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Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

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Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#51

Post by mtgx »

hakejam wrote: post #5

Rekognition is a public service and not specific to law enforcement use[1]. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ Disclaimer: I work for AWS.

It looks like law enforcement was definitely one of their let's say top 3 target markets when they built Rekognition, though.

Do know what gives it away? The fact that Amazon is actively pursuing that market and isn't just "allowing anyone to use it freely and equally".

No, they're going to law enforcement and showing them Powerpoint presentations, demos, and everything.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#52

Post by hbosch »

tajen wrote: post #18
pjc50 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the GDPR implications of this are.

If a European goes there, he’ll have to sign a GDPR agreement? but if the city grew tired of that, they could forbid access to Europeans altogether. Which I’m not surprised would happen one day, perhaps not under this form, but becausr of our overprotected status.

Sorry sir, we can’t let you through customs until you Accept the U.S. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#53

Post by Spooky23 »

ljw1001 wrote: post #11
hakejam wrote: post #5

Rekognition is a public service and not specific to law enforcement use[1]. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ Disclaimer: I work for AWS.

It may be available to be licensed for use in the private sector, but it is hardly a "public service." Without exaggeration, I think it would be closer to the truth to call it a "public menace".

That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?

With the exception of public figures, they aren’t sharing facial recognition datasets. This is a service that a moderately skilled team could implement with off the shelf and free software or an individual could do with a raspberry pi.

Law enforcement has been doing this for a long time in many areas. If there’s an ethical issue here, it’s with machine learning and camera surveillance in general, not Amazon.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#54

Post by paxys »

hbosch wrote: post #52
tajen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a European goes there, he’ll have to sign a GDPR agreement? but if the city grew tired of that, they could forbid access to Europeans altogether. Which I’m not surprised would happen one day, perhaps not under this form, but becausr of our overprotected status.

Sorry sir, we can’t let you through customs until you Accept the U.S. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Sounds funny, but this could actually happen. By entering the country you agree to give up your EU rights, or turn around and get back on the plane.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#55

Post by jolux »

darawk wrote: post #16
vinchuco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies do it at scale, though. And motivated by profits, not regard for 'good guy' or 'bad guy' status.

This doesn't really matter. You can do it at scale too, just spin up your NN on any of the cloud platforms available. Instant scale. The fact that amazon offers this recognition lowers the barrier hardly at all.

>just spin up your NN on any of the cloud platforms available

"just"...

Amazon marketed it to police explicitly, I'm pretty sure the open source team working on TensorFlow isn't going around suggesting you plop a model on Linode and use it to catch criminals. This isn't something that police departments have the ability or skill to discover and implement on their own, setting the menial bits up for them and suggesting a solution is half the battle with government stuff like this.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#56

Post by driverdan »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #48

As long as I or you can use it to track the coming and going of your Congressman and Senators, at the same price that Amazon charges others, I guess it is okay. That nice townhouse he visited with the attractive blonde who lives there, while his wife was out of town? It's ok for me to track and then publish the info, right? We're all equal when we are in public view, right?

I've long wanted to setup a system like this.

Cameras facing all entrances and exits of the state capitol would be fed into ALPR and facial recognition software. There are enough photos of elected officials to train facial recognition. It would be easy to identify who is coming and going, what cars they own, who they travel with, and their patterns.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#57

Post by darawk »

jolux wrote: post #55
darawk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't really matter. You can do it at scale too, just spin up your NN on any of the cloud platforms available. Instant scale. The fact that amazon offers this recognition lowers the barrier hardly at all.

>just spin up your NN on any of the cloud platforms available "just"... Amazon marketed it to police explicitly, I'm pretty sure the open source team working on TensorFlow isn't going around suggesting you plop a model on Linode and use it to catch criminals. This isn't something that police departments have the ability or skill to discover and implement on their own, setting the menial bits up for them and suggestin…

> Amazon marketed it to police explicitly

I don't see that in the article. Can you provide a source for that?

> This isn't something that police departments have the ability or skill to discover and implement on their own, setting the menial bits up for them and suggesting a solution is half the battle with government stuff like this.

It's something I have the ability to do on my own. Any police department could hire someone like me.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#58

Post by greenail »

callahad wrote: post #40
greenail wrote: post #33

Intel is also tracking everyone through the use of a very low level instruction shipped inside of every intel CPU. Details of this trust busting instruction can be found here: https://c9x.me/x86/html/file_module_x86_id_5.html It has also been discovered that many common languages such as C and PHP also implement abstractions to make this low level instruction much easier to use to track people with. The common use ca…

Sarcasm aside, Intel actually does / did sell a facial analytics platform that's embedded in many, many vending machines, digital signage, etc: https://aimsuite.intel.com/

this is the classic argument around blaming the tool or the user. The gun debate runs along the same lines. Saying "Amazon is Tracking People" is like saying Smith and Wesson is shooting people.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#59

Post by heelhook »

closetohome wrote: post #32

I'm a little surprised that a Libertarian think tank is taking issue with a private company going about its very profitable business.

Looking beyond the clickbait-y headline, I think the article takes issue with the use of this technology by government, which fits perfectly well with a Libertarian POV.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#60

Post by deleted_account »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #48

As long as I or you can use it to track the coming and going of your Congressman and Senators, at the same price that Amazon charges others, I guess it is okay. That nice townhouse he visited with the attractive blonde who lives there, while his wife was out of town? It's ok for me to track and then publish the info, right? We're all equal when we are in public view, right?

That just sounds like journalism to me, so: "Yes, it's ok."
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