Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#51

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:17 PM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #48

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many people who don't think there's anything immoral about facial recognition, or even its lawful use by law enforcement. I am among them. Such individuals probably comprise a higher fraction of Amazon's voting shareholders than the population at large. Especially if you count by votes, since if Bezos thought there was anything wrong with it the program wouldn't exist.

Just out of curiosity - How have your interactions been with law enforcement during your life? Largely positive? Largely negative? Or non-existent? Do you, overall, feel that the US in largely a place where law-abiding citizens are free to go about their days?

There are obviously serious problems with law enforcement in the united states. Although I think that these mostly manifest in face to face encounters with the poor, people of color, and the mentally ill. I can't think of many recent cases where local law enforcement's application of information technology resulted in gross injustice.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#52

Post by plandis » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

In my mind selling facial recognition seems no different than selling a hammer. It’s amoral, it can be used for good or bad.

Id much rather see laws to limit when and how the technology can be applied.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#53

Post by SquishyPanda23 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #47

llamataboot wrote: post #11

Ah, the public corporation! Fictive structures created so that profit-making shall never be interfered with by moral or ethical concerns! Just creating shareholder value, what else can you expect us to do!

Public corporations, private corporations, state-owned, party-controlled corporations. It doesn’t matter. At least public corporations are known to bow to pressure. I think ownership is irrelevant. What matters is lawfulness and what remains lawful after pressure or indifference from the constituencies. Hand in hand with this is the rule of law. Some countries on paper have great liberties and rights for their people…

Yeah but everyone on this site will tell you that laws and regulations are horrid evil things.

So if we can't expect anything from the corporations because we should be looking to laws, and if we can't pass laws because they are evil hindrances to corporations, then what should we do?

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#54

Post by xtian » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:21 PM UTC

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #53

mc32 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public corporations, private corporations, state-owned, party-controlled corporations. It doesn’t matter. At least public corporations are known to bow to pressure. I think ownership is irrelevant. What matters is lawfulness and what remains lawful after pressure or indifference from the constituencies. Hand in hand with this is the rule of law. Some countries on paper have great liberties and rights for their people…

Yeah but everyone on this site will tell you that laws and regulations are horrid evil things. So if we can't expect anything from the corporations because we should be looking to laws, and if we can't pass laws because they are evil hindrances to corporations, then what should we do?

Consume

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#55

Post by munk-a » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:21 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #7

Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle. Especially since presumably many of the foundation layers of this technology are open source with wide scale applications. Will they outlaw machine learning? TensorFlow? Obviously whatever Amazon is doing is more complicated than throwing a ton of face images at TensorFlow but as technology progre…

> Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can never put the tech genie back in the bottle.

We've (effectively) put chemical warfare back in the bottle, regulations can be quite effective in shifting the public perception - but I won't argue that it's hard to do.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#56

Post by linuxftw » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #8

godzillabrennus wrote: post #3

Love that the article says people can use the AWS support system to report issues with the technology. That's a black hole of no return if you are a paying customer much less someone random off the internet.

Let me just make a distinction that if you are a support paying customer, you get very fast and somewhat (depends who you get) helpful support, including real time webchat or through the phone. It's arguable this should be included at all levels but I guess AWS wants to keep their support top notch for the larger pocket users.

The one time I raised a ticket on a corp AWS account, it was handled swiftly and competently. I'm sure it depends much on what your issue is.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#57

Post by clairity » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #23

throwaway2048 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Queue the torrent of HN comments that conflate "is technically legal" and "Is morally responsible", after all the highest form of morality is making money.

It's always funny to see the upvote/downvote swings on comments like these. I try to keep them more substantive overall, but what else can be said about this. Clearly there are still major ethical concerns with access to these facial recognition black boxes and clearly amazon shareholders are far more concerned with expanding into any legal market as quick as possible. Amazon is /the/ poster child of late capitalism…

> "Amazon is [...] ruthlessly efficient..."

this part is capitalism working as intended and (mostly) as desired. the challenge of course is that it has also led to highly undesirable power structures (corporations, oligopolies, cabals, cartels, etc.) that increasingly eclipses the individual as principal agent. that's a failure (by omission) of capitalism.

while governments, communities and other social structures can contain that consolidation of power to some extent, subservience to corporate power is a looming threat for common folk. it's crucial to further codify and protect the equivalence of the individual and the corporation.

for instance, contracts (like EULA's) shouldn't be one-sided ultimatums inflicted on the indivudual, but the beginning of a negotiation between two equal parties. corporations would argue that the administrative overhead of this would be prohibitive, but that's the price for access to a lucrative market (and that sweet, sweet revenue stream).

in addition, corporations naturally have asymmetrical information advantages that need to be leveled in the exchange of value contemplated by an economic transaction. we have financial disclosure laws, for example, but they don't go far enough. basic information like the actual prices paid by other customers and the reasons for differences should be made available to the counter-party.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#58

Post by munk-a » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

danielovichdk wrote: post #9

Dont buy from Amazon. How hard can it be

Actually pretty ease with Ali-Express, but I don't know how much that fulfills your reason to not buy from Amazon. The brick and mortar stores are probably never coming back like they were before.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#59

Post by oil25 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

jcims wrote: post #12

What was the point of taking this to shareholders? On what planet would anyone expect them to vote any other way?

That is precisely the point: to externalize and diffuse responsibility on an abstract concept ("the market") rather than hold its creators accountable.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#60

Post by munk-a » Wed, May 22, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

xfitm3 wrote: post #15

danielovichdk wrote: post #9

Dont buy from Amazon. How hard can it be

Surprisingly difficult. Winding down from Amazon personally has taken months, but thats futile. At work I spend 8 figures a year on AWS.

AWS definitely has competitors you can switch to pretty easily, I think Amazon's retail side is the harder portion to jettison.