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Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police
- mantas 8y agoYeah, better waste public $$$ by forcing government to create in-house solution
- v_lisivka 8y agoBut, it will be open-source, which is good.
- nodesocket 8y agoUntil you are a victim of a crime and facial recognition helps to find the perpetrator and you suddenly change your mind. > The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE’s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services And... I can tell this post is going to be west-coast extreme liberal biased.
- kochthesecond 8y agoAnd if your daughter was murdered, you want them dead. That is not how we made our legislation work.
- nodesocket 8y agoMost people want justice, thus the police to find the murderer, arrest them, and bring them in front of a judge or jury for their due punishment. Limiting the polices technology and resources is an argument that doesn't make sense to me. Especially coming from open source advocates. Smells of hypocrisy.
- hef19898 8y agoYes, it kind of does. See, you want tech in place that can easily turn into mass-surveillance to catch a criminal you have been a victim of. And you want him punished. So, for both things are laws i. place, exactly to get these emotions out of the picture.
- hueving 8y agoOpen source has nothing to do with data. If you think open source people don't care about privacy you know nothing about open source. People want justice, but they also want individual liberties to not be violated. Particularly in the US the Constitution is filled with stuff to keep a government seeking 'justice' from getting out of control.
- andun 8y agoI'm with you. Never mind the leftist narrative of HN. You fight the good fight.
- detaro 8y agoSince when is "limiting the powers of the state" a "leftist narrative"? Because that what it boils down to.
- andun 8y agoThe argument usually is "this will be used to target minorities/dissidents/illegal immigrants"
- Majestic121 8y agoThe typical 'leftist narrative' is a nanny state over-using its power to censor alt-right to protect 'minorities/dissidents/illegal immigrants'. I'd place 'less government power' as more of a rightist narrative (see gun control for example)
- ckocagil 8y agoIt's very ironic that you're defending China's position on mass surveillance tech while complaining about leftists.
- grondilu 8y ago> That is not how we made our legislation work. Wasn't it, though? I mean, laws are ultimately decided by vote (directly or indirectly). People are free to agree or not with death penalty, but it's hard to deny that being personally affected by a crime can influence our opinions on the subject. That's why death penalty still exists in several states. Same with facial recognition tech. Despite the legitimate concerns about potential abuse from a government, people can acknowledge that it is an extremely valuable tool for crime investigation and thus law enforcement. So in the end, it all depends on how bad people want an efficient police, and that can definitely depend on our individual experiences with crime.
- hueving 8y ago>Until you are a victim of a crime and facial recognition helps to find the perpetrator and you suddenly change your mind. Appeal to fear. Why is it you think that justification doesn't work for illegal search and seizure?
- andun 8y agoIf "someone might commit a crime and facial recognition could help find the perpetrator" is appeal to fear, the argument of "nobody ever commits a crime so why would you ever want the police to have facial recognition" is appeal to living in a fantasy world.
- sureaboutthis 8y agoIn the same way, not wanting to let the police have this technology due to concern of surveillance is appealing to fear. People forget that, in the USA at least, the police investigate and pursue crimes that have already been committed. They do NOT pursue crimes that have not happened and do NOT scan for people who have not committed a crime. As you all should know, license plate scanners, for example, are looking for specific plates of people who have already committed crimes.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago>The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE’s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services The number one thing that will make large companies reject cloud computing is any hint that why will be kicked off because their legal business goes against the mores of the US West coast tech workers. If Palantir gets kicked off, how long until these same workers call for banning Boeing. A lot of these large conglomerates have at least a division that is involved in the defense industry. A final point. If you think that facial recognition is too dangerous to sell to police, why are you selling this dangerous technology to corporations where the potential for abuse is still there but with less oversight? Also, if. the police can’t buy this technology, they will buy the service from a middle man that buys it from Amazon.
- freeone3000 8y agoCorporations are overseen by the government. The government is in the unique position of having the monopoly of force. If a company turns bad, the government protects us. If the government turns bad, things get very bad.
- hugh-avherald 8y agoI doubt that any of the four sentences above are true in reality.
- jcoffland 8y agoAmazon is in it for the money. Appearing to be socially just is part of the marketing plan. Corporations are as much the problem as governments. But of course most the people here work for corporations.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoHN is a forum for startup founders and entrepreneurs.
- ta_egdhs 8y agoconstitutional rights (and a culture that enshrines them as sacred) is just one layer of protection for civil liberties. The other, Often overlooked layer is the fact that running a dystopian state is uneconomical. For better or worse this is the logic used by gun advocates, but it should also apply to other areas. technology can make it feasible to scale repression like never before. facial recognition, big data, centralized Electronic banking are all enormously powerful tools in the wrong hands. the guns of the 21st century are those made by the subversive cypherpunk. cryptocurrency and encrypted chat come to mind. In China the number one tool to oppose state censorship is not protest, its a vpn. at the end of the day if amazon doesn't do this someone else will. so long as the tech is possible the gov will get their hands on it, and so far as the tech errodes civil liberties it eventually will be used to do so. Amazon can only hold back the tide for so long.
- xg15 8y ago> technology can make it feasible to scale repression like never before. facial recognition, big data, centralized Electronic banking are all enormously powerful tools in the wrong hands What would be the "right" hands?
