Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#41

Post by jklinger410 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

nepeckman wrote: post #35

whoisjuan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…

I think it gets more problematic when the data is shared and human judgement is eliminated. What happens if someone is lost in a neighborhood and accidentally displays "suspicious" behavior in multiple locations? They are then logged in a database as a suspicious person and potentially pointed out to law enforcement as a suspect without any chance to explain themselves. I don't think this technology would be quite as…

>What happens if someone is lost in a neighborhood and accidentally displays "suspicious" behavior in multiple locations? They are then logged in a database as a suspicious person and potentially pointed out to law enforcement as a suspect without any chance to explain themselves.

Where is the issue here? That we provide suspicious activity reports, or that our police SEEMINGLY can't reliably deal with those reports?

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#42

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

helloworld2212 wrote: post #29

I'm quite surprised here to not have seen anyone point out the way these patent games typically work inside of a big company. Often a company is motivated to increase their IP portfolio. In turn they motivate their engineers by offering lucrative bonuses for each patent filed. At my last company we played this game and it was roughly $3k per patent. In general, out of the huge number of patents that get filed in a bi…

"let's maybe save the outrage until they announce that they are actually going to build this thing and deploy it in the real world?"

Perhaps enough outrage now would prevent it from being deployed, or would get them to engage in at least a tiny amount of mitigation of the worst aspects of it.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#43

Post by drb91 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #31

jbigelow76 wrote: post #27

Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. This has to be the worst part of it, if you've ever been part of a suburban neighborhood that uses NextDoor as a community tool you'll know that Ring doorbell videos of "others" crank the pearl-clutching paranoia of bored homeowners up to 11. The comme…

I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…

It is paranoid to think that the people outside your house want to rob or kill you. It is not paranoid to see that the “wrong context” is just a matter of time.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#44

Post by drb91 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #41

nepeckman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it gets more problematic when the data is shared and human judgement is eliminated. What happens if someone is lost in a neighborhood and accidentally displays "suspicious" behavior in multiple locations? They are then logged in a database as a suspicious person and potentially pointed out to law enforcement as a suspect without any chance to explain themselves. I don't think this technology would be quite as…

>What happens if someone is lost in a neighborhood and accidentally displays "suspicious" behavior in multiple locations? They are then logged in a database as a suspicious person and potentially pointed out to law enforcement as a suspect without any chance to explain themselves. Where is the issue here? That we provide suspicious activity reports, or that our police SEEMINGLY can't reliably deal with those reports?

Why is this data worth reporting at all? What good can come from it?

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#45

Post by gaze » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #11

Santosh83 wrote: post #2

It is not the technology that is dangerous but the scale and manner of its deployment. Patented, opaque, closed source, championed by mega-corporations closely allied with powerful governments, entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage... these are the real concerning…

> society will get sharply stratified into the 'watched' and the 'watchers' and the latter will get access to nearly limitless data and power... Don't kid yourself, even the 'watchers' will be 'watched'. The people bringing all these systems together will not be your local yocal Barney Fifes. They will be professional and highly intelligent technical teams whose members have likely studied little other than security…

Why do you think this? Who are these elites that never leave security holes in things? The snowden leaks show they don't work for the NSA. They don't work in consumer electronics... the deeply flawed copy protection schemes in most video game consoles show that. They don't work for the FSB. What gives you the impression that these people even exist?

People seem to not understand the asymmetry in difficulty between offence and defense. For something to be broken, there just needs to be one fuckup, or a few tiny fuckups that can be linked together. Smart people are not infallible. Everything is exploited eventually. The only foolproof thing to do is not to build the infrastructure in the first place.

But yes, I agree with your last point. There's no privacy anymore.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#46

Post by jf- » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

Have you heard of those handy online tracking companies, the ones that build profiles of you based on as much data they can scrape, steal or buy, mainly for advertising, but occasionally for more dubious purposes? Well, now thanks to Amazon Ring® powered by Rekognition™, you can have that same privacy invasion experience in real life! Not carrying your mobile device? Not to worry! Advanced facial recognition technology means that never again will you need to worry about going anywhere without being surreptitiously tracked! Every location, every purchase, and with optional amazon echo, every conversation. Amazon - total surveillance, today.

My point is, I don't like it, and this is actually where we're heading with this crap. The same tracking we currently have online, but in the real world.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#47

Post by richrichardsson » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #34

whoisjuan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…

So under this system if I walk up to your door mistakenly before realizing I'm at the wrong place, the police will be alerted any time I walk past a house.

Ring their doorbell. When they answer, tell them "Hi, this isn't the house I was looking for, but you've got that surveillance system in place, so I don't want to be registered as 'suspicious'. OK, sorry not sorry for wasting your time, goodbye."

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#48

Post by toss1 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #2

It is not the technology that is dangerous but the scale and manner of its deployment. Patented, opaque, closed source, championed by mega-corporations closely allied with powerful governments, entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage... these are the real concerning…

This.

The difference between individual human watchers doing surveillance, face recognition, etc. and at-scale watchers doing the same thing is key.

The difference is no less than the old corner stores every few blocks vs Amazon's automated warehouses & shipping.

An ordinary drive with a bit of speeding here and there everyday goes from perhaps a ticket or two every decade, to 6 tickets every trip.

A meaningless wrong turn, I'm lost, let's look around and try to figure out where I am, turns from a non-event to a Suspicious Activity Report...

Just because the laws are word-for-word unchanged, the scaling of enforcement technology transforms the identical laws into a completely different society and experience (just as other scaling technology transforms our experience in a positive way).

This phenomena, as unintended consequences ("just trying to make the neighborhood safer...", but scaled 10^7), is perhaps as dangerous as Bostrom's AI warnings.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#49

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #30

jbigelow76 wrote: post #27

Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. This has to be the worst part of it, if you've ever been part of a suburban neighborhood that uses NextDoor as a community tool you'll know that Ring doorbell videos of "others" crank the pearl-clutching paranoia of bored homeowners up to 11. The comme…

I kept arguing with others on the Nextdoor app to keep a lid on their paranoia so much that I ended up leaving. The story that led me to leaving that community? A van drove down a cul de sac and turned around. A homeowner thought that was suspicious and so jumped in their car and followed. They followed for a long time, then suddenly the van dips into another neighborhood, goes down a street, turns at the last moment…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#50

Post by dvtrn » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #37

SubiculumCode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kept arguing with others on the Nextdoor app to keep a lid on their paranoia so much that I ended up leaving. The story that led me to leaving that community? A van drove down a cul de sac and turned around. A homeowner thought that was suspicious and so jumped in their car and followed. They followed for a long time, then suddenly the van dips into another neighborhood, goes down a street, turns at the last moment…

Next time, on Nextdoor... I was across town trying to get back to the highway, when I get confused in this residential neighborhood and end up on a dead end street. (Why so many dead ends?) As I get ready to turn back onto Pine, I notice this guy run out and hop in his car and start tailgating me. No way am I going home now, with this weirdo following me and probably wanting to steal my stuff. So I hit the gas, and d…

When I first moved to Chicago years ago the amount of one way streets and intersecting one way streets on the northwest side made for a lot of turning around, stopping, passing the same block multiple times, pulling over to the side of a road to stare at my spotty-coverage GPS and figure out how to get back to the main two way thoroughfare. Especially while apartment hunting.

I jokingly wonder how many people I freaked out on nextdoor