
Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement - anigbrowl
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/393583-amazon-employees-protest-sale-of-facial-recognition-tech-to-law
======
confounded
Seeing, in the press, actual technologists' opinions on what is and isn't a
good use for their technologies is extremely refreshing, and something that
that many on HN have grumbled about for a long time.

Along with the similar actions at Google and Microsoft[0,1], I hope that this
represents a bit more of the decision-making power of tech companies coming
back towards technologists, and away from the money-men.

[0]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/technology/google-
project...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/technology/google-project-
maven-pentagon.html)

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/technology/tech-
companies...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/technology/tech-companies-
immigration-border.html)

~~~
rumcajz
It would be nice if this spread beyond the US. Although it's kind of hard to
imagine workers having any voice in countries like Russia or China.

~~~
dolzenko
One always has a voice simply by choosing the place to work at.

------
gasull
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.

~~~
pandem
If ICE has to get worse software that just means you and everyone else need to
pay more in taxes. The government has the means to get what it wants usually

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's only a problem if "minimize taxes" is the only metric you care about.

------
pravinva
Don't they understand their own platform? AWS is self service. Anyone with a
credit card can set up an account and consume Rekognition or any other
service. It's not as if it has to be sold to the police by a sales person
under some licensed/contract. No special software is being developed for ICE
or the Orlando police.Forbes recently put together a face recognition system
using AWS components under 30 dollars. WTF are these employees on about.
Anyone is free to build on AWS. What's next? Ban police from purchasing stuff
on Amazon retail? If you disagree with your govt, go tell your congressman
instead of irritating everyone at work

~~~
confounded
Right.

But, as we found out with Signal[0], in addition to the UI and the law,
there's a whole other world of what is and isn't possible with AWS, called
policy.

Anyone with a credit card can get an AWS account, but it's against the ToS to
use it to offend the DMCA, host a crawler (whoops!), run an open mail relay,
or store bestiality, for the simple reason that _Amazon have decided that they
don 't want that to happen on AWS_.

Mass surveillance of the population via facial recognition is an offensive
proposition to a great many million Amazon Prime members!

[0]: [https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-on-the-
front/](https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-on-the-front/)

~~~
pravinva
Er, explain how the law enforcement is violating any terms and conditions.
Domain fronting is illegal. Mass surveillance is what the NSA does for a
living. If it is offensive to prime members, they have found the wrong tree to
bark up

~~~
confounded
> _... explain how the law enforcement is violating any terms and conditions_

I’m not saying that they are, just that Amazon are within their right to
stipulate that there are certain uses of their technology which _they just
don’t like_ , as they see fit.

> _Domain fronting is illegal._

First I’ve heard. Where? Why?

> _...NSA... If it is offensive to prime members, they have found the wrong
> tree to bark up_

This story is not about the NSA. The Rekognition controversy arose regarding
local police departments, who are very much _not_ tasked with mass
surveillance. Amazon used local police departments as example deployments, and
for marketing copy as an idealized use-case.

I would personally stop shopping at a local store, if by supporting them I was
supporting their objectionable side-business. Consumer boycotts are pretty
common, as are changes to corporate policy due to the bad press boycotts
generate.

~~~
pravinva
The police cannot do any mass surveillance with AWS Recognition. For that they
need access to huge amount of video feeds.IF they already have access to such
video and use primitive techniques to sift through them for identifying
criminals, then Rekognition makes it cheap and value for money for the
taxpayers. Sifting through data to identify people is police work. Why hobble
it by mandating that they use expensive outdated slow technology? If the
police has no access to streaming video feeds on a mass scale, the tool can't
help. If they are accessing the feeds illegally, then they are breaking laws -
AWS can terminate accounts. Any proof that they are doing this illegal
activity?

------
replicatorblog
If you don't like what Amazon is building, just wait until all those contracts
start going to Raytheon and Northrop! I appreciate the moral quandary these
engineers are faced with, but there is something to be said for being a
responsible steward of technology. I've met quite a few MIT Ph.D.s who
nonchalantly mention their roles as, what sounds like to me like "Program
manager for raining fire and destruction on third-world countries systems."
Someone is going to write the code, I kind of hope it's done at companies like
Amazon where there is some ability to publicly pressure management vs. defense
contractors who are largely unaccountable to the masses.

