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Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

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Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#111

Post by bb88 »

jstanley wrote: post #110
bb88 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No object ever in society is "inherently authoritarian". Authoritarianism is a behavior of a country's leaders, not a label on some unwanted technology. E.g. Sniper rifles are not authoritarian in an of themselves. The use of sniper rifles to snuff out dissent is. And that's why this debate is dishonest. Because if you support facial recognition software for the police as another tool for the good guys, you get smear…

I agree that the existence of the software is benign. I said the use of it is authoritarian. And sure, I didn't make it explicit, so let me make it explicit now: the use of the software to identify real people is authoritarian. If you use it to classify random cat pictures then that's obviously not authoritarian.

First, thanks for responding.

But saying two things are equivalent doesn't make it so.

My phone tags people in them. Are you saying that is authoritarian? Because to me, it seems like a really nice tool to tag people in photos.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#112

Post by KirinDave »

naasking wrote: post #88
confounded wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if the parent expressed anything approaching either anger or hate. > ... that protection will require facial recognition software. Why? Lots of things are effective, but life in a free country means that we don’t do some of them. We could put cameras in every home, make them illegal to disable. Ban encryption. Censor the web. Ban cars that can’t be remotely disabled. Free societies are free because there is…

> My point is, that regardless of your issue, authoritarianism is not a good answer. Your assumption that this software would be used for authoritarian ends is exactly the problem the OP was trying to point out.

I mean, it's pretty clear given tweets given to us today by the US president that he'd LIKE to use it in an authoritarian manner. He literally said he wants to remove all courts and judges from the immigration process and have ICE be able to exercise deportation options unilaterally and with 0 tolerance or oversight.

So right now: yeah it's probably an authoritarian system. But in the long term, we need a better understand of the legal and social implications of facial recognition before we can really trust governments at scale to use the technology within a framework that preserves our values.

Right now, it's best to deny them access to it.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#113

Post by KirinDave »

StreamBright wrote: post #70
gasull wrote: post #54

I'm dismayed at the comments here of "if Amazon/Microsoft/Google don't work for ICE, someone else will". That argument doesn't fly. If you stop helping ICE, they will have to get worse software from likely more expensive vendors (less market competition for the contract). Which will make ICE less efficient in its goal to criminalize, separate and deport immigrants.

First of all, I am an immigrant. I am not sure why you think that ICE criminalize anybody? How is this even possible? People violate the law are criminals. Trying to enter the US illegally is a crime. Pretty plain simple. I do not like the ICE but I had pleasant experience with them even when I tried to enter the US (unknowingly) illegally once. They helped me through the process, fined me (following the law) and I w…

Until recently it was a federal misdemeanor of minor import. There really is no reason to run excessive immigration centers from a logistical standpoint in a modern society. It's a legacy concept from days when things like air travel were not readily available to the masses.

You assume that there NEEDS to be some kind of border enforcement. It's not clear why that needs to include detention camps, armed guns, tent cities for children, no logistical support for reuniting asylum seekers with their children, or intimidation tactics.

That is, unless you think South Americans are fundamentally different and less worthy than their North American cousins in some axiomatic way that says, "Only the top N% of you are worthy of joining our society." This is especially true because the US really doesn't have substantial social services (or those that we do have are teetering on the edge of collapse) to fund compared to other first world countries who proportionally spend much more of their budget on entitlements.

Seriously? What makes YOU more entitled to be here than someone else? The answer is: there are probably many people who'd like to be here that would have similar positive (or negative) impacts on society. It's only because of implicit exceptionalism in American culture that we assume there is chaff to filter out.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#114

Post by troubador55 »

gasull wrote: post #54

I'm dismayed at the comments here of "if Amazon/Microsoft/Google don't work for ICE, someone else will". That argument doesn't fly. If you stop helping ICE, they will have to get worse software from likely more expensive vendors (less market competition for the contract). Which will make ICE less efficient in its goal to criminalize, separate and deport immigrants.

Your argument doesn't fly either.

ICE is removing illegal immigrants from the US. If it was removing legal citizens or legal immigrants for some arbitrary reason then people would be much more sympathetic to your position.

In reality however, because ICE is not rounding up "immigrants" as you say in an intentional effort to obscure the truth by avoiding the necessary word "illegal", most people in the US are in support of ICE's mission.

