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Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

independent.co.uk

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Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#41

Post by sadris »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #28
Spivak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really the tool that's unethical or the argument here just about depriving governments they don't like tools in general? "Twenty shareholders from Ford demand they stop selling cars to local law enforcement."

> Is it really the tool that's unethical Amazon runs the tool on AWS servers they control, so they can (and should) be responsible for having policies that forbid its unethical use. Here is AWS's Acceptable Use Policy: https://aws.amazon.com/aup/ I don't see anything there about ethics.

> unethical use

Is arresting criminals based on photographic evidence "unethical" now?

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#42

Post by FartyMcFarter »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #28
Spivak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really the tool that's unethical or the argument here just about depriving governments they don't like tools in general? "Twenty shareholders from Ford demand they stop selling cars to local law enforcement."

> Is it really the tool that's unethical Amazon runs the tool on AWS servers they control, so they can (and should) be responsible for having policies that forbid its unethical use. Here is AWS's Acceptable Use Policy: https://aws.amazon.com/aup/ I don't see anything there about ethics.

> Is arresting criminals based on photographic evidence "unethical" now?

IMO creating a police state is unethical - the proliferation of cheap surveillance technology helps do that.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#43

Post by intopieces »

confounded wrote: post #37
mankash666 wrote: post #34

The only effective way to achieve this is getting a majority of the board to vote for this. Everything else is mere virtue signalling without effect.

> Everything else is mere virtue signalling without effect. By that definition, isn’t almost every form of non-decisive influence “virtue signaling”? Virtue itself? Marching against a war? Voting for a candidate you like the policies of, but who doesn’t have good media coverage? Declining to purchase unethical goods?

Yes. That’s the objective behind the term “virtue signaling” - to call into question the motives of anyone and everyone who claims to care about something so that it becomes deeply uncool to care about things so that they’ll stop trying to make the world a better place.

Even if you presented a 100-step well funded plan for changing the status quo, prepare to have it leveled by the sneer of “you’re just virtue signaling.” You can never prove your sincerity to anyone who uses this term, because it will never be enough.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#44

Post by bcheung »

This seems like it is approaching the problem from the wrong angle. This should be addressed at the government law level.

The problem is where do you draw the line? Any technology can be used for evil. Do you next ask companies that sell cameras not to sell to the government? Then ban computers?

Laws that concern themselves with targeting and surveilling people encompass any technology.

Facial recognition is not a hard problem and this is just a matter of convenience. Government can just go around and implement it themselves if nobody provides it to them. At least through Amazon there is some level of non-government control to shut it off if they end up doing anything nefarious.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#45

Post by hhh »

frozenport wrote: post #26
pests wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something wrong with this? Email, fax, phones, telegrams, snail mail, etc. Everything was the new weird thing at one point in time.

Tweets are limited in content, unlike other forms of communication their perminance is at the leisure of one American tech company.

Their visibility is as well.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#46

Post by kbsletten »

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #18
pests wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something wrong with this? Email, fax, phones, telegrams, snail mail, etc. Everything was the new weird thing at one point in time.

Tweets have the side effect of being public. Sometimes that becomes the main effect. Emails and the rest of your examples don't have that property.

You've clearly never had somebody forward your email on you. All digital communication is effectively public by virtue of fast, easy copying.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#47

Post by mankash666 »

intopieces wrote: post #43
confounded wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything else is mere virtue signalling without effect. By that definition, isn’t almost every form of non-decisive influence “virtue signaling”? Virtue itself? Marching against a war? Voting for a candidate you like the policies of, but who doesn’t have good media coverage? Declining to purchase unethical goods?

Yes. That’s the objective behind the term “virtue signaling” - to call into question the motives of anyone and everyone who claims to care about something so that it becomes deeply uncool to care about things so that they’ll stop trying to make the world a better place. Even if you presented a 100-step well funded plan for changing the status quo, prepare to have it leveled by the sneer of “you’re just virtue signali…

How's legitimacy relevant here? I'm not trying to place doubt, trying to make an honest observation that a result needs the majority of the board to vote for the measure.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#48

Post by _jal »

bb88 wrote: post #19

I don't think it matters. Third parties are going to be in this space anyway (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the foreign defense contractors) so it doesn't make a lot of sense to shut off a profitable segment. I was just thinking how much I would like an facial recognition API for my home security system. That way I can give someone's name to the police to make it easier to track someone down.

Me, I've been thinking about ALRs. If this stuff is going to be available, I think everyone should have it. So this is one of those projects I am just never going to get around to, but someone else, please do it - it shouldn't be that tough to build a cheap Raspberry-Pi-ish automatic plate reader anyone can point out their window to capture every plate going by. With a network of them, everyone can know this stuff, all the time, for free.

I find that to be a frightening outcome, but I think it is a less frightening one than only certain people having access. We have to learn how to live with this tech; far better to not allow it to be a tool of selective control while we're adapting. And it can be a more honest resource - police and other official vehicles' movements will be visible to those paying for those cars, whereas anything official will have official holes.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#49

Post by _rpd »

bcheung wrote: post #44

This seems like it is approaching the problem from the wrong angle. This should be addressed at the government law level. The problem is where do you draw the line? Any technology can be used for evil. Do you next ask companies that sell cameras not to sell to the government? Then ban computers? Laws that concern themselves with targeting and surveilling people encompass any technology. Facial recognition is not a ha…

> Facial recognition is not a hard problem

Low quality facial recognition is easy. High quality facial recognition is hard.

Re: Amazon shareholders demand it stop selling facial recognition to governments

#50

Post by sonnyblarney »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #10
istvanp wrote: post #5

While I applaud this effort, this will not stop the use of the technology. It will simply steer them to another provider or a custom implementation (on top of AWS if they so choose to) of this now well-understood technology.

Sure. But let's be clear - it is good to have as many software developers as possible steering away from unethical work.

"it is good to have as many software developers as possible steering away from unethical work."

Is it unethical to track down violent activists?

Is it unethical to check for people crossing the border illegally?

And this thing about the tech being used to single out 'people of colour' I think we can dismiss that out of hand - the tech won't be used for that ... though the application of the tech may disproportionately affect some groups (say the cops create a 'watch zone in S. Chicago' but not elsewhere).

But at least in the former scenarios, it's fairly grey thing.

At border crossings, I can see this could be very reasonable.

Walking down the street in 'wherever USA' tagged for something I can see ethical problems.

It depends on how it's used ... we need some new laws ...

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