~~~
freedomben
This really aligns with my thoughts too. I was sad to see Google pull out,
because I know that with the ideology of many of the people there, the whistle
is _far_ more likely to be blown when things go too far. Having worked for big
defense contractors, that whistle is not likely to get used there.

I get nervous as hell thinking about AI and ML in the hands of governments,
but it's gonna happen _anyway_. I'd rather it be Google than Northrop.

~~~
confounded
> _... the whistle is far more likely to be blown when things go too far_

In your admiration for a Google employees, you’re projecting your own beleifs
and norms.

The whistle was blown; Project Maven _is too far_.

> _I get nervous as hell thinking about AI and ML in the hands of governments_

Me too, but a cleaner way to deal with it might be to demand better
transparency and accountability from the government. Beleif that large
corporations will act in your unstated best-interests (and not their own)
seems pretty noisy.

~~~
freedomben
It's definitely fair to point out that Google and their employees aren't
likely to be the perfect representation of what I would hope for, but all I
really meant to convey was that as an institution I trust them _more_ than I
do the big defense contractors. TBF, it's not a high bar to leap.

------
makewavesnotwar
I love the sentiment, but seriously... who did you think you were building
this for? It's absurd to believe you were helping anything other than the big
brother character from 1984. Who else would this help? Foreign secret
services? Maybe you believed it would help stream line the automation process?
Thereby making humans irrelevant? I'd love to hear a legitimate - non-big
brother implementation of this. And please don't be so coy as to say this
helps automate person to person sales. I can already review all purchases made
through big box hardware stores thanks to them identifying me through my
credit card number and the email address I associated with it.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Who else would this help?_

FaceID users. Just because something has downsides doesn’t mean it has no
upsides.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
This is not the same thing as Face ID. First Face ID requires special cameras.
Second it only on device. Third, classifying something that is novel is much
different than identifying a previously registered person. (This difference is
somewhat akin to transcription versus recognizing ‘Hey Siri’)

------
us0r
Amazon is about to effectively receive a sole source DOD contract for 10
billion for "cloud services". They have been supplying AWS to intelligence
agencies for years. Why outrage over this and not that?

~~~
mc32
Because politics. It’s an election year and people are manoeuvering for
position. Obama had children in these detention camps, Feinstein and just
about any democrat in government more than ten years has had tough stances on
illegal immigration, but, now of course with Trump it’s different.

Snowden, Assange both shed light on massive surveillance and the outrage
lasted a week. Now Assange and Snowden are seen in a less positive light as
well by the same people who hailed them as defenders of freedom and
transparency.

People are fickle.

~~~
learc83
Under Obama, occasionally we had a few children seperated from their parents
and placed in detention camps. In the last 6 weeks we had over 2000 children
seperated.

There was a change in policy from: we don't generally presecute parents with
children, to: prosecute all parents with children.

You don't think that change could have had anything to do with people's
outrage?

------
mrep
lol, AWS has multiple entirely dedicated regions for the US government like
the CIA but now "facial recognition" crosses the line...

If those employees were really against this type of work, they should have
come out against it years ago.

------
crb002
Amazon built it to recognize staff as they walk in and customers at their
physical stores so they wouldn't have to carry a wallet. It's like GPS. Many
legitimate civilian uses, but also very useful to use in orchestrating
government force.

~~~
forapurpose
> customers at their physical stores so they wouldn't have to carry a wallet.
> It's like GPS. Many legitimate civilian uses

It's not like GPS, because GPS doesn't invade my privacy. I'm not sure that
being identified everywhere I go is "legitimate", though it is common.

------
toomanybeersies
How is selling to law enforcement any worse than selling facial recognition
tech to companies that are also use it to invade my privacy and use the
technology to try and squeeze money out of me?

Where do you draw the line on ethical usage?

In my mind, if you're concerned about the ethics of facial recognition tech,
you shouldn't be working in that field at all. It's fundamentally anti-
privacy.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Where do you draw the line on ethical usage?_

One can put me in a box. The other one can’t.

~~~
stryk
Say the government doesn't have it. They can just ask/force/coerce/pressure
the tech company that does for your data. Or steal it from them.

~~~
throwaway37585
But it’s more difficult.