- mprev 8y agoPresumably those that wouldn't use it. If we accept that those technologies have upsides, then the "right hands" would be those that don't take advantage of the downsides.
- tolien 8y agoThe argument I think you’re alluding to is that rather than employees petitioning Amazon not to sell the government facial recognition technology, they should petition for Amazon (among others) to lobby government to restrict its use (data retention limits would be a start, I guess). If nothing else, that would probably be more effective.
- ta_egdhs 8y agowhat I'm saying is we should assume that whatever mass surveillance mechanisms the government is trying to buy, it will eventually buy and whatever legal safeguards there are to protect us will eventually fail. what I'm calling for is the individual to be "armed" with adversarial patches or whatever other tool it is that confounds facial recognition sytems. the only thing which is long term effective is a population which can and does resist. VPNs, encryption, cryptocurrency, and a bunch of other tech (existing and under research) will be the safeguard when all else fails.
- product50 8y agoWon't the tech be built regardless of Amazon? It is either SV companies help with it and reduce costs or else blood-suckers such as IBM will come in with their contracts and low tech but costly solutions..
- hueving 8y agoMake up your mind, will the solution work if IBM makes it? If so, then it's not really low tech. If not, then Amazon staying out of the game did exactly the right thing because all of the capable people abstained.
- product50 8y agoI mean, it can work but not perfectly. For face recognition tech, accuracy matters and my hypothesis is that Amazon could do better vs. IBM. And Amazon doing it could be much cheaper and better. The taxpayers money will be spent regardless and in one case it would be more efficient.
- hueving 8y agoIf it's inaccurate it's a failure or it won't be widely deployed. It's idiotic to make a perfect surveillance machine using the excuse that, if you don't, someone will make a crappy one. This is about it being an unethical thing to make, not wasting taxpayer money. The optimal outcome is that it is a complete failure and the government learns not to do it again.
- mackrevinack 8y agoprobably, but the problem is that the people at amazon signed up to do X and now they are being asked to do Y. if they had joined a company specifically to do Y then it wouldn't be an issue
- gaius 8y agoWhat is X tho’? Exploiting minimum wage warehouse workers? Shipping counterfeit goods? Industrial scale tax shenanigans? Adtech? They were OK with all of this, remember.
- User23 8y ago"If we want to lead, we need to make a choice between people and profits." As an AMZN shareholder, I pick profits. Well, growth actually.
- dwb 8y agoHow do you justify this ethically?
- mrweasel 8y agoYou're not legally required to, so you don't have to. My government actively engages in different military operations around the world, even if I may disagree. For "ethical" reason the bank managing my pension fund refuse to invest in companies supplying the military my government use for missions I disagree with. So I have mixed feelings about mixing ethics and business.
- dwb 8y agoI realise you don't have to; it is usual for conversational answers to not be legally mandated. What a weird thing to say. Also quite weird is having "feelings" about mixing ethics and business. Businesses have effects on people's material reality, and businesses are staffed by people, whose actions can very legitimately be analysed by ethical positions. The "mixing" is there whether or not you have feelings about it.
- abc-xyz 8y agoIf given the choice between (1) increasing their personal wealth by 1% + tech that will violate billions of people's rights and result in the death of millions, or (2) no increase in wealth + no surveillance tech, then I'm afraid a disheartening large percentage will pick option 1 and find a naive and shortsighted way to justify their decision.
- tokyodude 8y agoFortunately that's not the choice being presented. The choice being presented is developing a tech that has just as many positive uses as negative just like many things. Cars can carry people or weapons. Knives can be used to cut food or stab people. Facial recognition can be used to stop crime or harass.
- throw2016 8y agoThis is where the free market system falls apart. It has no opinion on ethics, only profits. Companies are put together to produce, market and sell surveillance tech to schools, corporates, communities, the police and even nation states. Individual ethics are meaningless beyond signalling against a system. Individual components may have ethical concerns but the system is incentivized to grow and it has. Imagine walking into a group of sales or engineering folks celebrating a new deal or release at a restaurant and berating them on 'surveillance and ethics'. That shows you the dissonance of your expectation and the disconnect of ethical concerns from businesses. And the impotence of individual ethics in a system. The only thing that can counter this are explicit laws against this kind of damaging behavior and rule of law. Individuals are not allowed to do whatever gets them profit, they have to operate within ethical constraints, to advocate businesses not operate in an ethical context and to leave everything to markets is advocating lawlessness. And the system does respond in some cases like in drones, 3d printing of guns. Those are not free for all. Surveillance is a failure of regulation.
- hazz99 8y agoI strongly disagree. Regulation and a free market can definitely coincide, we don't have to be so absolutist in our economic opinion. Similarly, a nation having welfare and universal healthcare doesn't mean they're communist. It's not one-or-the-other. Europe has a much freer market than the US, and also has much stronger protections on personal privacy, a la GDPR. > Individuals are not allowed to do whatever gets them profit, they have to operate within ethical constraints, to advocate businesses not operate in an ethical context and to leave everything to markets is advocating lawlessness. Most Libertarian thought espouses this belief, and they are all-in on capitalism. Capitalism != immorality You likely believe this from examining the behavior of US companies. The US market is not very "free" at all - it is heavily regulated, with the government propping up unethical, failing, non-innovative corporations.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago> This is where the free market system falls apart. It has no opinion on ethics, only profits. "We won't sell this technology to anyone who wants to use it to oppress people even though we could make a huge amount of money doing so" seems to suggest otherwise.
