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Why do you deem all use of facial recognition to be immoral? Is it more moral to only allow the governments access to this tech? Are there really no consumer fr

Why do you deem all use of facial recognition to be immoral? Is it more moral to only allow the governments access to this tech? Are there really no consumer friendly applications of facial recognition? I'm sure there are and the only way we can explore these benefits is to allow the population access to the technology.

xvector 7y ago
RTFA: > The first proposal would have made the company stop offering facial recognition to governments unless its board determined sales did not violate civil liberties. A second would have requested a study by September of the extent to which Amazon’s service harmed rights and privacy. There is no world in which you are not disgustingly greedy, unempathetic, and immoral to reject sales of facial recognition technology to abusive governments.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Whether a governement is abusive or not is greatly in the eye of the beholder so yes, there are plenty of worldviews where such a thing wouldn't be "disgustingly greedy, unempathetic, and immoral". Besides, there's a lot more going on in this space (and article) than the vote itself. There are calls to regulate facial recognition, which I think is an immoral option (and futile) as it only allows governments access to a powerful technology.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    I think it’s entirely misguided to place the responsibility to ensure that customers are not using products to violate civil liberties on to corporate boards. Legislature should define them, and courts should uphold them. To say that these responsibilities should be shifted to the board room is alarming and undemocratic.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  That's not what the rejection of this proposition indicates. The shareholders are not saying, "Amazon, sell to anyone no matter how bad." They are saying, "Amazon, continue using whatever processes you are already using to determine who to restrict from using this product." It is very common for people who have a particular issue that they care about to attempt to require the board of a company to handle that issue. But if big companies acquiesced to all such requests, the board would take on a large workload, making sometimes detailed decisions where they have no expertise. Company owners delegate much of their authority to boards. Boards delegate much of their authority to employees. I am sure there will be entities to which Amazon would not offer facial recognition services. But that decision does not need to be made at the level of the board. BTW, this is why management almost always fights such propositions: it ties the hands of the company to use an inefficient decision process, for no provable gain on any worthwhile metric.
  - clairity 7y ago
    you're argument is wholly misplaced. if it were a decision like "should we put this bin over on that shef?", then yes, it's reasonable to delegate to a rank-and-file employee. "should we develop technology that can lead to a surveillance state?" is not one of those decisions. that's a strategic decision entirely negotiated between the shareholders (via the board) and the management team, for which they should all be held accountable.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
      Almost all useful technology could conceivably lead to better surveillance. Email is a great example. It is infeasibly expensive to open and read everyone's physical letters. But reading everyone's email is possible and is literally done in some very large countries. I believe that if the board of Amazon had more they wanted to say about this issue, either publicly or internally, they do not need a shareholder resolution to enable that -- especially a non-binding one. They can simply do so. So, the resolution's purpose is actually one of signalling the shareholder's stance on the technology being developed. Clearly, most shareholders agree with the board's implicit approval.
  - 7y ago
- scythe 7y ago
  >There is no world in which you are not disgustingly greedy, unempathetic, and immoral to reject sales of facial recognition technology to abusive governments. You need to re-word this sentence. I agree with what (I think) you're going for, but your words say something else.

xvector 7y ago

RTFA: > The first proposal would have made the company stop offering facial recognition to governments unless its board determined sales did not violate civil liberties. A second would have requested a study by September of the extent to which Amazon’s service harmed rights and privacy. There is no world in which you are not disgustingly greedy, unempathetic, and immoral to reject sales of facial recognition technology to abusive governments.

malvosenior 7y ago
Whether a governement is abusive or not is greatly in the eye of the beholder so yes, there are plenty of worldviews where such a thing wouldn't be "disgustingly greedy, unempathetic, and immoral". Besides, there's a lot more going on in this space (and article) than the vote itself. There are calls to regulate facial recognition, which I think is an immoral option (and futile) as it only allows governments access to a powerful technology.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  I think it’s entirely misguided to place the responsibility to ensure that customers are not using products to violate civil liberties on to corporate boards. Legislature should define them, and courts should uphold them. To say that these responsibilities should be shifted to the board room is alarming and undemocratic.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
That's not what the rejection of this proposition indicates. The shareholders are not saying, "Amazon, sell to anyone no matter how bad." They are saying, "Amazon, continue using whatever processes you are already using to determine who to restrict from using this product." It is very common for people who have a particular issue that they care about to attempt to require the board of a company to handle that issue. But if big companies acquiesced to all such requests, the board would take on a large workload, making sometimes detailed decisions where they have no expertise. Company owners delegate much of their authority to boards. Boards delegate much of their authority to employees. I am sure there will be entities to which Amazon would not offer facial recognition services. But that decision does not need to be made at the level of the board. BTW, this is why management almost always fights such propositions: it ties the hands of the company to use an inefficient decision process, for no provable gain on any worthwhile metric.
- clairity 7y ago
  you're argument is wholly misplaced. if it were a decision like "should we put this bin over on that shef?", then yes, it's reasonable to delegate to a rank-and-file employee. "should we develop technology that can lead to a surveillance state?" is not one of those decisions. that's a strategic decision entirely negotiated between the shareholders (via the board) and the management team, for which they should all be held accountable.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Almost all useful technology could conceivably lead to better surveillance. Email is a great example. It is infeasibly expensive to open and read everyone's physical letters. But reading everyone's email is possible and is literally done in some very large countries. I believe that if the board of Amazon had more they wanted to say about this issue, either publicly or internally, they do not need a shareholder resolution to enable that -- especially a non-binding one. They can simply do so. So, the resolution's purpose is actually one of signalling the shareholder's stance on the technology being developed. Clearly, most shareholders agree with the board's implicit approval.
- 7y ago
scythe 7y ago
>There is no world in which you are not disgustingly greedy, unempathetic, and immoral to reject sales of facial recognition technology to abusive governments. You need to re-word this sentence. I agree with what (I think) you're going for, but your words say something else.