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

#171

Post by mindcrime » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

ENOTTY wrote: post #72

> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…

That is the whole point of having armed forces! Armed forces exist to provide achieve foreign policy goals (deterrence, coercion) through the credible threat of its lethality.

WTF? No, just no. The only foreign policy goal the armed forces exist to serve is defense of the homeland. Everything else is a misuses of the military. Just because it's commonplace in this day and age doesn't mean it's OK or that anyone should accept it.

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

#172

Post by Pfhreak » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #76

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is where the free market system falls apart. It has no opinion on ethics, only profits. "We won't sell this technology to anyone who wants to use it to oppress people even though we could make a huge amount of money doing so" seems to suggest otherwise.

That keepaway strategy doesn't work for guns. There's no reason it should should work for other technologies.

[Citation needed]

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

#173

Post by _iyig » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #171

ENOTTY wrote: post #72

> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…

That is the whole point of having armed forces! Armed forces exist to provide achieve foreign policy goals (deterrence, coercion) through the credible threat of its lethality. WTF? No, just no. The only foreign policy goal the armed forces exist to serve is defense of the homeland. Everything else is a misuses of the military. Just because it's commonplace in this day and age doesn't mean it's OK or that anyone shoul…

Serious question: was liberating Auschwitz a misuse of the military?

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

#174

Post by mindcrime » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

allthecybers wrote: post #139

This argument conflates a number of issues and frankly loses steam on that basis. The running list of demands so far: Don’t sell facial recognition, don’t work with the government, kick a paying customer off of your system because of who they provide services to and while we are at it you shouldn’t be working with anyone I don’t like. Is that it? For now, but check back with me cause I might want to add greedy invest…

I really find it odd that all of a sudden tech employees are resistant to supporting their own government.

Nothing sudden about it. If anything, this trend is a return to normalcy. Hackers have traditionally been fairly opposed to authoritarianism, including - but not limited to - that expressed through the mechanism of governments and nation-states.

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

#175

Post by spamizbad » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #166

spamizbad wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A balance is going to have to be found here. A nightmare scenario for technology is one where it’s perceived as boot-licky and enabling the worst parts of government. Finding talent was hard even when tech was perceived as good or at least neutral; if it’s seen as an imperialist cog or even just an enabler for our governments bad behaviors it will make developing organizations even harder.

This talent scenario is a plausible one that could turn the balance from huge companies taking all the oxygen out of the system towards smaller ones being able to innovate again.

The problem is so few startups IPO and instead organize around becoming acquisition targets for "huge companies" that would theoretically now be in deep with the defense and law enforcement.

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

#176

Post by w0m » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

andun wrote: post #151

kodablah wrote: post #96

> Amazon, where I work, is currently allowing police departments around the country to purchase its facial recognition product, Rekognition, and I and other employees demand that we stop immediately. Ok, nod, nod... > 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 and to institute employee oversight for ethical…

It baffles me that some people seemingly want their country to fill with illegal immigrants and they also don't want to give the police/ICE/whatever the necessary tools to be able to dispatch them. Fantasy world indeed. I guess it's the result of being a wealthy programmer in the upper part of San Francisco: they won't affect your job security and you won't have to deal with or even see them

There's a clear and stark difference between

> want their country to fill with illegal immigrants

and selling facial recognition software to local police departments in main. It's disingenuous to conflate unlike positions. That's not to say I agree with one or or the other, but lets at least pretend to be honest about the comparisons.

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

#177

Post by Lich » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

I wonder if Amazon Go is used to improve Reckognition's computer vision algorithms.

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

#178

Post by aikah » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

Purely a question.

What are significant examples of internet related technologies that were if not invented, developed or had their development funded by the US military, if any?

Weren't languages like Ada developed for and financed by the DOD?

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

#179

Post by Kalium » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #87

ENOTTY wrote: post #72

> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…

> If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. That doesn't follow. One can believe in the utility of the military while at the same time holding that it must operate purely as a public service, so that no incentives are created for a state of permanent war. Famously, an American president expressed this ver…

You're absolutely, completely right. Eisenhower famously hated war, death, and military spending. He utterly loathed it and considered it a drain on humanity.

With that said, it's worth considering that Eisenhower might not have agreed with this:

> no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military

Accepting the utility of a military tends to mean accepting that it needs to be competitive in order to achieve the foreign policy goals that go with having a military. This often means incrementally increasing its lethality, and some people are going to make money along the way. Unless we think metal refineries and medical supplies producers and everything else in the supply chain should be operated on a strict non-profit basis.

In short, you are still completely correct! It might be worth considering being careful to avoid overinterpreting President Eisenhower is all.

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

#180

Post by mercutio2 » Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

Ilverin wrote: post #162

ENOTTY wrote: post #72

> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…

> If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Alternative: You can believe that circumstances dictate if the military is doing good or bad things. If the military is doing bad things, it is a reasonable argument to oppose them. Clearest example is Yemen. A less clear and debateable example is: the excessive…

Horrible things are happening in Yemen, but I’m not sure why you say it’s a clear example of something the [implicitily, US?] military is doing that is clearly bad.

I say this as someone who has ranged from medium to full-throated opposed to essentially every adventure undertaken by the US military and CIA in the past 50 years or so.

The militants on both sides seem really bad in Yemen.