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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

#231
post #208

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…

You can collapse the comments and it's child comments clicking the [-] icon

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

#232

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…

people have been separated from their children

This happens any time anyone is sent to prison for any reason, no?

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

#233
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…

For reference to those who may not know:

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address https://youtu.be/OyBNmecVtdU

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

#234

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.

Could you expand on this? Because it reads like "help build killing machines even though you signed up for a completely different job, or you don't support your government because you're a political partisan."

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

#235

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…

Trust in government is at an all time low, and IMO for good reason. Secret courts, lack of oversight and transparency, massive data collection, downplaying of what that means, security breaches, lack of competency at the court and congress level to even understand what they are passing into law, and most importantly regulatory capture.

Personally I'd be OK with government collection of some data if I knew it was properly secured, there was more oversight, and if it wasn't so beholden to corporate interests.

If anything, the current administration makes this even worse in my opinion, but it was already a really big problem with the previous administration.

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

#236
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…

The only foreign policy goal the armed forces exist to serve is defense of the homeland.

Securing access to raw materials is defending the homeland. I live on an island, patrolling the shipping lanes is absolutely something our military should be doing. Standing ready to assist our trading partners on whom we rely for food and fuel is absolutely something they should be doing.

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

#237
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

people have been separated from their children This happens any time anyone is sent to prison for any reason, no?

Being in the country without authorization is a civil infraction, not a criminal one, and people aren't sent to prison for civil infractions.

You're also allowed to be here if you're seeking asylum.

But, at the end of the day, if your basis for the family border separation policy is to defend it with "well, criminals also have their families broken up," then I'm not sure how to convince you it's right to care about and have empathy for families and other human beings.

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

#238
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interestingly, andun is a new account and seems to be a holocaust denier, based on at least one of their other comments ("purported holocaust death camps").

Engage accordingly.

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

#239
post #151

> 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

Unless you are a Native American, which make up less than 1% of the population, you came to this country as an immigrant. The vast majority of modern immigrants are coming to the country for a similar reason why people did 100 years ago. Immigration doesn't hurt anything, even if it was the case that it lowered the cost of labor (which it isn't), that would result in a bigger economy with more jobs and employment, which would then result in wages rising again.

Automation and outsourcing are the primary things that have lowered the wages of American workers as it reduced demand for low skill and other manual labor work, not immigrants seeking a better life.

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

#240
post #237
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people have been separated from their children This happens any time anyone is sent to prison for any reason, no?

Being in the country without authorization is a civil infraction, not a criminal one, and people aren't sent to prison for civil infractions. You're also allowed to be here if you're seeking asylum. But, at the end of the day, if your basis for the family border separation policy is to defend it with "well, criminals also have their families broken up," then I'm not sure how to convince you it's right to care about a…

if your basis for the family border separation policy is to defend it with "well, criminals also have their families broken up,"

Not at all. I just find it curious that this one particular application of what is actually a common policy has suddenly become protest-worthy. By all means protest it in its entirety (if you think it’s appropriate for children to serve sentences alongside their parents in the same cells) but anything else just looks politically motivated.

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