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Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

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Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#121
post #102

Sure and while you're at it why not implement cameras all over every roadway to automatically ticket you every time you break the speed limit. Or better yet, why not devise a real time geolocation device to be embedded in cars and then lobby for it to be nationally adopted so people literally can't speed? The reality is that very few people want to live in that world and even if we do fully adopt technologies like th…

This was something that came up shortly after the Snowden documents were released. I don't remember who made the point (maybe Moxie Marlinspike), but they pointed out how important it is to be able to break the law. That breaking the law is an vital means of effecting change in the US: kids smoke pot illegally and grow up to be adults that push to legalize it. Gay people are more and more open and successfully push f…

Indeed it was Moxie: https://moxie.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#122
post #59

Sure and while you're at it why not implement cameras all over every roadway to automatically ticket you every time you break the speed limit. Or better yet, why not devise a real time geolocation device to be embedded in cars and then lobby for it to be nationally adopted so people literally can't speed? The reality is that very few people want to live in that world and even if we do fully adopt technologies like th…

Would be interesting if all cars are robotic.

Whenever I talk about self driving cars, there is often somebody in the room who feels they represent a loss of freedom.

I’ve never been able to comprehend their position — Is this what they’re talking about?

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because constant surveillance of a targeted group will be systematically abused. And because next is using facial recognition to monitor other groups — LGBT, activists, political opponents. That is extremely frightening coming from an administration that is increasingly using violent and elimitionist language to levy completely made up charges at immigrants, LGBT, and particularly political opponents.

Do people have a right to not be identified in public? In public, your right to privacy doesn't protect you from having your picture being taken. Then, what if someone identifies you from your picture? How about if they use a CV system to speed it up? What's the argument here? BTW, as I expand upon below, I'm against surveillance of private communications, I think we all are. As far as I understand it, this is not su…

> In public, your right to privacy doesn't protect you from having your picture being taken.

I believe it does in some places, for example France.

Rules on the sort of thing are not universal. Europe collectively (continent not union) cares a bit less about freedom of speech, quite a bit more about privacy, compared to the USA.

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#124
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only commenting on your affluenza comparison specifically. Here's an example of why I think the comparison is meaningless. Grand theft can be charged as a misdemeanor with up to a two year jail sentence. But Brock Turner was sentenced to only six months of jail time for rape. Do you think grand theft is worse than rape? Of course not, but the problem here is the Brock Turner sentence, not the sentencing for grand…

And yet you failed to address my point entirely. Which is that far worse crimes in the US end up with more lenient sentencing than immigrants crossing the border. But fine then, I want to draw up a more apt comparison and I want you to address this. Public intoxication is a misdemeanor similar to crossing the border illegally. How often do you think people caught being publicly intoxicated end up losing custody of th…

As was clear from my first post, and as I stated explicitly in my second, and as I now state explicitly again, I was only commenting on your affluenza comparison. I found the comparison to be meaningless and invalid for the reasons I stated above. I never registered any opinion whatsoever on the specific issues at the border, so in particular I’m curious why you’re so confident I even disagree with you on that. Someone who agrees with your conclusion may still find your path there fallacious.

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left was the major source of anti immigration law until they replaced xenophobic labor laws with today's political reality

Why was this so downvoted?

They think it's political point scoring but you are substantially correct. Maybe mentioning that this shift took place in the late 80s and 90s would have helped.

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#126

Sure and while you're at it why not implement cameras all over every roadway to automatically ticket you every time you break the speed limit. Or better yet, why not devise a real time geolocation device to be embedded in cars and then lobby for it to be nationally adopted so people literally can't speed? The reality is that very few people want to live in that world and even if we do fully adopt technologies like th…

> The reality is that very few people want to live in that world

I suppose I'm in the minority, but I would love to live in a world with fewer impaired drivers and senseless motor vehicle accidents.

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#127
post #102

Sure and while you're at it why not implement cameras all over every roadway to automatically ticket you every time you break the speed limit. Or better yet, why not devise a real time geolocation device to be embedded in cars and then lobby for it to be nationally adopted so people literally can't speed? The reality is that very few people want to live in that world and even if we do fully adopt technologies like th…

This was something that came up shortly after the Snowden documents were released. I don't remember who made the point (maybe Moxie Marlinspike), but they pointed out how important it is to be able to break the law. That breaking the law is an vital means of effecting change in the US: kids smoke pot illegally and grow up to be adults that push to legalize it. Gay people are more and more open and successfully push f…

That does not work in states like the PRC or Russia. Indeed, in order to live and go on day-to-day, you must break the law. And people do. But, then when the state wants you, they will selectively enforce the law. That's how it works. Let people break the law, who cares, but when we need to arrest them, lo and behold, look, they've broken several laws!

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#128
post #38

Don’t Worry!!! Face recog startup founder here. Amazon’s tech only allows them to monitor a specific people list in real time. So search period should be limited. Otherwise it’s so expensive to do that. It only tracks for specific target list on real time cameras or photos. When it comes to searching on archives Amazon is so expensive to do it. As Reminisce Inc we are a photo delivery company. We have a face search t…

Kudos for the principled stance. Hope you can maintain that in the face of investor pressure. Are you saying it's prohibitively expensive to archive footage to later recog against (storage), or is the recog itself the expensive part (compute)?

The first thing we tell to investors is we are not building a security or surveillance product and we don't have a vision like that.

Storing and indexing (computation but not search) is expensive on AWS. Practically 1000 face metadata is not more than 4MB's of data in practice. 4MB face data is 1$ on AWS. Just one surveillance camera output archive + real time recognition costs 400$ / month according to my calculation.

Search part can be extremely fast with postgres in a special setting. It's kinda instant.

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but for the vast majority of issues, there is evidence that supports one side more than the other. I’m not so sure that is true. In my experience there is propaganda everywhere and politicians are trying to build a narrative instead of trying to find the truth.

> there is propaganda everywhere The propagandists would love you to throw up your hands and believe this; their goal is to paralyze you, sow chaos and despair. It's like a liar saying to you, after they lie to your face for the 10th time, 'everyone lies'. It's a false attempt to justify and normalize their bad behavior. Technically yes, but it's meaningless; some people are far more trustworthy than others. The trus…

> The trustworthiness of information and politicians varies greatly.

Yes it does - and we are hopeless at determining who is trustworthy and who isn’t.

For example I am a well educated, well paid, and politically aware person and I trust Trump. Other equally educated, paid, aware, etc people distrust Trump.

> throw up your hands

I think we need techniques to move in a positive direction even in the face of propaganda.

Techniques to ensure politicians are worse off when we the people are worse off. E.g. Salary capping for life at say 2x median state pay.

Techniques that help us risk adjust decisions based on how easy it is to back out of them. E.g. It’s far easier to add more immigrants if we find out we have taken in too few than it is to kick out immigrants if we find out we have taken in too many.

Techniques that ensure negative consequences of voting a particular way are felt by the voters. E.g. if you vote to ban private schools and it goes through then your kids are assigned to a bottom 25% public school.

Etc.

Re: Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants

#130
post #39

Don’t Worry!!! Face recog startup founder here. Amazon’s tech only allows them to monitor a specific people list in real time. So search period should be limited. Otherwise it’s so expensive to do that. It only tracks for specific target list on real time cameras or photos. When it comes to searching on archives Amazon is so expensive to do it. As Reminisce Inc we are a photo delivery company. We have a face search t…

.... what? This reads a lot more like an advertisement than a comment about the story, with a bit of sarcasm?

I just wanted to show a different application area. The leads I will get from here probably will not bring any sales before 5 years lol.
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