Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#241

Post by koonsolo » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:36 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #220

m3kw9 wrote: post #78

If there is a ban, it should be country law, not just one company. How is this gonna achieve anything if another company goes ahead anyways?

One simple ethical rule that I live by: If I ever find myself saying “if I don’t do this, somebody else will”, I don’t do the thing. It’s a good indicator that the thing in question is the wrong thing to do. Other people will still do it. That’s true. There will always be evil people in this world. But it won’t be me . And that’s important.

I remember a documentary about drug dealers, and these were the exact words that they used to justify their deeds: "If I don't do it, someone else will, so it makes no difference".

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#242

Post by Duckeh » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:52 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #238

eecc wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I never got this American Disdain for the State and regulations. Everything - health, pension, parental benefits, environmental restraint, repression of discrimination - ends up in the domain of corporate benevolence, the whims of the market and of shareholders. If it’s not in the Law, it's just corporate marketing

It exists because the American government (or governments writ large around the world anyway) have had a poor track record of regulating things ethically. For example, the us government has not done a great job of ethically regulating native Americans, or, ethically regulating terrorism abroad, or maybe in more quotidian and economic terms, regulating the sale of loose cigarettes. It baffles the mind that one would w…

Regardless of how well the democracy your government is based on is functioning, I have a rather hard time imagining that a corporation focused on maximizing shareholder profit would do anything better than a piss-poor job for the vast majority of the population.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#243

Post by Xelbair » Thu, May 23, 2019, 7:58 AM UTC

Calloutman wrote: post #233

julkali wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very noble approach, however in the life of business, moral has no place. Which is very unfortunate in my opinion. I couldn't imagine how the world would look like if everyone thought the way you do...

Doing something legal but immoral to boost your profit margins is by definition immoral. I don't know how some ceos sleep at night.

Probably on stacks of money.

In capitalism system everything is equated to money: ethics, success, self-worth.

To be exact, it is tied to short term earnings.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#244

Post by Xelbair » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #238

eecc wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I never got this American Disdain for the State and regulations. Everything - health, pension, parental benefits, environmental restraint, repression of discrimination - ends up in the domain of corporate benevolence, the whims of the market and of shareholders. If it’s not in the Law, it's just corporate marketing

It exists because the American government (or governments writ large around the world anyway) have had a poor track record of regulating things ethically. For example, the us government has not done a great job of ethically regulating native Americans, or, ethically regulating terrorism abroad, or maybe in more quotidian and economic terms, regulating the sale of loose cigarettes. It baffles the mind that one would w…

Option A: Government regulation, sometimes fails(Article 7 and 11), sometimes get things right(GDPR).

Option B: Corporate entity self-regulates in favor of profit. consumer is screwed.

Corporations regulate not for public interest, but for profit, sometimes it happens that those two are aligned - but that is an exception - not a norm.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#245

Post by pimmen » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:17 AM UTC

m3kw9 wrote: post #78

If there is a ban, it should be country law, not just one company. How is this gonna achieve anything if another company goes ahead anyways?

Because when another company fills the void they'll know what happens if you don't think about these issues and risk getting shut down themselves.

That opens up the possibility of benevolent actors filling the void. Or, someone at least as bad but better at playing the government.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#246

Post by Angostura » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:31 AM UTC

m3kw9 wrote: post #78

If there is a ban, it should be country law, not just one company. How is this gonna achieve anything if another company goes ahead anyways?

Doing the right thing can be excellent PR and boost customer acquisition and retention - especially when you are consumer facing.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#247

Post by blensor » Thu, May 23, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

Jaepa wrote: post #176

joemag wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging “America’s most wanted” in public places like train stations or airports. Looking for missing children. Having home automation react differently to different family members. Those are all usages I am personally totally ok with.

Those are the 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 possible uses for this. To illustrate lets imagine a really really good system that had a 0% false negative rate¹ , and a 0.000001%² false positive rate. If we were to sample the entire country looking the the FBI's most wanted we would end up with ~3290 matches, 3280 of which are going to be other people³. Considering high value of the individual the chances of harassment or wrongful arrest…

I am not advocating for large scale facial recognition, but your argument holds true for basically any measure law enforcement has to apply to locate missing people.

How big is the false positive rate with tips received by phone? Law enforcement probably has to deal with much more wrong clues on a daily basis than to double check an image that was flagged by an automated system. And if even a human inspection can't tell the difference between the missing person and an image of the missing person then it's definitely worth checking out.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#248

Post by junipertea » Thu, May 23, 2019, 9:10 AM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #230

ALittleLight wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a problem if you use the face recognition as your only criteria - but if it alerted security to pay more attention to someone or to double check their documents? Even with the false positive rate it's much more likely an individual identified by the system is a target than a random individual.

> > To illustrate lets imagine a really really good system that had a 0% false negative rate¹ , and a 0.000001%² false positive rate. If we were to sample the entire country looking the the FBI's most wanted we would end up with ~3290 matches, 3280 of which are going to be other people³. > It's definitely a problem if you use the face recognition as your only criteria - but if it alerted security to pay more attentio…

Wouldn't it be the same as a police officer having a board of wanted people on his desk and (mistakenly) thought a person in a mall to be one of those? He'd check their papers (sorry, I'm European) due to his hunch and decide?

I believe there is no better way to identify wanted criminals at scale, do we want to comb the streets with policemen and "harass" 10x more people in hoes of finding them?

It's not a death penalty to be checked and bothering additional 3200 people in the whole country is a ok tradeoff to find wanted person in my opinion.

It feels like you want to cripple the way police looks for criminals because they don't act very kind towards suspects. Maybe police is the problem and not surveillance?

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#249

Post by dzhiurgis » Thu, May 23, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

Jaepa wrote: post #176

joemag wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagging “America’s most wanted” in public places like train stations or airports. Looking for missing children. Having home automation react differently to different family members. Those are all usages I am personally totally ok with.

Those are the 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 possible uses for this. To illustrate lets imagine a really really good system that had a 0% false negative rate¹ , and a 0.000001%² false positive rate. If we were to sample the entire country looking the the FBI's most wanted we would end up with ~3290 matches, 3280 of which are going to be other people³. Considering high value of the individual the chances of harassment or wrongful arrest…

Your (USA) police forces are crooked. They swat people on a first signal they've received.

Instead they should attempt to verify first and try to approach people in civilised manner, not shoot their pets...

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#250

Post by infinitezest » Thu, May 23, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #219

fiblye wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because corporations and governments always follow the laws they write and laws never get repealed and overridden. The fourth amendment already has a bunch of exceptions to it, and the constitution is the highest legal framework in the land. Other laws mean diddly.

Laws are a high latency side-chain of power and authority. That doesn't mean they are completely useless.

I'm not sure anyone is proposing that laws are _entirely_ useless. But it a tech is powerful enough, any abuse at all has potential for widespread negative effects. In the US, we've already seen post-9/11 how laws are side-stepped, trampled or quietly ignored even by well-meaning actors. Plus, getting laws in place is _hard_. Much of the public doesn't care enough to make noise about this kind of tech until it has already been abused (and sometimes not even then). None of this is meant as an argument against your position per se; just counter-point.