- gaius 8y agoThis technology is the very definition of dual-use. There’s fundamentally no difference between a tool that can do “cat or not cat” and one for “terrorist or not terrorist”. The only difference is that people using for the latter probably don’t understand its failure modes and are taking its output very, very seriously.
- yAnonymous 8y agoI'm decidedly against government surveillance, but it feels like our government are deliberately inviting crime to further the needs and arguments for complete surveillance. Now that violent attacks against the police and emergency services, stabbings, rape, murder and generally a complete refusal to accept the law become more common, I'm at the point where unsolved crime bothers me more than protecting people's privacy, so it evidently works. It's ironic how the people who want open borders are creating their own dystopian future, but are too short-sighted to realize how they're being used. In the end, the borders will be closed and we'll end up with not only a lot more problems and surveillance that none of us wanted, but the net result of people being better/worse off will also be negative.
- planb 8y ago> Now that violent attacks against the police and emergency services, stabbings, rape, murder and generally a complete refusal to accept the law become more common [...] Citation needed.
- yAnonymous 8y agoWhich one do you want citations for? These are all publicly accepted problems by now, so I'm not going to do a writeup for all of them just because one person asks for it. Your downvotes change nothing, by the way. This is not a sinister outlook, it's already happening right now and I'm provably right. We get more police and they get more permissions, including broader surveillance, and they're looking to adopt tasers like in the U.S. The last few years did this and hardly anyone is arguing it anymore. The surveillance state you don't want is coming, and you are the reason.
- bun_at_work 8y agoOP is asking for citations regarding the rise in crime you referred to. Understand - crime rates have been going down historically. Things are not getting worse, they are getting better. While that doesn't mean everything is OK yes, crime is going down. Therefore, your argument for increased surveillance because of increased crime is wrong. In short, crime is getting better, not worse, and your argument for increased surveillance is the one given to you by those who already want increased surveillance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/dec/04/jeff-sessions/violent-crime-some-still-well-historical-highs/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/dec... https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/homicide-rate-1950-2014 https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/homicide-rate-1950-2014
- Rainymood 8y agoHopefully my opinion is not controversial but the tech behind this is really cool. It is equally easy to imagine a future where this tech is helpful and beneficial for all society. It is also equally easy to imagine a dystopian future where this tech is used by evil authoritarian governments. I am personally very conflicted on this issue because the tech is really cool (actual big data machine learning/CV) but can be used extremely unethically at the same time. It's like a razor sharp double-sided blade.
- finnthehuman 8y agoBut you’re not describing a double sided blade (that “cuts both ways”), you’re saying that sword making is cool.
- tokyodude 8y agoHow is it not a double sided blade. Better surveillance would catch and/or possibly stop car thieves, bike thieves, muggers, vandals, robberies, some rapes, life threatening drivers, hit and run drivers, bad cops. I get that there's no magic wand to make sure the tech is only used for good but that's true of pretty much everything. Knives can be used to cut food or to stab people.
- Rainymood 8y agoTo follow up on this, I actually had a philosophical debate with myself about the following statement: "Anything that can be used for good, can be used for evil." The point I'm trying to make is that by inventing something "good", you can always use it for "evil" by witholding it from someone. You invent a new medicine to cure cancer? Give it to the highest bidder and leave those who can't pay for it to die, this could be seen as "evil" in my eyes. I haven't studied philosophy so I'd love some pointers to authors who touch upon this subject or whatever its called.
- harryf 8y agoI guess Bezos sees this as a strategic play to leapfrog Facebook on knowing who everyone is.
- sudhirj 8y agoThis is FUD - AWS, as opposed to Amazon the e-commerce company, has pretty strict walls between itself and the data of its customers. In these cases the data is owned by the police department and AWS or Amazon won’t be allowed to use or profit from it. Unless there’s some kind of special agreement in exchange for a discount, which I doubt very much.
- pulse7 8y agoSuch tools and technologies WILL be used - regardless if it's legal or illegal. They will be used at least in HIDDEN ways by security agencies in - at least - some places on the earth...
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoWhen it comes to enabling domestic surveillance there is too much focus on Amazon/Google/etc and too little focus on the voters and city governments that seem to be perfectly ok with their police departments engaging in this sort of crap. This is like blaming whatever company makes M113s when they wind up in the hands of local police. Now, I don't consider Amazon or the bureaucrats who are rubber stamping the paperwork for APCs to be blameless but they're definitely not the root cause. The fact that there is a domestic market for this crap it the root of problem. This is also something that voters have a lot of power to chance because it's a city/town level issue and while it's getting cheaper all the time implementing a surveillance state still is still expensive so there's an avenue to drum up bipartisan support for not doing it.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoBest thing to do about it is limit the reach of your message with a paywall.
- cproctor 8y agoI applaud the authors of this letter. It's an open question whether an open, democratic society can exist in the world of computational media. If it can, we'll either need a well-educated citizenry or a benevolent oligarchy of people who are skilled, knowledgeable, and wise in the use of computers. We have done a lousy job of ethical political leadership so far, preoccupying ourselves with profitably dismantling what's left of the old paradigm. I would love to see more folks in tech running for office.
