> The title is akin to saying "We bought <gun maker>'s hunting rifle, pointed it at Congress, pulled the trigger, and it shot 22 members of Congress". Only if

> The title is akin to saying "We bought <gun maker>'s hunting rifle, pointed it at Congress, pulled the trigger, and it shot 22 members of Congress". Only if <gun maker> was specifically marketing their hunting rifle to be aimed at members of the public, and for the trigger to be frequently pulled. Happily, gun-makers are far more responsible than that. > It's a tool, you're responsible for how it is used, not the manufacturer Not so. Private businesses can refuse to offer services largely as they wish, and AWS frequently do, based on their terms of service. For example, you are not permitted to run a web-scraper or open mail relay on EC2. You are not permitted to host bestiality on S3. None of these things are illegal. But Amazon have taken the stance that they just don't want them to happen on AWS. I am of the view that mass facial recognition poses more problems for society than running web-scrapers. Many civil liberties organizations have serious concerns about the use of facial recognition for law enforcement, including pro-industry organizations such as the EFF[0]. This is not some new reaction; they have had Know Your Customer guidelines about terms for ML for states since 2011[1]. Even competitors who are incentivized to sell facial recognition tech to LEAs are warning that it's a bad idea for society, with serious and likely lethal implications. Here's the CEO of facial recognition startup Kairos[2]. > ...the confidence level would be tweaked by Law Enforcement This is a large part of the problem. If you don't think so, then we simply have very different visions of the future that we want to live in, and must agree to disagree. [0] https://www.eff.org/wp/law-enforcement-use-face-recognition https://www.eff.org/wp/law-enforcement-use-face-recognition [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/it%E2%80%99s-time-know-your-customer-standards-sales-surveillance-equipment https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/it%E2%80%99s-time-know... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/facial-recognition-software-is-not-ready-for-use-by-law-enforcement/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/facial-recognition-softwar...