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

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

#201

Post by andun »

sdenton4 wrote: post #195
dragontamer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue is that the leader of ICE / Military / etc. etc. change power roughly... every 4 years. Police is a local issue, and may change closer to every 2 years (although local municipalities may have a Sheriff, or a Commission, or may rely upon a Mayor to make those decisions). We already have a mechanism for choosing the leader of these various institutions. And whatever powers we give to these institutions,…

So people have been separated from their children should just wait for the American people to maaaaaaybe kick out the jackboots in two to four years? Naw, dawg, when things get ugly, you have to resist where you can. I'm guessing you can't agree, but there's a fair number of people who think we're in a Germany 1937 situation. We have a president who in all likelihood enlisted Russian interference in the election, who…

Those people were caught committing a crime. And it's not the kind of crime one could commit by mistake, they were entering a country illegally.

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

#202

Post by tracker1 »

I may have a slightly bent view on this... the technology exists, is being created, and is getting commoditized. Why increase the cost to taxpayers?

As to increasing lethality, wouldn't this in effect be decreasing the risk of collateral deaths?

The bigger issue to me is probably unsupervised police usage at a local level. That said, the tech exists and will be used. I'd rather it were less costly. We, as a nation (in the US) already spend far more than we should be on the military. I'm in favor of most technology that reduces costs and mitigates risks.

That's not to say that I approve of the use of drones on sovereign soil we are not actively at war with (the country itself, not "terrorism"), without that country's permission. I wouldn't want China, Russia, Mexico or Canada flying armed drones over the U.S. and don't think the U.S. should be doing it either. That doesn't mean I don't think drones should exist. Policy, use and technology are not the same and shouldn't be conflated like this.

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

#203

Post by tracker1 »

sam0x17 wrote: post #152
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…

It is perfectly consistent for example to believe that it is OK to have a military, but not to do any R&D in the private sector. That is what this guy is advocating.

So you think we should duplicate R&D that's already happening in the private sector and increase taxpayer costs?

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

#204

Post by Ilverin »

mercutio2 wrote: post #180
Ilverin wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If both sides are bad, then helping either side accomplishes nothing good unless it ends the war sooner. If the side you support is enforcing a blockade and causing harm to civilians, that is a bad thing while it lasts.

In reality, the Saudis have no realistic plan to win in Yemen, so helping them will not end the war anytime soon. In the meantime, Yemen has the worst famine in the last 100 years.

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

#205

Post by onemoresoop »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #125
turdnagel wrote: post #111

Stopping facial recognition tech is not the solve. The problem is surveillance - that’s what we ought to address.

Agreed. Software doesn't run oppressive surveillance states. People run oppressive surveillance states.

Thats similar to "guns dont kill people, people do". But the more guns are available the more people are being killed. Similar with this story, the more the facial recongition technology evolves (without ethical considerations) the more the surveillance states accomplish their jobs

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

#206

Post by tomnipotent »

kadendogthing wrote: post #194
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…

>Second, you risk AWS being seen as non-neutral based on the whims of employees' feelings about a company God forbid workers have say in how their work is used, instead of just being robots. Smart enough to build the technology, but apparently not qualified enough to have input on limiting its nefarious and anti-social uses at the hand of an executive branch the employees probably don't favor.

Should a conservative bakery be allowed to refuse service based on religious beliefs?

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

#207

Post by bsenftner »

Pfhreak wrote: post #169
bsenftner wrote: post #121

Click bait journalism. Pointless article. Bad journalism tricking you for ad dollars with nonsense. I am a lead software scientist in the Facial Recognition industry. Amazon's ‘Rekognition’ service is a sad, expensive joke. No body takes that software serious. It is poor quality. It is expensive. It is marketed to the consumer public for Amazon's stock, not for actual serious FR use. It is not appropriate for any ser…

You have a lot of experience in the industry, and are able to make your own evaluations of a product based on (I'm guessing) years and years of daily interaction with that domain. Do you think police departmant purchasers are as well informed as you are?Able to make the same thorough analysis? What happens when a facial recognition product that you believe performs poorly is used and everyone thinks it performs well?…

Police departments are not well informed at all; and they are the constant targets of manipulative, fact-free marketing.

Thank gawd they can't just go out and purchase any security / surveillance technology they fancy.

Typically a trial / vetting period is used to test a given system for accuracy as well as ability to integrate with existing systems, plus the over all expense of operating the system over time.

This is when Rekognition falls down, because the accuracy is too wide, the system requires human operators to make up for the lack of accuracy. Then the monthly is expensive to use it is high. Plus there is a perceptual disconnect officers have with the FR system operators required to maintain Rekognition: these operators more or less become FR specialists, with salaries to match, but their actual moment to moment work is closer to a security guard, with their technological knowledge only needed for moments at a time. Police department Directors have a hard time justifying these new roles, in light of the multiple new high expenses required to use Rekognition.

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

#208

Post by rayvy »

I really hate that 50% of this thread has ran off on a military-related tangent. Could have been a good discussion about facial recognition, morality, and authority, but instead, because one looney posted some "super-uber-pro-military" comment, the first 50% of my scroll is related to that one topic.

Will post this in ASK HN another time, but HN really needs some sort of drop down mechanism where we can show/hide a top-level comment's thread at will (mobile & desktop). Makes no sense the way this current setup is.

[edit]

Ruins the UX when I have to scroll aaaallllllll the way down to get to the top level comments. Not saying we should discourage constructive discourse by any means. Just saying we need to better organize how that discourse is reflected, so as to make for a better UX.

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

#209

Post by jki275 »

onemoresoop wrote: post #205
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Software doesn't run oppressive surveillance states. People run oppressive surveillance states.

Thats similar to "guns dont kill people, people do". But the more guns are available the more people are being killed. Similar with this story, the more the facial recongition technology evolves (without ethical considerations) the more the surveillance states accomplish their jobs

Are you sure your premise is accurate? There are consistently more murders in cities throughout the US where gun ownership is heavily restricted or de-facto banned -- Chicago, DC, etc.

Out in the wild west, where there are more guns, there are fewer killings (per capita and absolute).

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