- flomble 8y agoWhen I picture a person in tech successfully running for office, I imagine precisely someone who has excelled at "profitably dismantling what's left of the old paradigm". Unfortunately, technical ability, business savvy, ability to understand social, political and bureaucratic systems in motion and strong, reasonable ethical convictions are all mostly orthogonal and rare qualities.
- rl3 8y agoWhat happens when they combine this with image enhancement powered by deep learning?
- SilkRoadie 8y agoIsn't this already what private companies are doing? Google and Facebook especially have the ability to create huge profiles about your life and activities. They could almost certainly make highly productive models on people's activity. The concern about facial recognition and deep learning should be about its use in general. Perhaps I am fortunate with where I live. I am far more concerned about technologies use with private companies than I am with the local police.
- faceplanted 8y agoLegally, not much, machine learning image enhancement is essentially probabilistically guessing the inbetween pixels of an image, if you use it for actual work and not art you're just asking to have your evidence thrown out of court and run into the same misrecognition problems humans face.
- rl3 8y agoI agree it seems absurd on the face of it (forgive me), but with enhancement techniques going mainstream elsewhere, I could see it happening with surveillance applications. Sure, the false positive rate will go up, but it might help generate legitimate matches that otherwise crack cases even if the recognition footage itself can't be relied upon in an evidentiary capacity. Speaking of, Pixel 3's new enhancement feature[0] is now mainstream. If these end up mistaken for originals, it opens up an evidentiary Pandora's box. Then again, much poorer quality image enhancement has been around forever now (e.g. "digital zoom"). [0] https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/see-better-and-further-with-super-res.html?m=1 https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/see-better-and-further-wit...
- ENOTTY 8y ago> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build technology to oppress and kill people, whether in our country or in others. That is the whole point of having armed forces! Armed forces exist to provide achieve foreign policy goals (deterrence, coercion) through the credible threat of its lethality. These two sentences are fundamentally pacifist, which is okay if the author claimed that mantle. But don't dress it up with a fake unifying clause like "regardless of our views on the military".
- chrisseaton 8y agoMaybe ‘profiting’ was the key bit? Maybe they think it’s ok for the government to build weapon systems but not for civilians to profit from doing that same work? But then can suppliers profit? Is a salary profit for an individual? Not really sure it ‘scales’ as an point of view.
- dandare 8y agoI agree. Even if your doctrine is purely defensive you show develop in efficient, profit seeking framework. Question the doctrie, not the efficiency.
- TelmoMenezes 8y ago> If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. That doesn't follow. One can believe in the utility of the military while at the same time holding that it must operate purely as a public service, so that no incentives are created for a state of permanent war. Famously, an American president expressed this very concern. I doubt that Dwight Eisenhower did not believe in the utility of the military, given that he was a general.
- ENOTTY 8y ago
- neom 8y agoIf I understand correctly, Amazon employees want Amazon to police the police with respect to ethics? Wouldn't lobbying government and educating the public work better?
- elicash 8y agoI only know about this issue because of these Amazon employees. So I'd say they were QUITE effective at educating the public by taking this stand. We spend half our waking lives at our workplace, and the places we work are often tremendously powerful. The idea that you shouldn't take action as employees seems like giving up a tremendous amount of opportunity at creating change.
- edoo 8y agoI wonder if an argument could be made that this violates the 4th amendment right to be free from unseasonable search. Collecting your travel movements automatically without cause might apply. It is an interesting problem because there is no expectation of privacy in public. If you venture into public the police or anyone can stake you out and take pictures of you. Devices that do this are just an efficiency increase. The true root of the issue might be whether the government has a right to collect information about you at all. Before taxes about 100 years ago they really had no reason to.
- sys_64738 8y agoThis is no different than a spotter LEO or witness recognizing you from a mugshot or from video surveillance. It's just that it's done with EVERYBODY now.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y agoBut scale is an important difference in legality and morality. Consider the following example. Calling someone to ask them on a date is normal acceptable behavior. Doing it 20 times an hour, 3 hours a day, every day, quickly becomes immoral and illegal.
- 0xfeba 8y ago> Calling someone to ask them on a date is normal acceptable behavior. Doing it 20 times an hour, 3 hours a day, every day, quickly becomes immoral and illegal. Not if you're calling different people, totally legal.
- sys_64738 8y agoAt some point it has to change from legal to illegal. That is, with n calls then you're still legal but that n+1th call makes you a felon. What is n? What is n for facial rekognition?
- anticensor 8y ago
- jopsen 8y agoAs a personal investor I hold a few Amazon stocks (yes, not much, but I have a small bet on Amazon). Nevertheless, I see a huge risk to doing this kind of business. Short term there might be profit, but long term it hurts your brand with consumers and erodes trust. A consumer dependent company like Amazon should avoid getting into ethical issues. Because it limits long term growth. At least that's my two cents.
- macspoofing 8y ago>but long term it hurts your brand with consumers and erodes trust In crazy circles maybe. I'm not seeing any sort of backlash against the military as Americans generally have a very positive view of it.
- SauciestGNU 8y agoI think it's disingenuous to call anyone opposed to persistent surveillance and the military "crazy". There are numerous reasons people would be opposed to those institutions and practices. And the more abused those things are, the more people will likely oppose them.
