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Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle. Especially since presumably many of th

Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle. Especially since presumably many of the foundation layers of this technology are open source with wide scale applications. Will they outlaw machine learning? TensorFlow? Obviously whatever Amazon is doing is more complicated than throwing a ton of face images at TensorFlow but as technology progresses, the advances will bubble up to the application layer. The thought that you could even regulate facial recognition just shows how out to lunch lawmakers and the media are when it comes to technology, how it's developed and how it's deployed.

Bjartr 7y ago
This isn't about regulation of facial recognition tech (in the legal sense), this is about voluntarily choosing to not pursue a course of action because it is unethical and how shareholders have overruled decision makers on that matter.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  From the article: Responding to the shareholder vote, Democratic U.S. Representative Jimmy Gomez said, “that just means that it’s more important that Congress acts.” Republican members of the committee expressed concern about U.S. citizens having their rights violated and their information shared with the likes of the FBI without elected officials’ oversight. A second hearing on the topic is scheduled for June 4. Any federal regulation would follow a major decision by San Francisco officials earlier this month to ban city personnel from using the technology. That contrasts with New York, Chicago and Detroit, where law enforcement have reportedly used facial recognition or acquired it with the hope of speeding up post-crime investigations.
xvector 7y ago
Actively producing and selling the tools to strip human rights is far worse than standing by while someone uses said tools.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Not all uses of facial recognition strip people of human rights. Would it strip you of your rights if an airport used this tech to discover known terrorists in a crowd? Or how about recognizing you at the DMV and pulling up your records automatically? I'm sure there are millions of non-human rights violating usages (even by the government) of facial recognition.
  - Zarath 7y ago
    IMO it isn't that it strips people of human rights per se, it is that it removes opportunity to disrupt the status quo. Whether you believe this is a good thing is up to you. Terrorists are trying to disrupt the status quo, but so are protestors, people who write to their Senator, etc. By the ubiquity of facial recognition, you are essentially making it harder to disrupt the status quo by non-legal means. This all has the effect of increasing cohesiveness of the existing system. When people talk of "dystopia", that doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad place to live, at least in principal. Brave New World was tyrannical and oppressive, but not necessarily a miserable existence (you always have SOMA). What distinguishes this as a "dystopia" is the inability for the system to change itself. So while it doesn't strip human rights, per se, it certainly strips people of the ability to affect change on their environment. If knowledge is power, then the more knowledge they have about you, the more power they have over you.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      Technology empowerment cuts both ways though. If you regulate technology so only the government has it, then the scenario you lay out will still happen. If you leave access to technology available to everyone, those same protesters could deploy their own version to locate government moles in their midst (for instance). Technology has the ability to power everyone, individuals, groups and governments. It's best to leave the access open to all.
lettergram 7y ago
> Obviously whatever Amazon is doing is more complicated than throwing a ton of face images at TensorFlow but as technology progresses, the advances will bubble up to the application layer. You’d be surprised...
munk-a 7y ago
> Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle. We've (effectively) put chemical warfare back in the bottle, regulations can be quite effective in shifting the public perception - but I won't argue that it's hard to do.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Given tear gas I am not sure about chemical warfare (although that also has to do with relative effectiveness). And there is far more infastructure required for chemical weaponry production and use more complex than throwing a bottle of bleach and ammonia mix.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Chemical weapons have no consumer applications and are very difficult to create. This is more like trying to put DeCSS back in the bottle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS

Bjartr 7y ago

This isn't about regulation of facial recognition tech (in the legal sense), this is about voluntarily choosing to not pursue a course of action because it is unethical and how shareholders have overruled decision makers on that matter.

malvosenior 7y ago
From the article: Responding to the shareholder vote, Democratic U.S. Representative Jimmy Gomez said, “that just means that it’s more important that Congress acts.” Republican members of the committee expressed concern about U.S. citizens having their rights violated and their information shared with the likes of the FBI without elected officials’ oversight. A second hearing on the topic is scheduled for June 4. Any federal regulation would follow a major decision by San Francisco officials earlier this month to ban city personnel from using the technology. That contrasts with New York, Chicago and Detroit, where law enforcement have reportedly used facial recognition or acquired it with the hope of speeding up post-crime investigations.

xvector 7y ago

Actively producing and selling the tools to strip human rights is far worse than standing by while someone uses said tools.

malvosenior 7y ago
Not all uses of facial recognition strip people of human rights. Would it strip you of your rights if an airport used this tech to discover known terrorists in a crowd? Or how about recognizing you at the DMV and pulling up your records automatically? I'm sure there are millions of non-human rights violating usages (even by the government) of facial recognition.
- Zarath 7y ago
  IMO it isn't that it strips people of human rights per se, it is that it removes opportunity to disrupt the status quo. Whether you believe this is a good thing is up to you. Terrorists are trying to disrupt the status quo, but so are protestors, people who write to their Senator, etc. By the ubiquity of facial recognition, you are essentially making it harder to disrupt the status quo by non-legal means. This all has the effect of increasing cohesiveness of the existing system. When people talk of "dystopia", that doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad place to live, at least in principal. Brave New World was tyrannical and oppressive, but not necessarily a miserable existence (you always have SOMA). What distinguishes this as a "dystopia" is the inability for the system to change itself. So while it doesn't strip human rights, per se, it certainly strips people of the ability to affect change on their environment. If knowledge is power, then the more knowledge they have about you, the more power they have over you.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    Technology empowerment cuts both ways though. If you regulate technology so only the government has it, then the scenario you lay out will still happen. If you leave access to technology available to everyone, those same protesters could deploy their own version to locate government moles in their midst (for instance). Technology has the ability to power everyone, individuals, groups and governments. It's best to leave the access open to all.

lettergram 7y ago

> Obviously whatever Amazon is doing is more complicated than throwing a ton of face images at TensorFlow but as technology progresses, the advances will bubble up to the application layer. You’d be surprised...

munk-a 7y ago

> Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle. We've (effectively) put chemical warfare back in the bottle, regulations can be quite effective in shifting the public perception - but I won't argue that it's hard to do.

Nasrudith 7y ago
Given tear gas I am not sure about chemical warfare (although that also has to do with relative effectiveness). And there is far more infastructure required for chemical weaponry production and use more complex than throwing a bottle of bleach and ammonia mix.
malvosenior 7y ago
Chemical weapons have no consumer applications and are very difficult to create. This is more like trying to put DeCSS back in the bottle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS