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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

#241

Post by Nasrudith »

sykh wrote: post #136
fixermark wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens with false positives? What's the recourse? The same recourse when you're false-positived by a witness, I'd assume: get a lawyer. Personally, I'd probably place my trust in facial recognition (possibly not this system specifically, though) over human eye-witness testimony, based on my understanding of human psychology and its vulnerability to incentives. It's not as dire as it's sometimes painted. MD at…

It's not the same thing as a false positive by an eye witness. Eye witness testimony is well known to be prone to false memories. Hence there needs to be corroborating evidence. I think people are too readily willing to accept a technological identification. I can see a claim being made that the computer is wrong only once in a billion cases without proper justification. There are people today who still think lie det…

Sadly they never seem to learn about it despite the risks being known of treating them as magic wand auto-wins instead of pieces of evidence. From the absolute criminal garbage of bite mark identification junk science, DNA science using tests skimpy enough to false positives as their databases grow and they misuse what it statically enough for 'eliminating any non-matches in the pool of suspects' to pools of millions including vast numbers of non-suspect and non-victim samples which basically guarantee a conviction of an innocent statistically via lack of precision.

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

#242

Post by asimpletune »

PostOnce wrote: post #230
npongratz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that total involuntary surveillance is not something the majority of the (United States) populace signed up for. I certainly agree, but just wait until They/Them/Those start telling us this is part of some sacrosanct "social contract," and those who don't like it can simply leave. Edit: small changes for clarity.

> If you dont like it leave people start leaving > wait! dont leave! We're gonna jack up the renounce-your-citizenship fee by thousands of dollars! actually happened already.

I didn’t know about this. Do you have any links?

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

#243

Post by state_less »

Spooky23 wrote: post #190
zipwitch wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the advancement of technology changes the impact of certain classes of surveillance and tracking. Existing law is based on a balance that no longer exists. Bruce Schneier has a nice essay on this and license plates: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/01/on_police_s... In short, having a unique id and database of car owners may be okay when the police need to manually look up information. But when t…

I don’t disagree with you. My point isn’t that pervasive surveillance is great. It’s that if you’re allowed to have cameras everywhere, why would you limit useful processing of the data? How do you regulate it? If you can’t hire Amazon to do LPR or facial recognition, can you pay a guy to recognize people walking down the street and note their patterns? Do you license/permit camera placement?

> It’s that if you’re allowed to have cameras everywhere, why would you limit useful processing of the data?

So that a company doesn't end up doing mass surveillance.

During bad times, you'd see crackdowns and suppression caused by such a system. If you look in the present at the countries that are more authoritarian, you can get a picture. Places like China or Russia, where the internet is censored, monitored and mass surveillance is openly practiced. Russia recently passed Yarovaya law:

"Internet and telecom companies are required to store communications and metadata for 6 months to 3 years. They are required to disclose them, as well as "all other information necessary," to authorities on request and without a court order. It also requires email and messaging service providers to have cryptographic backdoors. The surveillance regulations will take effect on 1 July 2018."

It probably goes without saying that they use this tool to get a tighter grip on their population to maintain power.

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

#244

Post by geomark »

asimpletune wrote: post #242
PostOnce wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you dont like it leave people start leaving > wait! dont leave! We're gonna jack up the renounce-your-citizenship fee by thousands of dollars! actually happened already.

I didn’t know about this. Do you have any links?

Try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renunciation_of_citizenship

TL;DR: You could renounce your US citizenship for free before 2010. Then it when up to $450. In 2014 the fee was raise to $2,350.

On top of the fee is the exit tax wherein you may be required to pay a tax on the entirety of any gains on your assets as if you had sold them all that day. And, further, if they think you are renouncing to avoid taxes they claim that you must continue to pay taxes for 10 years after you renounce.

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

#245

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

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…

> "they were able to charge him with a more serious crime"

Isn't charging defendants with overwhelming charges part of the problem?

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

#246

Post by syshum »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #212
syshum wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm Cell phones in everyone pocket, Echo / Home Devices, etc etc etc Keep believing the government has no access to this data..

The government has no access to that data without due process mediated by a judge. That is not the same as continuous surveillance.

Yea, sure, you betcha....

That assumes 2 things

1. that the Warrant process today is more than a superficial formality to give people the illusion of check on government power. When in reality to get a warrant they simply have to fill out a form, there is hardly ever any push back and it has been proven countless times that law enforcement lies via omission, or stretched the truth, or any number of dishonest unethical things to get warrants, on top of the fact the most judges simply approve 99.9% of all warrant applications. "Getting a warrant" should not be viewed as some panacea of government restraint

2. Assume that "if they got a warrant" then people like me would approve of government having access to that data. That "Getting a warrant" is a valid justification for obtaining data.

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

#247

Post by tanilama »

sadamznintern wrote: post #172
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.

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.

It could happen both way. Noted that Google is much more saturate for its ML talents, so unless you are super top-notch, some people will take it to Amazon for bigger impact. I personally know a few people, who is competitive in the industry, having Google offer/leaving Google for Amazon.

No doubt, the flow is usually Amazon -> Google/Facebook, because for mid-level engineer/scientist, money talks :), and Google/FB generally have much open/better publication policy, while Amazon is neurotically secretive. Apple is not on the picture, I think the internal engineer culture is very problematic(no common codebase, severe NIH syndrome), except for the money, it is subpar place to grow.

Disclaimer: Work in a ML related AWS team.

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

#248

Post by blitmap »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #186
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.

All I see here is a slightly different version of “it’s for the children”.

I'm the last one to stay "it's for the children". I don't think mass surveillance can be rolled back though I will continue to support changing legislation that harms us. There are positives to consider if we must live in that reality. It's the best we can do if we can't go back.

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

#249

Post by bfuller »

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.

8-10 people and only two pizzas??? Madness

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

#250

Post by xfitm3 »

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 have concerns over misuse but I’m glad to see this is available to the public.
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