Live data from Hacker News

Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

thehill.com

1–10 of 117 posts

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#3
How is selling to law enforcement any worse than selling facial recognition tech to companies that are also use it to invade my privacy and use the technology to try and squeeze money out of me?

Where do you draw the line on ethical usage?

In my mind, if you're concerned about the ethics of facial recognition tech, you shouldn't be working in that field at all. It's fundamentally anti-privacy.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#5

How is selling to law enforcement any worse than selling facial recognition tech to companies that are also use it to invade my privacy and use the technology to try and squeeze money out of me? Where do you draw the line on ethical usage? In my mind, if you're concerned about the ethics of facial recognition tech, you shouldn't be working in that field at all. It's fundamentally anti-privacy.

> Where do you draw the line on ethical usage?

One can put me in a box. The other one can’t.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#6
I love the sentiment, but seriously... who did you think you were building this for? It's absurd to believe you were helping anything other than the big brother character from 1984. Who else would this help? Foreign secret services? Maybe you believed it would help stream line the automation process? Thereby making humans irrelevant? I'd love to hear a legitimate - non-big brother implementation of this. And please don't be so coy as to say this helps automate person to person sales. I can already review all purchases made through big box hardware stores thanks to them identifying me through my credit card number and the email address I associated with it.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#7

How is selling to law enforcement any worse than selling facial recognition tech to companies that are also use it to invade my privacy and use the technology to try and squeeze money out of me? Where do you draw the line on ethical usage? In my mind, if you're concerned about the ethics of facial recognition tech, you shouldn't be working in that field at all. It's fundamentally anti-privacy.

> Where do you draw the line on ethical usage? One can put me in a box. The other one can’t.

Say the government doesn't have it. They can just ask/force/coerce/pressure the tech company that does for your data. Or steal it from them.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#9

How is selling to law enforcement any worse than selling facial recognition tech to companies that are also use it to invade my privacy and use the technology to try and squeeze money out of me? Where do you draw the line on ethical usage? In my mind, if you're concerned about the ethics of facial recognition tech, you shouldn't be working in that field at all. It's fundamentally anti-privacy.

> Where do you draw the line on ethical usage? One can put me in a box. The other one can’t.

Anything goes, so long as they don't put you in a box? That's very permissive of you.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#10

I love the sentiment, but seriously... who did you think you were building this for? It's absurd to believe you were helping anything other than the big brother character from 1984. Who else would this help? Foreign secret services? Maybe you believed it would help stream line the automation process? Thereby making humans irrelevant? I'd love to hear a legitimate - non-big brother implementation of this. And please d…

> Who else would this help?

FaceID users. Just because something has downsides doesn’t mean it has no upsides.

Post reply on HN