~~~
stryk
Is it? I don't think it would be. In fact, extortion and coercion are fairly
easy because there are no rules (this I can attest to from both sides of the
equation). The easiest weakness to exploit is always going to be the humans
involved, especially in a legitimate business. The only true way to protect
data like this is to have it not exist in the first place. Once the data is
created - forget it, you might as well assume if Big Bro _really_ wants it,
they're going to get it -- because they will, if they don't already have it.
It's not a case of if, but when.

------
keeptrying
I am seriously liking how S/W engineers are controlling the conversation here.

~~~
varactor
It would be more correct to say "a small but vocal subset of software
engineers" are controlling the conversation. That is, if they do manage to
"control" it in Amazon's case, which I highly doubt. This is completely
politically motivated knee jerk.

If you do not like surveillance and would like to have less of it, the proper
way to deal with the problem is to get your lawmaker to ban it at the federal
level, not to shift the implementation to some other company just because you
don't like Trump.

But that's not the issue here, is it? "Resistance" is. Time and time again it
is uncovered that the Obama administration did the same exact things the Trump
administration is being panned for, and everyone just nodded in agreement. If
someone's moral compass turns opposite depending on whether their candidate
wins or loses, that's not a "moral compass" at all, that's just a political
dog whistle.

~~~
blub
As long as protesting is still legal in the US, it's part of the proper way to
deal with the problem.

------
tanilama
I really don't think the DRPA needs Amazon/Google to militarize AI.

It already happened, years ago it is a random forests/SVM, now it is a neural
network. Weapons are machines, should we just go and ban research machine
learning as a whole?

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I have a feeling that one of these cloud companies is going to have a mass
firing of employees that are protesting against government contracts. People
underestimate just how much money the US government spends. Just DoD spending
is more than 600 Billion per year. Microsoft and Google have annual revenue of
100 Billion. The $10 Billion Pentagon cloud contract immediately gives a huge
boost to any cloud provider. As can be seen by most of these companies
dealings with very repressive governments (China, Saudi Arabia, etc), they
will talk a good game, but when serious money is on the line, they will do
what they need to do to get the money.

I bet that in back rooms, high level cloud execs at Hear companies are hearing
an earful about how they need to control their employees and part of getting
the big contracts requires controlling your employees. Just look at how the
NFL caved in when Trump accused them of not supporting soldiers. Will these
companies stay the line when Trump starts saying that these companies are
hurting American soldiers and police officers? I am not confident they will.

~~~
confounded
Google and Facebook are known to retain the services of _Pinkerton Corporate
Risk Management_ for employee surveillance.

They’re a pretty famous name in US labor history!

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-v...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-
valley-internal-work-spying-surveillance-leakers)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_\(detective_agency\))

------
toasterlovin
Unfortunately, the future is often unavoidable.

------
pmoriarty
Previously on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17341742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17341742)

~~~
newest_user_
Is it? That looks like shareholders. Unless these employees are the same
shareholders?

~~~
salawat
It's a bunch of commentary on the subject mostly. I spoke my piece in that
thread. So I won't go into it again here.

Long story short, basically what a previous poster said. People spent so much
time trying to find out if they could, no one seemed to stop and think about
whether they should.

------
TangoTrotFox
If people do not want a public organization to use facial recognition
software, then energy should be directed towards that action of the public
organization - not towards the vendors supplying the technology. They will get
the technology whether or not Amazon or Google or whoever else provide it. The
one and only thing that might stop this from happening is if our political
representatives chose to take action against facial recognition. And as
opposed to mass surveillance of digital communications, I think this is
something that would have pull with the masses as well. People's faces being
automatically processed and scanned is something much more visibly dystopic
than the NSA archiving your digital communications.

------
lord_ring_11
Seriously? All the proclaimed freedom in country is built on the backs of
soldiers/police. And we are worried about helping them? If we cant trust the
govt then boot them. I am more worried about big companies which are
accountable to small set of shareholders more than big govt accountable to
najority.

~~~
int_19h
> I am more worried about big companies which are accountable to small set of
> shareholders more than big govt accountable to najority.

Well then, how do you feel when the two cooperate, one enabling the other to
screw us more efficiently?

