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Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

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Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#201

Post by magnetic »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #124
sedachv wrote: post #116

> When most people think of the tech giant Amazon, they think of an innovative, consumer-friendly company responsible for affordable deliveries. This is one of those instances where I say to myself, "I wish I had listened to Richard Stallman X years ago": https://stallman.org/amazon.html

> Emo Phillips once made this joke: The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way." Evidently Amazon has made that joke obsolete. Like Stallman, I'm so uncomfortable installing a listening device in my home like OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc. It creeps me out on a visceral level unlike any other kind of snooping.

I am uncomfortable about it too (and haven't installed any in my home), but I'm not sure what to do about the exact same issues from smart phones that we carry with us all the time: they can easily listen in on our conversation, in addition to knowing when that conversation happened and where.

The home pods are a bit of a drop in the bucket when you think about "smartphone coverage around the world".

What options are there?

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#202

Post by Fnoord »

JackCh wrote: post #168
Fnoord wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I physically disconnect all of the internal microphones from my laptops, and cover the cameras. How do you deal with the former on your smartphone?

You missed this part: "I don't actually have a smartphone for this reason)."

Good for you, not practical for most of us though.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#203

Post by julsimon »

ceejayoz wrote: post #99
Nullabillity wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can do positive things with Rekognition. [Citation needed]

[Citation provided] The NYT (and C-SPAN, apparently) uses it to identify members of Congress: https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-softwar... Shutterfly is apparently using it for image categorization: http://ir.shutterfly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...

Amazon Rekognition helps Marinus Analytics fight human trafficking http://www.marinusanalytics.com/articles/2017/10/17/amazon-r...

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#204

Post by cyphar »

Fnoord wrote: post #202
JackCh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed this part: "I don't actually have a smartphone for this reason)."

Good for you, not practical for most of us though.

The Librem 5 will have hardware switches for the microphone and camera I believe. But at the moment I don't have a smartphone (I used to have one but eventually figured out it was a much bigger burden than it was worth).

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#205

Post by turbografx16 »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #130
ehnto wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am honestly very surprised at how comfortable people are with them. I think the smartphone paved the way and normalized it. I remember friends and family being terrified that their SMS messages were being read. Now people often don't give it a second thought.

Never write anything in an email/SMS/etc that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading on the Jumbotron in Times Square. If you follow that simple rule you'll do fine.

You shouldn't fucking have to. That just leads to social cooling.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#206

Post by mulmen »

slededit wrote: post #94
mulmen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the expectation that employees and corporations act with some (or any) kind of morality beyond "make money legally". Philosophically I would rather laws and social norms are enforced by law and not corporations or individuals with disproportionate influence.

Are they not citizens? Surely a person has a duty above personal wealth. Past generations certainly thought that way.

I’m not sure about you but my personal identify is not wholly made up of my employment.

My comment is clearly about the danger of imposing morality through corporate influence.

I did not say that a person’s entire responsibility is to enrich themselves. I said that is the responsibility of an employee. People can and do have complex and sometimes conflicting interests and responsibilities.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#207

Post by fghtr »

lazybreather wrote: post #150

I am in this dangerous situation where I see posts like "X is tracking people online" and just scroll though without even giving it a thought. Help me!

Become a member of EFF and FSF, so that even if you cannot think about it anymore, some people will (I did just that).

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#208

Post by analyticascent »

wwweston wrote: post #160
all_blue_chucks wrote: post #112

Facial recognition software isn't particularly new and isn't specific to Amazon. Cato is just trying to sling manufactured mud at Bezos to further a political agenda because that's what they do.

Isn't Cato about "a political agenda" here in the same way the same way the EFF has political agendas? This issue is political in the sense that it's very much about social policy ... and it's just possible that it's bad social policy to let people perform/offer surveillance-at-scale as a service. (It is kindof funny to see Cato discover one significant limit of a general philosophy of private market freedoms, though…

Specifically, they take issue with the government creating demand for surveillance technology. Nothing unusual for a public policy organization that has Cato's perspective.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#209

Post by analyticascent »

oculusthrift wrote: post #122

Not a fan of Amazon but this article is directly sponsored by the koch brothers. kind of weird we have transparently political articles like this yet others are banned.

Under what conditions should financial support from people who share an organization's thesis disqualify what that organization has to say on an issue?
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