81–90 of 210 posts
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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".
I think they may have meant something more like “publicly available service”
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.
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> The fact that your face can be tracked does not mean your speech will be curtailed, those two things are fairly unrelated. Anonymity is one of the most effective tools for preserving free speech. If you can't speak anonymously, you're more likely to self censor what you say. If you can't consume information anonymously, you're unlikely to seek out or research unpopular views or ideas. Barring massive social changes…
I agree with some of the principles you're articulating here, but I think the general class of position you're taking here is a bad one. Free speech has an actual meaning. It means the government does not restrict speech. Tracking people does not restrict speech. It may impose a social cost on you for speaking, but it does not prevent you from doing so. Nowhere in the constitution of the United States, nor any consti…
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Are people surprised that real-time image analysis has been commodified or that local governments are already applying this technology ahead of policy discussions? Clarifying edit: I'm not being disingenuous. I may be too close to the technology to grok why this thread is a down-vote minefield. Running OpenCV on an Arduino board is years-old proof-of-concept stuff and now I have an AWS DeepLens sitting on my desk tha…
No, but I'm sure many of the people working on it will continue to deny that they are simply building tools of control. That, or they don't care, or think it's a good thing.
Philosophically I would rather laws and social norms are enforced by law and not corporations or individuals with disproportionate influence.
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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.
Well, it's not like people go out facial-recognizing for sport or recreation...
Paparazzi and autograph hunters, to name two obvious examples.
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Are people surprised that real-time image analysis has been commodified or that local governments are already applying this technology ahead of policy discussions? Clarifying edit: I'm not being disingenuous. I may be too close to the technology to grok why this thread is a down-vote minefield. Running OpenCV on an Arduino board is years-old proof-of-concept stuff and now I have an AWS DeepLens sitting on my desk tha…
I believe it's the latter, given the last two paragraphs of TFA: > In order to protect civil liberties without hampering innovation, lawmakers should require public input before surveillance tools are deployed and ensure that facial recognition databases are purged of data related to law-abiding people. > lawmakers should ensure that real-time facial recognition capability is not merged with police cameras, whether t…
> lawmakers should require public input before surveillance tools are deployed
Again, what does that mean? Input is not the same thing as saying the public can veto it. Even if it does required explicit approval from the public is that really a great solution? The public has made a lot of shitty political decisions recently. Furthermore, who counts as part of the public? If you're a convicted felon who served his time do you count as part of the public?
This shit reeks.
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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.
Well, it's not like people go out facial-recognizing for sport or recreation...
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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 su…
Amazon is still facilitating it. If you’re selling guns to someone you know is a a serial killer, “someone else would have sold them a gun” is not a defense. Edit: especially if you run ads about how effective your guns are for serial killing.
By your standard, HN is on the same level as Amazon, as there have been many articles here over the years describing technical details on how to implement such a system available to anyone. A serial killer may be using a raspberry pi based facial recognition system that he learned about here, right now to stalk a victim.
That’s an untenable position.
> Amazon’s facial recognition service, Rekognition, is designed to identify and track people going about their daily business. This isn’t hyperbole - a Rekognition spokesperson explicitly mentioned real-time tracking and identification at an Amazon Web Services summit earlier this year. The same spokesperson went on to call Orlando a “smart city,” with cameras everywhere that allow authorities to track persons of int…
> The same spokesperson went on to call Orlando a “smart city,” with cameras everywhere that allow authorities to track persons of interest in real time. Someone needs to design an AI-powered camera-seeking spraypaint drone.