial recognition datasets. This is a service that a moderately skilled team could implement with off the shelf and free software or an individual could do with a raspberry pi. Law enforcement has been doing this for a long time in many areas. If there’s an ethical issue here, it’s with machine learning and camera surveillance in general, not Amazon.
  - Gaelan 8y ago
    Amazon is still facilitating it. If you’re selling guns to someone you know is a a serial killer, “someone else would have sold them a gun” is not a defense. Edit: especially if you run ads about how effective your guns are for serial killing.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      There’s a big difference between committing a crime and engaging in lawful commerce. By your standard, HN is on the same level as Amazon, as there have been many articles here over the years describing technical details on how to implement such a system available to anyone. A serial killer may be using a raspberry pi based facial recognition system that he learned about here, right now to stalk a victim. That’s an untenable position.
phyzome 8y ago
So? It's enabling dystopia.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  The facial recognition cat is out of the bag. If AWS is "enabling dystopia", so are Linux and Ethernet.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    Linux and Ethernet do not "Easily add intelligent image and video analysis to your applications."
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      Any image recognition API is likely to heavily rely on them. You can do positive things with Rekognition. You can do dystopian things with it, too. Get AWS to stop doing it and folks will just use GCP and Azure's similar offerings. This is a problem that fundamentally needs government regulation to be successfully addressed.
      - Nullabillity 8y ago
        > You can do positive things with Rekognition. [Citation needed]
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        [Citation provided] The NYT (and C-SPAN, apparently) uses it to identify members of Congress: https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-software-to-recognize-members-of-congress-29b46dd426c7 https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-softwar... Shutterfly is apparently using it for image categorization: http://ir.shutterfly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterfly-goes-all-aws http://ir.shutterfly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...
mtgx 8y ago
It looks like law enforcement was definitely one of their let's say top 3 target markets when they built Rekognition, though. Do know what gives it away? The fact that Amazon is actively pursuing that market and isn't just "allowing anyone to use it freely and equally". No, they're going to law enforcement and showing them Powerpoint presentations, demos, and everything.
- gowld 8y ago
  That reflects where the funded customer base is, not Amazon's preferences. That may be the result of a social reality of what this tech is good for and who is funded to make use of it.
bpchaps 8y ago
Er, read the article. It links this, where the AWS speaker explicitly mentions it's use for law enforcement. https://youtu.be/sUzuJc-xBEE https://youtu.be/sUzuJc-xBEE
ams6110 8y ago
s/disclaimer/disclosure/ Sorry, pet peeve.

Rekognition is a public service and not specific to law enforcement use[1]. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ Disclaimer: I work for AWS.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

>Rekognition is a public service When this is used to track/recognize my face in a crowd what service is it that I'm receiving?

chadmeister 8y ago
Targeted Social Engineering Services :)
- eecc 8y ago
  Using batons and castor oil
lostlogin 8y ago
If you are a celebrity: “Celebrity recognition You can quickly identify well known people in your video and image libraries to catalog footage and photos for marketing, advertising, and media industry use cases.” It’s even named with a 1984esque style.
darawk 8y ago
You're receiving enhanced public safety.
- tajen 8y ago
  The public safety of no people having different political opinion, of no people who would want to raise awareness on the problem of Amazon for this instance, because they could cause unsafe words being told to your ears.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Whoa whoa, there. Who said that? Facial recognition is a tool. You seem to be extrapolating some dystopian fantasy from this. The fact that your face can be tracked does not mean your speech will be curtailed, those two things are fairly unrelated. Now, there are real privacy implications to facial recognition and tracking. Serious ones. There are also benefits for law enforcement. Personally, I come down on the side that the privacy is worth more than the benefit to law enforcement. But that doesn't mean that that benefit isn't real.
    - danShumway 8y ago
      > The fact that your face can be tracked does not mean your speech will be curtailed, those two things are fairly unrelated. Anonymity is one of the most effective tools for preserving free speech. If you can't speak anonymously, you're more likely to self censor what you say. If you can't consume information anonymously, you're unlikely to seek out or research unpopular views or ideas. Barring massive social changes that are realistically never going to happen, a world where your identity and actions are always visible is a world without free speech.
      - darawk 8y ago
        I agree with some of the principles you're articulating here, but I think the general class of position you're taking here is a bad one. Free speech has an actual meaning. It means the government does not restrict speech. Tracking people does not restrict speech. It may impose a social cost on you for speaking, but it does not prevent you from doing so. Nowhere in the constitution of the United States, nor any constitution that i'm aware of, does it say that you are to be insulated from the social consequences of speaking your mind. Nor do any guarantee the right to anonymity in public spaces. Now, will this have a chilling effect on certain kinds of speech? Most likely, yes. Should we be concerned about that? Probably. But please, do not conflate 'free speech' with 'freedom from social consequences'.
        danShumway 8y ago
zachm0 8y ago
You could make a drone that will follow your friends/enemies around and spray them with a super soaker. Use your imagination, the first person to figure out a good answer to your question will probably make a lot of money.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> When this is used to track/recognize my face in a crowd what service is it that I'm? Fixed that for you.