- macspoofing 8y ago>I think it's disingenuous to call anyone opposed to persistent surveillance and the military "crazy" I didn't label people who are against 'persistent surveillance' as crazy. I don't know why you attributed that to me. Though I will state that there is nothing wrong with an American company providing services to the American government. If you hate 'persistent surveillance' look to Congress, not contractors. To extend my point to the military, it is unreasonable to label an American company providing services to the American military as intrinsically unethical.
- jopsen 8y agoIn the long run the US isn't the only market. > I'm not seeing any sort of backlash against the military as Americans generally have a very positive view of it. That might be true. But the military is many things, serving is in many ways honorable, creating weapons from behind a desk -- not so much. Regardless, in the long run we are likely to see the end of armed conflicts. Investment in military tech will likely drop. That might take 20 years, or it might take 200 years. But war doesn't create economic growth, why bother getting involved?
- kodablah 8y ago> Amazon, where I work, is currently allowing police departments around the country to purchase its facial recognition product, Rekognition, and I and other employees demand that we stop immediately. Ok, nod, nod... > The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE's deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services and to institute employee oversight for ethical decisions. Nope, lost me. These should not be lumped together for a myriad of reasons. First, you are diluting your original goal. Second, you risk AWS being seen as non-neutral based on the whims of employees' feelings about a company (as opposed to something illegal). Third, you cannot be consistent with this approach (e.g. all the gov cloud stuff). Fourth, there is a clear delineation between computing services like AWS and targeted software efforts like facial recognition systems, like the difference between a phone company and a weapons manufacturer. Fifth, AWS is not value added enough nor can it see enough of what's going on with its customers for this to be any more than virtue signalling. If you want to ban companies you disagree with from AWS, I disagree with it, but at least separate the requests. The Google employees you are following in the footsteps of are not demanding that Android calling be disabled for certain companies or Google search be restricted from use by them. Maybe Amazon should also not ship any products to that company too?
- dragontamer 8y agoThe real issue is that the leader of ICE / Military / etc. etc. change power roughly... every 4 years. Police is a local issue, and may change closer to every 2 years (although local municipalities may have a Sheriff, or a Commission, or may rely upon a Mayor to make those decisions). We already have a mechanism for choosing the leader of these various institutions. And whatever powers we give to these institutions, we have to recognize that they will change leadership as quickly as a single election. Ultimately, it should be a political issue... first and foremost. We may not have the best political system possible, but its the best that we all can agree to. As such, we should rely upon the culture of this country to provide us the leaders who we would be proud to give these powers to.
- sdenton4 8y agoSo people have been separated from their children should just wait for the American people to maaaaaaybe kick out the jackboots in two to four years? Naw, dawg, when things get ugly, you have to resist where you can. I'm guessing you can't agree, but there's a fair number of people who think we're in a Germany 1937 situation. We have a president who in all likelihood enlisted Russian interference in the election, who shares plenty of rhetorical similarity to actual fascists. We have a Congress that is moving as fast as it can to stack the judiciary, which in turn will hear future election cases. Things are getting grim. I've lived and worked in places where these processes have played out - like Hungary - and anyone who says it can't happen here is kidding themselves.
- exabrial 8y agoAlso please stop voting to fund these projects. Local and national budgets are way bigger than they need to be as is to provide the basic necessities of society and anything charitable is best handled independently; not through the government.
- exabrial 8y agoI would say appeal to the Constitution: facial recognition violates a person's 4th Amendment rights. But alas, both liberal and conservatives have weakened the 1st Amendment to be "only speech we agree with", the 2nd to "Only squirt guns", and the 5th/14th doesn't apply to accusations from 38 years ago.
- krapp 8y ago>But alas, both liberal and conservatives have weakened the 1st Amendment to be "only speech we agree with", the 2nd to "Only squirt guns", and the 5th/14th doesn't apply to accusations from 38 years ago. Meaningless hyperbole.
- jetti 8y ago>facial recognition violates a person's 4th Amendment rights. Does it really though? Has there been any sort of court cases confirming this?
- claydavisss 8y agoEventually all the tech CEOs will reach the same conclusion: the company cannot be run by mob rule.
- turdnagel 8y agoStopping facial recognition tech is not the solve. The problem is surveillance - that’s what we ought to address.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoAgreed. Software doesn't run oppressive surveillance states. People run oppressive surveillance states.
- throwaway2048 8y agoThus absolving the people who are building the surveillance state, some nice self serving logic.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThe technology that makes up the surveillance state can be used for good and evil. Your bank can profile you in order to detect someone who isn't you trying to commit fraud by pretending to be you or the ATF can kick down your door and shoot your dog because you made the mistake of buying fertilizer in bulk and renting a truck to go pick it up. I used to work on tech that could be very useful for someone trying to drop bombs. Our implementation was part of a package that was used defensively, mostly to give the guys on the ground a heads up if someone was speeding toward their checkpoint (go watch some ISIS VBIED videos if you think a few seconds heads up isn't a huge help). I can shoot someone who breaks into my home (or better yet, nobody breaks into my home when it's common knowledge that most people have the ability to shoot back) or I can shoot someone for illegally dumping a mattress in my alley. How you use technology really does matter a lot more than the tech itself.
