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Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#191

Post by syshum »

fixermark wrote: post #152
scarecrowbob wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boring observation that I can make is that the folks living in that dystopia were very good at thinking that it was a dystopia. I know that's a circular epistemic wormhole to get into, but simply liking the authoritarian surveillance you live in doesn't remove the features that make it authoritarian and intimately surveilling you.

Right, but doesn't it remove the notion that the authoritarian, intimate-surveillance features are necessarily bad things? To stay in dystopian sci-fi: The computers on the Enterprise (TNG at least) were aware of crewmember's positions and health situation at all times as long as they were aboard ship. Do we imagine they felt spied upon? It seems instead being born into a world where surveillance is ubiquitous and be…

>>Maybe we can build that world instead of assuming the end-result is 1984 every time.

The Key difference between the 2 is Resource Limitation.

In 1984 Society had limited resources, in Star Trek it was a Post Scarcity Civilization.

Star Trek is not possible while we have limited resources, invent replicator tech then you might have the ability to create a Star Trek society, no replicators no Star Trek

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#192

Post by ProAm »

moduspol wrote: post #174
ProAm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it me or has Amazon ever cared about customers, always marketshare and profit margin. I've never felt Amazon was a pro-consumer company, merely a side-effect that they need consumers.

Amazon has long been notable for minimizing its profit margins, actually. https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-26/amazon-...

Only to trade it for market share.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#193

Post by Spooky23 »

ryanlol wrote: post #72
dbliss wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on "literally everyone is worse off", and I'll assume you meant literally in the colloquial sense, as an emphasis. OP gave an example where he was better off. Do you mean that the trade-off is not worth risk/down side?

OP gave the example where they felt better because someone got a harsher punishment.

No, I didn’t say that.

When you take a GPS from an unlocked car, you get charged with petit larceny, which is an appearance ticket and $50-500 fine.

When you get charged with a higher crime, you get a few weeks in jail. In my case, the offender was a known “frequent flyer” who victimized my neighborhood for months, and was arrested 6 times. He was charged with a more serious misdemeanor, and was charged with 30 days in jail. He has not returned.

My objective as a citizen is to peacefully enjoy my home. Some lowlife doesn’t have the right to pillage our yards.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#194

Post by zizek23 »

Silicon Valley and its offshoots are going to become surveillance central. The HQ of a surveillance economy courted by despots at home and abroad. The people working here are going to be the most hated people in the world.

A new narrative about benefits other than totalitarian surveillance is going to be crafted and circulated to provide some sort of ethical fig leaf for employees but everyone involved will know the truth just not acknowledge or discuss it.

Any reasonably well informed citizen intuitively will know this is not the right direction but there is an inevitability about it, money creates its own logic and many have already made their peace with it.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#195

Post by godelski »

fixermark wrote: post #95
alex_young wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not inappropriate for police to be able to determine who they are interacting with if that person is a known criminal. Everyone is a criminal. You commit multiple crimes a day if you're like most people. There absolutely should be a clear delineation between what is possible and what is allowed when considering state surveillance. The 4th amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, hous…

Reasonable people can disagree on the definition of "unreasonable," however. Is it "unreasonable" for the Amber Alert system to co-opt the eyes and attention of ten thousand citizens around a kidnapped child? Hard to say. Most people seem to think 'no.' If that system could co-opt camera feeds instead of human attention, we could get most (all?) of the benefits of the existing Amber Alert without having to burn civil…

Is it right to track the all online dealings of people that may be connected to terrorist organizations? Pretty reasonable people seem to think yes (Patriot Act).

Is it right for the government to track all the online dealings of an average citizen? Most people think no.

You may see a discrepancy here. That is why there is the saying "First they came for the fascists...". It is why when we talk about breaking encryption and backdoors discussion is centered around terrorists and pedos. Because those are universally hated groups. The problem comes with the fact that there is spill over. (See cases like San Bernardino shooting or the cop that is sitting in jail without sentencing because they know he has child porn on an encrypted drive. Btw, they use this same tactic to frame less controversial legal cases too)

I think if backdoors/searches/whatever could only be applied to universally hated groups and not include a single random citizen than there would be almost unanimous agreement that we should do that (you are not violating a "non-criminal's" rights). The problem is that technology doesn't allow us to exclusively target those kinds of groups. As tech oriented people we understand that this spill over HAS to happen, but the average citizen (outside SV) does not understand the how it works, the scale, nor ramifications. I'd like to remind everyone that 1984 wasn't about the government watching everyone at all times, but having the ability to. I'm not sure why we call that a dystopian society but many people readily accept the use of this technology by the government. Sure, the police have the technological ability do facial recognition without Amazon, but technological capability is not the question. It is SHOULD THEY?

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#196

Post by godelski »

JackCh wrote: post #155
blitmap wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely feel like we're missing positive opportunities for mass surveillance. Things like being able to recognize someone in cardiac arrest, or who is at risk for a stroke. Someday mass surveillance will help as much as it hurts society.

> Things like being able to recognize someone in cardiac arrest, or who is at risk for a stroke. Can those things actually be done with a vanishingly low false-positive rate? If I'm walking down the sidewalk and a camera sees me suddenly grimace because a rock got into my shoe, I don't want paramedics rushing to the scene to offer me assistance for a heart attack.

Currently? No. In the future, sure why not. Just don't ask when.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#197

Post by godelski »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #158
fixermark wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Prison has X, therefore X is bad" isn't a very compelling argument.

Its exactly analagous. The government agencies want to implement this technology for the same reasons they do it in prisons - not for your benefit.

It isn't analogous because someone walking freely on the street has not been convicted of a crime.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#198

Post by godelski »

decebalus1 wrote: post #124
alex_young wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not inappropriate for police to be able to determine who they are interacting with if that person is a known criminal. Everyone is a criminal. You commit multiple crimes a day if you're like most people. There absolutely should be a clear delineation between what is possible and what is allowed when considering state surveillance. The 4th amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, hous…

Lol. The fourth amendment went out the window with the Patriot act and the Freedom act. The fourth amendment does not matter anymore and nobody gives a shit. It's not like an 'important' amendment. I mean it's not the second amendment, otherwise there would be huge lobbying groups up in arms (no pun intended).

> The fourth amendment went out the window with the Patriot act and the Freedom act.

Or in other words

> We had that right taken away and there's nothing we can do to change that. Laws can't be changed, so accept your fate.

We are literally talking about that we don't want to accept that and change it.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#199

Post by howard941 »

decebalus1 wrote: post #124
alex_young wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not inappropriate for police to be able to determine who they are interacting with if that person is a known criminal. Everyone is a criminal. You commit multiple crimes a day if you're like most people. There absolutely should be a clear delineation between what is possible and what is allowed when considering state surveillance. The 4th amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, hous…

Lol. The fourth amendment went out the window with the Patriot act and the Freedom act. The fourth amendment does not matter anymore and nobody gives a shit. It's not like an 'important' amendment. I mean it's not the second amendment, otherwise there would be huge lobbying groups up in arms (no pun intended).

The Rehnquist drug exception to the 4th amendment opened the door for everything else.

Re: Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

#200

Post by LoonyBalloony »

chisleu wrote: post #76

They are NOT selling a service that identifies people from data sets other than the police's supplied data sets. It is not inappropriate for police to be able to determine who they are interacting with if that person is a known criminal. The cat is out of the bag and is already something the police could do themselves. The real fear is when they are able to source commercially available information from linked in, fa…

Total surveillance of citizens? yes.

Body cams for police? Huge deal guys! How we gonna pay for this? Oh gee my body cam was off judge my bad

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