ljw1001 8y ago

It may be available to be licensed for use in the private sector, but it is hardly a "public service." Without exaggeration, I think it would be closer to the truth to call it a "public menace".

fisherjeff 8y ago
I think they may have meant something more like “publicly available service”
- krick 8y ago
  Sounds almost like "publicly available weapon of mass destruction". Kinda doesn't make me feel at ease with that, for some odd reason…
Spooky23 8y ago
That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? With the exception of public figures, they aren’t sharing facial recognition datasets. This is a service that a moderately skilled team could implement with off the shelf and free software or an individual could do with a raspberry pi. Law enforcement has been doing this for a long time in many areas. If there’s an ethical issue here, it’s with machine learning and camera surveillance in general, not Amazon.
- Gaelan 8y ago
  Amazon is still facilitating it. If you’re selling guns to someone you know is a a serial killer, “someone else would have sold them a gun” is not a defense. Edit: especially if you run ads about how effective your guns are for serial killing.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    There’s a big difference between committing a crime and engaging in lawful commerce. By your standard, HN is on the same level as Amazon, as there have been many articles here over the years describing technical details on how to implement such a system available to anyone. A serial killer may be using a raspberry pi based facial recognition system that he learned about here, right now to stalk a victim. That’s an untenable position.

phyzome 8y ago

So? It's enabling dystopia.

ceejayoz 8y ago
The facial recognition cat is out of the bag. If AWS is "enabling dystopia", so are Linux and Ethernet.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Linux and Ethernet do not "Easily add intelligent image and video analysis to your applications."
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Any image recognition API is likely to heavily rely on them. You can do positive things with Rekognition. You can do dystopian things with it, too. Get AWS to stop doing it and folks will just use GCP and Azure's similar offerings. This is a problem that fundamentally needs government regulation to be successfully addressed.
    - Nullabillity 8y ago
      > You can do positive things with Rekognition. [Citation needed]
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        [Citation provided] The NYT (and C-SPAN, apparently) uses it to identify members of Congress: https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-software-to-recognize-members-of-congress-29b46dd426c7 https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-softwar... Shutterfly is apparently using it for image categorization: http://ir.shutterfly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterfly-goes-all-aws http://ir.shutterfly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...

mtgx 8y ago

It looks like law enforcement was definitely one of their let's say top 3 target markets when they built Rekognition, though. Do know what gives it away? The fact that Amazon is actively pursuing that market and isn't just "allowing anyone to use it freely and equally". No, they're going to law enforcement and showing them Powerpoint presentations, demos, and everything.

gowld 8y ago
That reflects where the funded customer base is, not Amazon's preferences. That may be the result of a social reality of what this tech is good for and who is funded to make use of it.

bpchaps 8y ago

Er, read the article. It links this, where the AWS speaker explicitly mentions it's use for law enforcement. https://youtu.be/sUzuJc-xBEE https://youtu.be/sUzuJc-xBEE

ams6110 8y ago

s/disclaimer/disclosure/ Sorry, pet peeve.