- onemoresoop 8y agoThats similar to "guns dont kill people, people do". But the more guns are available the more people are being killed. Similar with this story, the more the facial recongition technology evolves (without ethical considerations) the more the surveillance states accomplish their jobs
- stevespang 8y ago> We will not silently build technology to oppress and kill people, whether in our country or in others. Country Joe McDonald at Woodstock on You Tube: "Come on all of you big strong men Uncle Sam needs your help again he's got himself in a terrible jam way down yonder in Viet Nam so put down your books and pick up a gun we're gonna have a whole lotta fun . . . . Hey students . . just agree to sign on with the US military, travel to foreign lands and murder foreigners in exchange for a shot at the GI Bill, we'll pay for your education (if you survive) you'll have a great chance at a lifelong guilt trip, suicidal depression and shame for being a paid Gov't sponsored "hitman", but heck, if you're gonna play, sometimes you gotta pay - - - with your life or your mental health. This is what the US politicians have achieved with the student loan situation. In Europe many university tuitions are free or very low cost,their kids are not coerced to take up arms and kill people, but in the US we have a "student loan crisis" where graduates with less desires to murder foreigners are in debt $30K to $40K or more for college tuition, many of them liberal arts degrees which may never allow them to pay back the debt. Default rates are already hovering at 10%. In the US we're creating a force of "un-natural born killers" exiting our foreign conflicts and undeclared wars, too many coming home to roam around with PTSD, shame, guilt and depression, the VA hospitals just putting them on questionable drugs, and some ending up in newspaper headlines for killing innocent Americans on American soil if they don't commit suicide first.
- bsenftner 8y agoClick bait journalism. Pointless article. Bad journalism tricking you for ad dollars with nonsense. I am a lead software scientist in the Facial Recognition industry. Amazon's ‘Rekognition’ service is a sad, expensive joke. No body takes that software serious. It is poor quality. It is expensive. It is marketed to the consumer public for Amazon's stock, not for actual serious FR use. It is not appropriate for any serious FR use. It's a toy. I'll say that again for those in the back: it's a TOY, expensive and hardly works.
- Pfhreak 8y agoYou have a lot of experience in the industry, and are able to make your own evaluations of a product based on (I'm guessing) years and years of daily interaction with that domain. Do you think police departmant purchasers are as well informed as you are?Able to make the same thorough analysis? What happens when a facial recognition product that you believe performs poorly is used and everyone thinks it performs well? (Hey, we made all these arrests based off this product, it's really working well for us!)
- bsenftner 8y agoPolice departments are not well informed at all; and they are the constant targets of manipulative, fact-free marketing. Thank gawd they can't just go out and purchase any security / surveillance technology they fancy. Typically a trial / vetting period is used to test a given system for accuracy as well as ability to integrate with existing systems, plus the over all expense of operating the system over time. This is when Rekognition falls down, because the accuracy is too wide, the system requires human operators to make up for the lack of accuracy. Then the monthly is expensive to use it is high. Plus there is a perceptual disconnect officers have with the FR system operators required to maintain Rekognition: these operators more or less become FR specialists, with salaries to match, but their actual moment to moment work is closer to a security guard, with their technological knowledge only needed for moments at a time. Police department Directors have a hard time justifying these new roles, in light of the multiple new high expenses required to use Rekognition.
- bsenftner 8y ago
- Shivetya 8y agoI am of the opinion that facial recognition technology is a good tool to produce and sell to the police provided it is burdened with significant regulation to prevent abuse. this includes short term expiration of all imagery gathered, access by public warrant only, and full public auditing. the reason I am of this view is that if can reduce the impact of the police on innocent people the better and I think that a system which can eliminate people as suspects is the true value here. anything that stops the nonsense or need of no knock warrants and other brutality the police have been caught doing. the face id tech should work both ways, identify the police and policed.
- allthecybers 8y agoThis argument conflates a number of issues and frankly loses steam on that basis. The running list of demands so far: Don’t sell facial recognition, don’t work with the government, kick a paying customer off of your system because of who they provide services to and while we are at it you shouldn’t be working with anyone I don’t like. Is that it? For now, but check back with me cause I might want to add greedy investment firms to the list or any other villain of the moment. I really find it odd that all of a sudden tech employees are resistant to supporting their own government. If it’s about the current administration - they are gonna be gone in a couple years and you want another admin to be years behind in capability? The reason the internet and the tech industry as a whole exists at this point is because of the defense technology complex. If this really bothered people they would leave the nice paycheck and the perks and go work for a co-op or a non profit or some other organization untouched by anything unsavory.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- spamizbad 8y agoA balance is going to have to be found here. A nightmare scenario for technology is one where it’s perceived as boot-licky and enabling the worst parts of government. Finding talent was hard even when tech was perceived as good or at least neutral; if it’s seen as an imperialist cog or even just an enabler for our governments bad behaviors it will make developing organizations even harder.
- fixermark 8y agoWill it? Or will it make developing the wrong type of organization harder? I'm not clear if you're predicting a drought of Computer Science students or a drought of Fortune 500 company computer science hiring candidates.
- ovi256 8y agoThis talent scenario is a plausible one that could turn the balance from huge companies taking all the oxygen out of the system towards smaller ones being able to innovate again.
