Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#31

Post by bnt » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 9:42 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

>The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE’s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services The number one thing that will make large companies reject cloud computing is any hint that why will be kicked off because their legal business goes against the mores of the US West coast tech workers. If Palantir gets kicked off, how long until these same workers…

Kicking a high-profile account like Palantir off of AWS would probably have a domino effect which would result in pretty much every big player moving to custom data centers (or preparing a plan-b just in case it happens to them).

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#32

Post by ckocagil » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 9:45 AM UTC

andun wrote: post #23

nodesocket wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people want justice, thus the police to find the murderer, arrest them, and bring them in front of a judge or jury for their due punishment. Limiting the polices technology and resources is an argument that doesn't make sense to me. Especially coming from open source advocates. Smells of hypocrisy.

I'm with you. Never mind the leftist narrative of HN. You fight the good fight.

It's very ironic that you're defending China's position on mass surveillance tech while complaining about leftists.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#33

Post by Majestic121 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 9:47 AM UTC

andun wrote: post #28

detaro wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is "limiting the powers of the state" a "leftist narrative"? Because that what it boils down to.

The argument usually is "this will be used to target minorities/dissidents/illegal immigrants"

The typical 'leftist narrative' is a nanny state over-using its power to censor alt-right to protect 'minorities/dissidents/illegal immigrants'.

I'd place 'less government power' as more of a rightist narrative (see gun control for example)

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#34

Post by NeedMoreTea » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 10:06 AM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #8

kochthesecond wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if your daughter was murdered, you want them dead. That is not how we made our legislation work.

Most people want justice, thus the police to find the murderer, arrest them, and bring them in front of a judge or jury for their due punishment. Limiting the polices technology and resources is an argument that doesn't make sense to me. Especially coming from open source advocates. Smells of hypocrisy.

I am a great believer in Sir William Blackstone's view in 1765: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer". Particularly with the state of our prisons and the utter ruination of an innocent life, even if later identified as a miscarriage of justice.

Innocent until proven guilty, and police gathering evidence of a crime and scene to find, catch, interview and potentially prosecute a suspect. If that proves more expensive, spend enough on policing to achieve adequate deterrence and conviction rates.

The problem with any mass trawl or systemic facial recognition is it makes it utterly trivial to abuse the rights of those who happen to be in a minority group, or to actively look for crimes with which to persecute someone disliked. This is policing the wrong way round.

I hold just the same views about traffic enforcement. Cameras and automatic fines worse than a police officer in a patrol car. The officer can let someone off with a chat if there were clear extenuating circumstances - cameras can't. The officer can catch bad or dangerous driving that happens to be at legal speeds - cameras can't.

I see no hypocrisy here.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#35

Post by throw2016 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 10:12 AM UTC

This is where the free market system falls apart. It has no opinion on ethics, only profits. Companies are put together to produce, market and sell surveillance tech to schools, corporates, communities, the police and even nation states.

Individual ethics are meaningless beyond signalling against a system. Individual components may have ethical concerns but the system is incentivized to grow and it has.

Imagine walking into a group of sales or engineering folks celebrating a new deal or release at a restaurant and berating them on 'surveillance and ethics'. That shows you the dissonance of your expectation and the disconnect of ethical concerns from businesses. And the impotence of individual ethics in a system.

The only thing that can counter this are explicit laws against this kind of damaging behavior and rule of law. Individuals are not allowed to do whatever gets them profit, they have to operate within ethical constraints, to advocate businesses not operate in an ethical context and to leave everything to markets is advocating lawlessness. And the system does respond in some cases like in drones, 3d printing of guns. Those are not free for all. Surveillance is a failure of regulation.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#36

Post by hazz99 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

throw2016 wrote: post #35

This is where the free market system falls apart. It has no opinion on ethics, only profits. Companies are put together to produce, market and sell surveillance tech to schools, corporates, communities, the police and even nation states. Individual ethics are meaningless beyond signalling against a system. Individual components may have ethical concerns but the system is incentivized to grow and it has. Imagine walki…

I strongly disagree. Regulation and a free market can definitely coincide, we don't have to be so absolutist in our economic opinion. Similarly, a nation having welfare and universal healthcare doesn't mean they're communist. It's not one-or-the-other.

Europe has a much freer market than the US, and also has much stronger protections on personal privacy, a la GDPR.

> Individuals are not allowed to do whatever gets them profit, they have to operate within ethical constraints, to advocate businesses not operate in an ethical context and to leave everything to markets is advocating lawlessness.

Most Libertarian thought espouses this belief, and they are all-in on capitalism.

    Capitalism != immorality

You likely believe this from examining the behavior of US companies. The US market is not very "free" at all - it is heavily regulated, with the government propping up unethical, failing, non-innovative corporations.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#37

Post by simion314 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

ta_egdhs wrote: post #10

constitutional rights (and a culture that enshrines them as sacred) is just one layer of protection for civil liberties. The other, Often overlooked layer is the fact that running a dystopian state is uneconomical. For better or worse this is the logic used by gun advocates, but it should also apply to other areas. technology can make it feasible to scale repression like never before. facial recognition, big data, ce…

This employees from big companies protesting cause news like this to appear here, so it was not a waste

- part of the people read about this

- other developers will get inspired so we can see more developers speaking against this.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#38

Post by hazz99 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 10:17 AM UTC

hugh-avherald wrote: post #13

freeone3000 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations are overseen by the government. The government is in the unique position of having the monopoly of force. If a company turns bad, the government protects us. If the government turns bad, things get very bad.

I doubt that any of the four sentences above are true in reality.

I disagree. When the government turns bad, it is potentially an extremely dangerous scenario which pales in comparison to a corporation being unethical. A corporation cannot bomb your house.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#39

Post by simion314 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 10:21 AM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #8

kochthesecond wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if your daughter was murdered, you want them dead. That is not how we made our legislation work.

Most people want justice, thus the police to find the murderer, arrest them, and bring them in front of a judge or jury for their due punishment. Limiting the polices technology and resources is an argument that doesn't make sense to me. Especially coming from open source advocates. Smells of hypocrisy.

>Limiting the polices technology and resources is an argument that doesn't make sense to me. Especially coming from open source advocates. Smells of hypocrisy.

You know we have the technology to monitor people location and conversations in real time, we can put those monitoring bracelets on everybody , promise not to use them until a crime is happening and we want to see who was where.

This will solve crimes but it gives a big oppressive tool to the state, is your point that all possible tech should be used if is not too expensive so we reduce crime to 0? This may mean cameras on private properties, mandatory personality checks, social score etc.

Re: Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

#40

Post by gaius » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 10:27 AM UTC

This technology is the very definition of dual-use. There’s fundamentally no difference between a tool that can do “cat or not cat” and one for “terrorist or not terrorist”. The only difference is that people using for the latter probably don’t understand its failure modes and are taking its output very, very seriously.