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Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#31

Post by ProAm »

lainga wrote: post #29
ProAm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it me or has Amazon ever cared about customers, always marketshare and profit margin. I've never felt Amazon was a pro-consumer company, merely a side-effect that they need consumers.

On the contrary as far as Amazon-the-online-store goes: they are notoriously pro-customer to the detriment of small retailers.

The number of counterfeits and abomination of UI argues against that point. I think Amazon is against both customer and small retailer and that goes to my point they are about market share and profit margin above all else.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#32

Post by Karunamon »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #21

I think this is going to happen, regardless of ACLU or whether Amazon pulls the service or not. Face recognition will be refined and sold as a package. Probably every cop car will have it one day. Courts will say that when you're in public you give certain privacy rights away etc. etc. Expect cop cars next to you if you missed a court date or violated parole. The scariest part is the DNA fishing expeditions through c…

>Courts will say that when you're in public you give certain privacy rights away etc. etc.

This is the law of the land right now. As to your next example, I don't see what's wrong with those, as missing a court date or violating parole is a perfectly legitimate reason for you to be arrested.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#33

Post by cascom »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #10

I find this article a bit funny, and see it mostly as hype. I worked very revently on a large internal face detection service for a legal and compliance application at a large US company. Being pragmatic engineers, the first thing we did was to pilot test Rekognition against an in-house prototype built by modifying some open source deep learning approaches. Rekognition performed so poorly compared to our prototype (w…

I wonder how many innocent people are going to be harmed due to poor facial recognition matches...

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#34

Post by excalibur »

thirduncle wrote: post #18
excalibur wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the leaking they fear most. The implementation of surveillance technologies is unavoidable. Ban them all you like, they will be used regardless. Privacy is dead, and nobody can save it. What we DO have a shot at controlling is what is done with the data. Probably the best hope for safeguarding things like freedom and democracy lies in making surveillance data transparent and public.

Ban them all you like, they will be used regardless. We'll see about that. I'd say legal bans are worth a try at least. Privacy is dead, and nobody can save it. If you keep repeating that to yourself as you go to sleep each night - by gosh, eventually it will become true.

Your philosophy is admirable. Unfortunately it's also the one that led us here. Shall we wait until the surveillance state has us intractably under its boot before we stop arguing over whether its power should exist and start focusing on who we would like wielding it?

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#36

Post by bpicolo »

CompanionCuuube wrote: post #8
bpicolo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting the power of surveillance is only going to come in the form of passing laws, there's always somebody willing to build the tech for the military industrial complex. It's lucrative

Law enforcement is not part of the military.

Call it the police industrial complex if you want (some people do), but it's all the same thing.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#37

Post by maldeh »

codazoda wrote: post #3
bpicolo wrote: post #2

> If Rekognition is not reined in, its use is also certain to spread The tech isn't new and certainly not limited to Amazon, it's going to exist regardless of whether Amazon wants to be the one providing the APIs

I agree that it's going to happen with or without Amazon but I'd rather not support this system.

It's possible that in the short term, Amazon could be changing the economics of mass surveillance, making it more feasible for police departments that could not afford such tech before. But at this point, I think a change of dynamic is important, and that we actually _need_ an 800 pound gorilla to frighten us, before people wake up and start demanding action at the state and federal level.

It's already been half a decade since the UK surveillance regime and the reality of mass surveillance was opened to us, yet nobody batted an eyelid in the US. Meanwhile, facial recognition has improved by an order of magnitude and has already silently been seeing deployment everywhere around us. I'm being led to believe that unless we have a public poster boy to rally against, the situation isn't going to change.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#38

Post by bitL »

bsenftner wrote: post #30
thisisit wrote: post #17

Does anyone know how good Amazon Rekognition actually is? If the technology is not good then it might post more problems than it solves.

I write facial recognition software. If those example facial images and their match scores are any indication of their systems accuracy, it is on the poor side.

The point is that they made it available to customers as a full, scalable pipeline. They can (and will) improve their accuracy continuously. Any kiddo can take some bleeding-edge wide resnet variation and get better results than they have right now, but can't make it available at scale to anyone.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#39

Post by kchronic8 »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #27
Spooky23 wrote: post #12

Why? The surveillance is there. I used this with some personal video surveillance to identify some thieves who were casing driveways to find cars to get into. Instead of wasting hours looking at footage, I was able to give the police excerpts that helped them identify the perp. Also, because of the circumstances and footage, they were able to charge him with a more serious crime than petit larceny, which means he won…

When all they probably needed was a real drug rehab program. Edit: Just saying because almost all petty thievery is committed to get goods to trade for drugs. Edit 2: Also, I'm not saying that this wasn't a good use of home surveillance, or to whatever parent's comment referred, although (s)he is probably wrong that they won't be back next week. I have acquaintances that having got hooked on meth, began stealing cars…

Let me increase your rent so we can pay for said rehab program. If you say no, then you have no right to say anything.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#40

Post by SubiculumCode »

kchronic8 wrote: post #39
SubiculumCode wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When all they probably needed was a real drug rehab program. Edit: Just saying because almost all petty thievery is committed to get goods to trade for drugs. Edit 2: Also, I'm not saying that this wasn't a good use of home surveillance, or to whatever parent's comment referred, although (s)he is probably wrong that they won't be back next week. I have acquaintances that having got hooked on meth, began stealing cars…

Let me increase your rent so we can pay for said rehab program. If you say no, then you have no right to say anything.

Ha! I would support any tax that pays for real drug rehabs...much cheaper than prison and better chance to fix the real problem.
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