- CoryG89 8y agoI don't personally have a problem with Amazon selling tech to police or militaries. I would, however have a problem working for Amazon while not realizing that my work is being directly utilized by the military. If I'm gonna sell out to the war machine, I want to at least make that decision myself ahead of time.
- M_Bakhtiari 8y agoI wish these people wouldn't automatically assume everyone who reads their articles are Americans or otherwise intimately familiar with US institutions. What exactly is it that ICE does that is so bad?
- forgottenpass 8y agoThey're a country-wide law enforcement agency for immigration law (ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement). A big issue in our current politics is immigration policy, and there are segments of our population that dislike the current law so strongly they believe it should be go unenforced until the legislature writes an immigration law that they do like. A lot of the dislike towards ICE is pointing out the harsh reality of any law enforcement agency ("putting people in cages", etc...), and holding that against them in the context of policy they dislike. Edit: I'm trying to state this plainly for an outsider without showing my hand on our immigration policy. Even for a less-heated topic (e.g., obvious parallels with federal marijuana laws, selective enforcement thereof, and oft-abused LE powers both mundane and created specifically for the war on drugs) I'd frame it the same way.
- M_Bakhtiari 8y agoI see. Thanks for the explanation. That’s a cause I can get behind, it would be handy for myself and my countrymen to be able to enter the US without a visa. Abolishing the equivalent border enforcement agency of Iran, not so much.
- burger_moon 8y agoI think it's important to note this person has to remain anonymous just to voice their concerns about the their employer > This person, who has spoken with me on the condition that their name not be revealed for fear of professional retribution This is not how an workplace environment should be. Don't one of Amazon's leadership principals talk about being vocally self-critical? Yet they drive such a fear mongering culture where unless you're making soft complaints you have to be silent or anonymous for fear of being fired.
- zdragnar 8y agoI think there's a difference between speaking up internally and bad-mouthing your employer in public (especially to the press). I can't think of any company that would let that slide.
- burger_moon 8y agoYou would consider this article bad mouthing amazon? The way I interpret 'bad mouthing' is saying things which are false, or misrepresenting what Amazon is does. I don't think the author made any misrepresentations of what Amazon is doing with their involvement but rather bringing to light that employees do not agree with their policies, that to me anyways is in a different category than bad mouthing.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bwood 8y agoThis is pretty common for large enterprises. They have an official PR mouth and any public communication regarding the company which doesn't first pass the PR filter is often a fireable offense, even if it's all positive and puts the company in a good light. If Amazon talks about being vocally self-critical, they almost certainly mean in the context of internal improvement, not talking freely to the press. Even if employees try raising issues internally at first, most companies won't take kindly to an employee going public. Please note that I am not defending Amazon, simply saying that this is bog-standard and not surprising.
- jothezero 8y agoA political piece of text (to not say crap)
- snrji 8y agoIt's very nice that American companies have the actual option NOT to sell to the government. Sadly it's not always the case.
- Lich 8y agoI wonder if Amazon Go is used to improve Reckognition's computer vision algorithms.
- aikah 8y agoPurely a question. What are significant examples of internet related technologies that were if not invented, developed or had their development funded by the US military, if any? Weren't languages like Ada developed for and financed by the DOD?
- camelCaseOfBeer 8y agoImagine what the Nazi party would have accomplished with Amazon's, "unwavering support". The facial recognition software is just the first phase, just wait til we're hit with the final solution, the racial recognition software, Rekkkognition.
- GuB-42 8y agoDon't focus on profit, say the employee who focus on his pay. The real reason why people work at Amazon is because the pay is better, or the perks are better than the other jobs they applied to. If they go see their boss in order to negotiate a rise, they don't want to hear "sorry, no rise for you, but you should be happy, we didn't sell our product to the police". The vast majority of employees are motivated by their pay. And in order for them to get paid, their company has to make money. They want their boss to make them rich, and this is what their boss is doing by putting profits over people, and that's why they are still there. There are a few people who care more about the cause their work serve than money, they are often found in nonprofits, much less so in tech giants.
- picsao 8y agoAnd that is why we need to abandon the notion of company's as moral entitys. That's what the state and law is for to be moral and humane.
- Brybry 8y agoMoney is most definitely not the only thing employees care about. When you're picking a job you care about location, stability, company culture, hours, vacation policy, etc. I know plenty of people who have taken lesser paying jobs for a large variety of reasons and morality is definitely one of them. If you're against the death penalty then it's a bit hard to justify working a court job that puts people on death row. You, personally, may only be focused on your pay but that doesn't mean the vast majority of people are. Glassdoor certainly hints that this is not true for most people. [1][2] [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/salary-happiness-research/ https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/salary-happiness-research/ [2] https://www.glassdoor.com/research/more-money-change-value-at-work/ https://www.glassdoor.com/research/more-money-change-value-a...
- zjaffee 8y agoMaybe this particular instance is a bad example, but if it were a private enterprise doing similar unethical things, it would be the role of the government to make it illegal for technology to be used in a way that discriminates against people. And in turn, the governments power should be limited in the same exact way.
- cyclingswitch 8y agoIt's a little backwards. You're not actually making the military more lethal by selling them facial recognition tech. You are making them more accurate. Right now, an 18-25 year old looks at a (often) blurry video and tries to say if something is a weapon. With visual recognition technology, you actually decrease the false positives. Same with police. You're reducing the false positives inherent with human intervention in an already established system.
