Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by mrobot » Tue, May 22, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

"Whatever means you want" just has to not include matching to a database of suspicious people that are not currently under investigation for a real crime. Or to something with a floating definition like "terrorist". Which it won't. Just because Washington County says it's not currently being used for mass surveillance doesn't mean it won't be in the future or for other departments.

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

#42

Post by amzn-throw » Tue, May 22, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

> backed by a team surely comprised of at least hundreds of top Amazon engineers, was so slow and inaccurate.

You'd be surprised. Many many AWS services are launched by a single 2-pizza team (8-10 developers). It's in Amazon's DNA to act like a startup, ship something quickly, collect feedback, then iterate, and scale.

Rekognition will get much better in time.

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

#43

Post by cwperkins » Tue, May 22, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

Can someone create a bodycam sophisticated enough to let the police know if a suspect is wielding a weapon or not?

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

#44

Post by syshum » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

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…

Ahh the old "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" defense for mass surveillance. Don't study history much do you?

If you believe this will only ever be used to stop thieves and people that victimize others you are naive at an unfathomable level

>The Federal government has been doing this type of surveillance either using facial or LPR data on interstate corridors since at least the 90s.

lol... You believe that is justification or a defense. The fact that the Federal Government is doing something that people that value privacy oppose does not mean we should allow local law enforcement to do it even more efficiently

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

#45

Post by kevinh » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

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.

You're assuming that drug rehab programs are a net cost to society.

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

#46

Post by Madmallard » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#47

Post by syshum » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

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.

Why take 50% of the money used to lock people away in a metal cage and fund the best drug rehab program every conceived by man.

I dont think you have any idea how much money is in the prison system today

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

#48

Post by ataturk » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

kinsomo wrote: post #7

sykh wrote: post #5

At some point in time we Americans are going to have to come to grips with the computational abilities of the state. There are way too few safeguards in the system and the Bill of Rights does not seem to be adequate in dealing with the new reality that private companies can acquire a vast amount of information on us and thereby sell it to law enforcement. Law enforcement can use privately obtained information without…

> There are way too few safeguards in the system and the Bill of Rights does not seem to be adequate in dealing with the new reality that private companies can acquire a vast amount of information on us and thereby sell it to law enforcement. Law enforcement can use privately obtained information without a search warrant [1]. Ultimately what the Bill of Rights means is determined by the Supreme Court. It could limit…

Yes! This to me represents a gigantic, gaping loophole that the statists have run through. It's why everyone pushed "cloud" so hard, too--put your data in our cloud, it will be safer there, we promise!

I'm a law abiding citizen (mostly) but even I can see the ramifications of total surveillance and I want no part of it, public or private, it sucks.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by mfringel » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

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…

I suspect that total involuntary surveillance is not something the majority of the (United States) populace signed up for.

The legal Expectation of Privacy[0] continues to be important, even if there are people who think that it was a legal handwave that only existed due to lack of adequate technology.

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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy