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

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

#171

Post by matwood » Tue, May 22, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #126

matwood wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's a legal matter, but completely illegal is not realistic. What's needed is a legal/privacy framework that addresses these new technologies. Unfortunately, I have zero faith in the law makers to understand the technology enough to really do anything meaningful. Instead, we will probably have to wait for a SCOTUS case at some point in the future to define the legal side.

Laws cannot stop a technology that is easily availabe, like number plate scanning or face recognition. Nothing can stop it. You might just as well outlaw knives (they are in fact illegal in many European countries, which has done nothing about their easy availability, and software will be far easier to acquire than knives)

> Laws cannot stop a technology that is easily availabe, like number plate scanning or face recognition. Nothing can stop it.

Which is why I said that completely illegal is not realistic. What laws can do is provide a scope and framework on how technology is used. Data retention, sampling, court admissibility, etc... are all pieces that can be argued and adjusted to fit with new technology. But, like I also said above, I don't have faith that current law makers understand technology enough to make any of these laws. It will take some overreach cases that end up in SCOTUS to get anything done.

> You might just as well outlaw knives

Using knives in a certain way (stabbing someone for example) is against the law. Using this new technology in certain ways could also be against law.

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

#172

Post by sadamznintern » Tue, May 22, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

amzn-throw wrote: post #42

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.

Also, for the record, AWS is hardly top of the industry in terms of talent. It's not Google or Facebook. I've never heard of an ML researcher joining Amazon when they could have joined Google/FB/Apple.

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

#173

Post by Madmallard » Tue, May 22, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #143

wafflebear wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we install security cameras in public toilets? It would certainly reduce crimes such as assaults that occur in public toilets. There would be very little impact on our personal security. Privacy is an fundamental aspect of our quality of life. Privacy is not of secondary importance to security but exists alongside it. If that were not so, then there are plenty of places we could be putting surveillance cameras…

However, people install security cameras in their own homes all the time---some of which are even wired to cloud services or outside security monitoring agencies. I agree that privacy exists alongside security. Where the balance-point is best placed varies from person to person. In public spaces not scoped for private activities (such as the streets of a city), the balance point has to be agreed upon by the citizenry…

Until we have 100% transparency into situations where executives/operatives/etc are meeting behind closed doors to screw over thousands if not millions of people then they should not be allowed to have any of those privileges on us.

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

#174

Post by moduspol » Tue, May 22, 2018, 7:46 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #24

teachrdan wrote: post #20

Key quotation: "Facial recognition is not new technology, but the [criticizing] organizations appear to be focusing on Amazon because of its prominence and what they see as a departure from the company’s oft-stated focus on customers." This is an interesting side-effect of the success of AWS. Amazon's customers are not just individual consumers or even sellers anymore, but organizations on the scale of multinational…

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.

Amazon has long been notable for minimizing its profit margins, actually.

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-26/amazon-...

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

#175

Post by Buttons840 » Tue, May 22, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

doorbumper wrote: post #127

blitmap wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely feel like we're missing positive opportunities for mass surveillance. Things like being able to recognize someone in cardiac arrest, or who is at risk for a stroke. Someday mass surveillance will help as much as it hurts society.

What's interesting is that anyone implementing mass surveillance could care less about your proposed benefits.

I believe technology will ever erode privacy, and that the best we can hope for is to make sure the transparency goes both ways. The government should become more transparent to the people as the people become more transparent to the government. Like you though, I'm afraid we'll end up with a vast and reliable surveillance system which police will be able to use, while the police themselves are still "struggling" to get their body cams to work reliably.

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

#176

Post by wavefunction » Tue, May 22, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

chisleu wrote: post #76

They are NOT selling a service that identifies people from data sets other than the police's supplied data sets. It is not inappropriate for police to be able to determine who they are interacting with if that person is a known criminal. The cat is out of the bag and is already something the police could do themselves. The real fear is when they are able to source commercially available information from linked in, fa…

I would counter that you don't need machine facial recognition for known criminals. They're already known.

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

#177

Post by exclusiv » Tue, May 22, 2018, 8:11 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #176

chisleu wrote: post #76

They are NOT selling a service that identifies people from data sets other than the police's supplied data sets. It is not inappropriate for police to be able to determine who they are interacting with if that person is a known criminal. The cat is out of the bag and is already something the police could do themselves. The real fear is when they are able to source commercially available information from linked in, fa…

I would counter that you don't need machine facial recognition for known criminals. They're already known.

You would if you want to surveil them.

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

#178

Post by exclusiv » Tue, May 22, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #106

amzn-throw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sidebar: I've never heard of teams measured in terms of "pizza count," and now I can't un-think it. Good metric. :)

It's been reported that Bezos uses a two pizza rule for meetings.

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

#179

Post by SubiculumCode » Tue, May 22, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #165

SubiculumCode wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unfortunately, knowing our luck it will barely be more than an AA/NA meeting, perhaps with random UA testing, that some contractor charges the government Passages Malibu rates for...

This is unfortunately true. Indeed I think it has to include imprisonment during detox and skill training periods (min 1 year)

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

#180

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, May 22, 2018, 8:30 PM UTC

HashThis wrote: post #130

decebalus1 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. The fourth amendment went out the window with the Patriot act and the Freedom act. The fourth amendment does not matter anymore and nobody gives a shit. It's not like an 'important' amendment. I mean it's not the second amendment, otherwise there would be huge lobbying groups up in arms (no pun intended).

> The fourth amendment does not matter anymore and nobody gives a shit. It does matter. Citizens do care. Just because they haven't taken action yet doesn't mean that they don't care or won't.

(Lack of) actions speak louder than words.