- Nasrudith 8y agoWhile ideally that may be the case machine learning is infamous for its false positives even without malicious actors causing toy turtles to be seen as rifles. Even if it has advanced enough to not see desert landscape photos as nudity. Relying on inaccurate information is more dangerous not less. Not to mention the potential pretextual abuses - drug sniffing dogs are infamous for being trained to be four legged probable cause and field drug tests are a sick joke that makes a mockery of chemistry akin to declaring anything with a PH below 5 is an explosive because picric acid is an explosive.
- effnorwood 8y agoIt’s not for the police. It’s initially for the TSA.
- tracker1 8y agoI may have a slightly bent view on this... the technology exists, is being created, and is getting commoditized. Why increase the cost to taxpayers? As to increasing lethality, wouldn't this in effect be decreasing the risk of collateral deaths? The bigger issue to me is probably unsupervised police usage at a local level. That said, the tech exists and will be used. I'd rather it were less costly. We, as a nation (in the US) already spend far more than we should be on the military. I'm in favor of most technology that reduces costs and mitigates risks. That's not to say that I approve of the use of drones on sovereign soil we are not actively at war with (the country itself, not "terrorism"), without that country's permission. I wouldn't want China, Russia, Mexico or Canada flying armed drones over the U.S. and don't think the U.S. should be doing it either. That doesn't mean I don't think drones should exist. Policy, use and technology are not the same and shouldn't be conflated like this.
- rayvy 8y agoI really hate that 50% of this thread has ran off on a military-related tangent. Could have been a good discussion about facial recognition, morality, and authority, but instead, because one looney posted some "super-uber-pro-military" comment, the first 50% of my scroll is related to that one topic. Will post this in ASK HN another time, but HN really needs some sort of drop down mechanism where we can show/hide a top-level comment's thread at will (mobile & desktop). Makes no sense the way this current setup is. [edit] Ruins the UX when I have to scroll aaaallllllll the way down to get to the top level comments. Not saying we should discourage constructive discourse by any means. Just saying we need to better organize how that discourse is reflected, so as to make for a better UX.
- finnthehuman 8y ago>Amazon’s ‘Rekognition’ program shouldn’t be used as a tool for mass surveillance I agree with this, but it leaves the question: what else is there for it to do?
- jedberg 8y agoThis effort is wasted. If Amazon doesn’t sell it someone else will (most likely on top of AWS). If they actually want to see change, they should be asking Amazon to use their clout to lobby the government for strict regulations around facial recognition. Then all agencies would have the same rules and you won’t just have them going to another vendor.
- jhabdas 8y agoThis reminds me of those red light cameras. The only thing they protect is the funds they generate giving out speeding tickets. What's worse is I also got in a wreck once after one of the cameras lit up a dark intersection to take my plates.
- mooseburger 8y ago> in the United States, a lack of public accountability already results in outsized impacts and over-policing of communities of color, immigrants, and people exercising their First Amendment rights. ... in the United States, a lack of public accountability already results in outsized impacts and over-policing of [progressive ingroup], [progressive ingroup], and [progressive ingroup]. > We follow in the steps of the Googlers who spoke out against the Maven contract and Microsoft employees who are speaking out against the JEDI contract. Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. We will not silently build technology to oppress and kill people, whether in our country or in others. Mentions the Maven contract but not Dragonfly, at least not directly. The worst part is that I don't even disagree with the letter, but I doubt the author has principles as much as he has tribal allegiances. I suspect he would be all-in on this tech if it came with some sort of guarantee it would only be used on "Nazis".
- stevew20 8y agoUh they already have it. Have had it since the late 90s (FBI, NSA, CIA, etc..), and in the early 2000's it trickled out to some major PD's. The issue is, it's quite inaccurate. Being developed in the 90's, before the recent amazing leaps in ML, it is just not very good. So Amazon, please sell the cops some decent software, so they are less likely to show up at my house because of a software glitch. Even better, use your vast wealth to push out self driving cars to all Americans, then we can disband the police (no traffic stops=no PD income)!
- kevin_b_er 8y ago> Selling this system runs counter to Amazon’s stated values. This is exactly in line with Amazon's values and past practices. > Bezos suggested we wait for society’s “immune response.” Bezos wants to make as much as possible off this until its no good anymore. Operating in the margin of what is acceptable is opportunity, to refashion his famous quote. I think the author is in some westcoastish bubble of thought that has obscured a fresh view of how Amazon acts. Bezos wants to bring in more cash flow and selling more is how it is done.
- booblik 8y agoThe police will get the tech from one company or another. The only question is how much it is going to cost to taxpayers.
- writepub 8y agoFunny how activist employees don't trust governments and other authority figures, but gladly violate the trust of the hand that feeds them by leaking stories when they don't get their way at work. Happens at AWS, Google, MSFT, ... AWS is an infrastructure company. AWS' employees suggesting service denial to people with opposing political viewpoints is like asking AT&T to deny phone service to someone based on their politics. Please, take an orientation course on political tolerance, instead of making preposterous & unprofessional demands at work. No company can rely on AWS if they're at risk of service denial based on politics. Today, AWS might be left leaning, but tomorrow things may change to the other side. Politics is best left out of business