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‘450 Amazon employees tell Bezos to kick Palantir off AWS’

25 points by hinchlt 8y ago

agency 8y ago
This is a very confusingly written article. It repeatedly refers to Rekognition as a Palantir product, but it is in fact an AWS offering[1]. This is much clearer in the ACLU article they link to [2], which makes no reference to Palantir. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ [2] https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28 https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te...
- hinchlt 8y ago
  Solid point and the article has been updated.
writepub 8y ago
We live in an age of private companies owning the infrastructure facilitating daily life. For instance: 1. Communications infrastructure: FB, Twitter, private sites hosted on big cloud vendors 2. Payments: Stripe, Braintree, ... 3. Cloud: Google, AWS, MSFT-Azure, ... 4. Transportation: Uber, Lyft, ... 5. Domain registration, hosting: GoDaddy, Google, AWS, ... Imagine running a real business while being banned from the aforementioned platforms --> It's unfeasible!!! Never ever in history have companies from the valley held outsized control over private communication and business. With this power comes great responsibility - one of which is tolerance for an opposing political thoughts. If these "infrastructure" companies start making it unfeasible for those with differing politics to exist online, they'll immediately draw regulatory ire. Not to mention that systemic censorship of certain thought is unethical. If AWS employees disagree with Palantair & ICE, they should consider other channels of expression - from social media to pressuring their elected representatives to call for change. But, if Palantair isn't engaged in illegal activity, they should be sent to an orientation in tolerance for opposing political philosophies.
- philwelch 8y ago
  When's the most recently that private companies haven't owned the infrastructure facilitating daily life? Railroads are private businesses, the telephone companies are private businesses, payments have to go through credit card companies and banks, TV and radio are private businesses. Roads are public, but you have to go through private businesses to buy, maintain, repair, and fuel your car. Commercial infrastructure providers have always had similar power, and sometimes even use it. The main reasons for them not using it has always been a combination of purely commercial motives for running a business--which is undermined by the founding myth of Silicon Valley as a haven for idealistic hippies trying to change the world--and the potential for competition--which is undermined by the monopolistic tendencies of the tech industry and the cultural groupthink on the West Coast. Ironically, Silicon Valley, the Internet, and the field of computer science itself all originate from WWII-era military R&D.
  - tomohawk 8y ago
    When companies get to monopoly status (which the SV companies are), many of the kinds of things they could do as non-monopolies are no longer legal. They also face greater political scrutiny and legal action. This is as it should be. The railroad companies are heavily regulated, as are the phone companies, as are the energy companies, etc. They tried applying 1930s phone laws to the internet, and that didn't work out. At some point, they'll have to nut up and make some laws that prevent monopolies from doing bad things, or they'll have to allow the FTC to start breaking 'em up.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Yeah, it’s a hard problem. And I think GP is right in the sense that being good stewards of their power will forestall any legislative action targeted against them. The Bell monopoly persisted for years by being on good terms with the government. Which is ironically an incentive for them to take defense and intelligence contracts.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Railroads and telephone companies are regulated. AFAIK, telecoms can't just refuse service to people because they disagree with their politics. Likewise, a toll-road can't just say, "we're not letting traffic from X company use this infrastructure." Private companies that sell cars are de-facto incapable of refusing service to certain groups, since another entity can just by the car and resell them to the banned party. Private common carriers like UPS and whatnot are also bound by similar rules if I'm not mistaken. I think it is fairly unprecedented that many of the pieces of infrastructure central to running a business are increasingly owned and run by companies that are allowed to refuse service to people on a whim. At least unprecedented since the early 20th century.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fierro 8y ago
this will never ever ever ever never ever happen. don't waste your time reading this
neom 8y ago
"An anonymous Amazon employee verified by Medium’s editorial staff wrote yesterday that Amazon should not be selling facial recognition software “Rekognition” to law enforcement as it was being used by police departments and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without ethical oversight." I'm curious who's ethics and who's oversight this is referring to? I read the article and the medium post and that still seems unclear to me.