ICE will continue to carry out that just and necessary mission with or without the assistance of some naive and privileged ideaologues that work at tech companies.

Your position on this issue is rooted firmly on the wrong side of history.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#115

Post by troubador55 »

KirinDave wrote: post #113
StreamBright wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I am an immigrant. I am not sure why you think that ICE criminalize anybody? How is this even possible? People violate the law are criminals. Trying to enter the US illegally is a crime. Pretty plain simple. I do not like the ICE but I had pleasant experience with them even when I tried to enter the US (unknowingly) illegally once. They helped me through the process, fined me (following the law) and I w…

Until recently it was a federal misdemeanor of minor import. There really is no reason to run excessive immigration centers from a logistical standpoint in a modern society. It's a legacy concept from days when things like air travel were not readily available to the masses. You assume that there NEEDS to be some kind of border enforcement. It's not clear why that needs to include detention camps, armed guns, tent ci…

No we have to filter people because if we did not there would be chaos, and everything that makes America a great place to live would disappear.

You seem to not understand how the world works at a fundamental level.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#116

Post by KirinDave »

troubador55 wrote: post #115
KirinDave wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently it was a federal misdemeanor of minor import. There really is no reason to run excessive immigration centers from a logistical standpoint in a modern society. It's a legacy concept from days when things like air travel were not readily available to the masses. You assume that there NEEDS to be some kind of border enforcement. It's not clear why that needs to include detention camps, armed guns, tent ci…

No we have to filter people because if we did not there would be chaos, and everything that makes America a great place to live would disappear. You seem to not understand how the world works at a fundamental level.

> No we have to filter people because if we did not there would be chaos, and everything that makes America a great place to live would disappear.

Prove it.

> You seem to not understand how the world works at a fundamental level.

You seem to believe in magic and suggest it's essential to the world. You think America is fundamentally different. It's really not. It's rich, that's the difference, and a difference that's fading over time as its imperialism is curbed by progress elsewhere. It's largest ideological plurality is Christian, which is just as violent and hate-prone as any other religions.

It's not special. It's already chaotic. We could trivially improve the immigration process to make the waits less than 10x. We could even tax immigrants more than legacy citizens to offset that cost, if we wanted.

But what people actually want is to pretend that they're special. That only the best of the rest of the world match up with their mediocre life. It'd be funny if it wasn't leading to scaled human rights abuses and mass child trafficking by the human government.

Re: Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement

#117

Post by Reactionary_ »

KirinDave wrote: post #116
troubador55 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we have to filter people because if we did not there would be chaos, and everything that makes America a great place to live would disappear. You seem to not understand how the world works at a fundamental level.

> No we have to filter people because if we did not there would be chaos, and everything that makes America a great place to live would disappear. Prove it. > You seem to not understand how the world works at a fundamental level. You seem to believe in magic and suggest it's essential to the world. You think America is fundamentally different. It's really not. It's rich, that's the difference, and a difference that's…

In order for the United States to remain united, its people must share basic elements of culture.

While immigrants are an integral part of American culture - something that is itself unique to America - successive waves of immigrants have over the past 200 years integrated into the broader American culture over the generations. Immigrants bring their cultures with them and enrich the broader culture but ultimately they become American.

Mass illegal immigration threatens this dynamic because in order for integration to happen, immigrants must be surrounded by people from outside of their culture. But if they continually pool into a few pockets of the country, they don't have an opportunity to integrate.

Persistant linguistic and cultural differences represent fault lines along which the country could fracture. It's a risk that's not worth taking.

Not only that, the current economic situation is one in which the gap between rich and poor is growing. If we let in massive amounts of poor illegal migrants, they will probably remain poor, unlike in the past when there were abundant factory jobs available to migrants that would have enabled them to join the middle class. Persistent poverty leads to unrest.

We need to let immigrants in slowly so they can be gradually integrated into the economy, especially because studies show that most migrants are on welfare, placing a large burden on an already stressed social safety net.

Not only that, open borders encourage drug smuggling, human trafficking and other criminal activity, and we cannot tolerate that.

You don't recognize the threat to stability mass immigration causes and the critical importance of stability to national unity.

The greatest threat to America is disunity from within, so we must do everything we can to encourage unity and unify the country.

Mass immigration will lead to an unstable and fractured nation.

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