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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

#251

Post by nighthawk1 »

sean2 wrote: post #235
nighthawk1 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in ww2 Germany they said: give me the man and I’ll give you the crime.

"Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime." To be pedantic, it was Lavrentiy Beria[1] who is credited with that statement[2]; So it was a WW2 Russian Sentiment. Though Stalin-ism is also an example of a surveillance state government that was known for being unpleasant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria [2] http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1137804

Thanks, learned something new today.

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

#252

Post by EpicEng »

Spooky23 wrote: post #190
zipwitch wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the advancement of technology changes the impact of certain classes of surveillance and tracking. Existing law is based on a balance that no longer exists. Bruce Schneier has a nice essay on this and license plates: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/01/on_police_s... In short, having a unique id and database of car owners may be okay when the police need to manually look up information. But when t…

I don’t disagree with you. My point isn’t that pervasive surveillance is great. It’s that if you’re allowed to have cameras everywhere, why would you limit useful processing of the data? How do you regulate it? If you can’t hire Amazon to do LPR or facial recognition, can you pay a guy to recognize people walking down the street and note their patterns? Do you license/permit camera placement?

>It’s that if you’re allowed to have cameras everywhere, why would you limit useful processing of the data?

Because what matters is what the result of that processing is. This is not some abstract concept; what's actually being done with the data matters.

>How do you regulate it? If you can’t hire Amazon to do LPR or facial recognition, can you pay a guy to recognize people walking down the street and note their patterns?

That's a silly analogy and I think you know it. Again, this is not some academic debate. The difference between being able to process TB order data automatically and hiring a guy to watch a corner and take notes is the difference between the Hubble telescope and me in my backyard with a pair of binoculars.

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

#253

Post by anigbrowl »

LoonyBalloony wrote: post #205
anigbrowl wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Lack of) actions speak louder than words.

Better to do nothing then the wrong something. There is a non violent solution to this, I'm just not smart enough to know what that is.

that can easily tip into a policy of never doing anything, on the basis that there is always the possibility of an unknown better solution. Nonviolent solutions are ideal, but they do depend on the existence of a public conscience sufficiently active and reliable to restrain bad actors.

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

#254

Post by wooter »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #232
wooter wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden proved this was false.

They still need warrants to get information on specific people.

no they didn't. it was self-reported abuses and no consequences.

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

#255

Post by chisleu »

alex_young wrote: post #90
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…

> 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…

known criminal != criminal

Yes, I likely commit a couple felonies a day unknowingly. Still, I've never been arrested and I don't have a mug shot. It's not inappropriate for law enforcement to automate processes that are valid and legal for them to do. They are allowed to study the mug shots but it's not reasonable for them to memorize every mugshot. However, automating their recollection via machine learning is reasonable.

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

tanilama wrote: post #247
sadamznintern wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, for the record, AWS is hardly top of the industry in terms of talent. It's not Google or Facebook. I've never heard of an ML researcher joining Amazon when they could have joined Google/FB/Apple.

It could happen both way. Noted that Google is much more saturate for its ML talents, so unless you are super top-notch, some people will take it to Amazon for bigger impact. I personally know a few people, who is competitive in the industry, having Google offer/leaving Google for Amazon. No doubt, the flow is usually Amazon -> Google/Facebook, because for mid-level engineer/scientist, money talks :), and Google/FB g…

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