25 points by hinchlt 8y ago

This is a very confusingly written article. It repeatedly refers to Rekognition as a Palantir product, but it is in fact an AWS offering[1]. This is much clearer in the ACLU article they link to [2], which makes no reference to Palantir. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ [2] https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28 https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te...

hinchlt 8y ago
Solid point and the article has been updated.

writepub 8y ago

We live in an age of private companies owning the infrastructure facilitating daily life. For instance: 1. Communications infrastructure: FB, Twitter, private sites hosted on big cloud vendors 2. Payments: Stripe, Braintree, ... 3. Cloud: Google, AWS, MSFT-Azure, ... 4. Transportation: Uber, Lyft, ... 5. Domain registration, hosting: GoDaddy, Google, AWS, ... Imagine running a real business while being banned from the aforementioned platforms --> It's unfeasible!!! Never ever in history have companies from the valley held outsized control over private communication and business. With this power comes great responsibility - one of which is tolerance for an opposing political thoughts. If these "infrastructure" companies start making it unfeasible for those with differing politics to exist online, they'll immediately draw regulatory ire. Not to mention that systemic censorship of certain thought is unethical. If AWS employees disagree with Palantair & ICE, they should consider other channels of expression - from social media to pressuring their elected representatives to call for change. But, if Palantair isn't engaged in illegal activity, they should be sent to an orientation in tolerance for opposing political philosophies.

philwelch 8y ago
When's the most recently that private companies haven't owned the infrastructure facilitating daily life? Railroads are private businesses, the telephone companies are private businesses, payments have to go through credit card companies and banks, TV and radio are private businesses. Roads are public, but you have to go through private businesses to buy, maintain, repair, and fuel your car. Commercial infrastructure providers have always had similar power, and sometimes even use it. The main reasons for them not using it has always been a combination of purely commercial motives for running a business--which is undermined by the founding myth of Silicon Valley as a haven for idealistic hippies trying to change the world--and the potential for competition--which is undermined by the monopolistic tendencies of the tech industry and the cultural groupthink on the West Coast. Ironically, Silicon Valley, the Internet, and the field of computer science itself all originate from WWII-era military R&D.
- tomohawk 8y ago
  When companies get to monopoly status (which the SV companies are), many of the kinds of things they could do as non-monopolies are no longer legal. They also face greater political scrutiny and legal action. This is as it should be. The railroad companies are heavily regulated, as are the phone companies, as are the energy companies, etc. They tried applying 1930s phone laws to the internet, and that didn't work out. At some point, they'll have to nut up and make some laws that prevent monopolies from doing bad things, or they'll have to allow the FTC to start breaking 'em up.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Yeah, it’s a hard problem. And I think GP is right in the sense that being good stewards of their power will forestall any legislative action targeted against them. The Bell monopoly persisted for years by being on good terms with the government. Which is ironically an incentive for them to take defense and intelligence contracts.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Railroads and telephone companies are regulated. AFAIK, telecoms can't just refuse service to people because they disagree with their politics. Likewise, a toll-road can't just say, "we're not letting traffic from X company use this infrastructure." Private companies that sell cars are de-facto incapable of refusing service to certain groups, since another entity can just by the car and resell them to the banned party. Private common carriers like UPS and whatnot are also bound by similar rules if I'm not mistaken. I think it is fairly unprecedented that many of the pieces of infrastructure central to running a business are increasingly owned and run by companies that are allowed to refuse service to people on a whim. At least unprecedented since the early 20th century.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

fierro 8y ago

this will never ever ever ever never ever happen. don't waste your time reading this

neom 8y ago

"An anonymous Amazon employee verified by Medium’s editorial staff wrote yesterday that Amazon should not be selling facial recognition software “Rekognition” to law enforcement as it was being used by police departments and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without ethical oversight." I'm curious who's ethics and who's oversight this is referring to? I read the article and the medium post and that still seems unclear to me.