
Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban - petethomas
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-facial-recognition/amazon-shareholders-reject-facial-recognition-ban-as-concern-grows-in-u-s-congress-idUSKCN1SS28I
======
plandis
In my mind selling facial recognition seems no different than selling a
hammer. It’s amoral, it can be used for good or bad.

Id much rather see laws to limit when and how the technology can be applied.

~~~
ahelwer
There are very, very few moral applications of facial recognition. Logging
into your phone/laptop or assisting people with prosopagnosia, I guess.
Everything else basically enables mass surveillance.

It is frankly astonishing, and an exemplar of technologist naivete, that so
much effort was (and continues to be) dumped into developing this technology.

~~~
joemag
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.

~~~
Jaepa
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 (or worst) is pretty high.

1: In reality the false negative and false positive rate are going to be
directly inversely related. The more you decrease the false positive rate the
higher your false negative rate is.

2: That is 1 in 1 million

3: In this ideal situation it is assuming there is an even distribution. At
this point computer vision is significantly worst for false positives for
people of color.

~~~
edanm
While valid, your criticism is with the actual ability/execution of the
technology, not the concept. Imagine we get it to a 100% match or, more
realistically, use it in a way that makes more sense than just flagging
someone and ruining their life forever (not to mention being biased). Would
you still be opposed to the technology? If so, your opposition has nothing to
do with the above argument.

~~~
oarsinsync
This may or may not be valid, but I'm not aware of any advanced technology
that is 100% accurate that exists today.

Rather than the hypothetical of 'is this ok if we have 100% accuracy', how
about 'is 100% accuracy ever likely to be possible?'

If it's not, then the previous question is about as relevant as 'if unicorns
existed, would you want one?' (and yes, I would!)

~~~
edanm
I agree, which is why I wrote "or, realistically, use it in a way..." etc.

~~~
oarsinsync
> or, more realistically, use it in a way that makes more sense than just
> flagging someone and ruining their life forever

I think that's less realistic than developing 100% accurate algorithms, but
now we're into anthropology instead of technology...

------
m3kw9
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?

~~~
jasonkester
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.

~~~
netcan
That's a good and reasonable personal ethic, but it transfers into a (imo)
poor, even disingenuous public discourse.

Let's say we're talking about the clickbait/trolling problem in political
discourse. We can berate some prominent individual, but that individual is
inevitable. If she wasn't doing the clickbait, someone else would be and we'd
be beratying them.

Focusing on the individual when a problem is systemic can be empty, righteous
moralising.

~~~
ClutchBand
The individuals come together to create a society with rules. To be a part of
society one must follow those rules.

Ethics, to me, have a place there, and it would be better in all cases to
establish those rules or norms in your society, or your culture, rather than
regressive actions like banning something.

~~~
netcan
Bans are a type of rule/norm.

------
godzillabrennus
Love that the article says people can use the AWS support system to report
issues with the technology. That's a black hole of no return if you are a
paying customer much less someone random off the internet.

~~~
vasco
Let me just make a distinction that if you are a support paying customer, you
get very fast and somewhat (depends who you get) helpful support, including
real time webchat or through the phone.

It's arguable this should be included at all levels but I guess AWS wants to
keep their support top notch for the larger pocket users.

~~~
linuxftw
The one time I raised a ticket on a corp AWS account, it was handled swiftly
and competently. I'm sure it depends much on what your issue is.

~~~
mattbeckman
Every ticket I've ever created on the paid Developer support plan was within
the "24 hour" and "12 hour" windows for guidance and system impaired issues.
However, always always always at the far end of those windows.

Meaning if I had something I really needed help with, it was going to be a
conversation for the following day.

I'm not really mad, we're just pre-release, and the number crunching to go
from Developer adding 3% to cost vs. Business adding 10% to cost is too damn
high. Our infra is about $10K/mo right now (pre-release), so we're talking
$1000/mo for live chat and a shorter window vs. $250-300/mo we're paying right
now.

------
spunker540
I feel like there are clearly ways in which facial recognition can improve a
lot of systems -- ticketing (think airports, sporting events, concerts etc);
automated stores (like the amazon cashierless stores); payment (imagine not
needing a wallet because the combination of your face, gait, and voice is
enough to verify you); security (home/building/car entry, detecting suspicious
individuals, known terrorists, past offenders, restraining orders)

There are also the many valid awful ways it which it can be used, particularly
by the government. Why not just ask for laws preventing the bad uses? I don't
get why it has to be all or nothing. If it's strictly government use that is
concerning, or police use, then pass laws banning government collection of
facial recognition models. There's no need to pass laws banning all forms of
racial recognition simply because there are certain dangerous use cases.

It'd be like if back in the 20's or 30's someone said we need to ban cars
because they could someday be driven by terrorists into large groups of
people. It's a tragically valid concern, but we all agree it's not reason
enough to ban cars altogether. An even more realistic example is folks back in
the day complaining about how dangerous cars were, and rather than banning all
cars deciding on speed limits and safety belts and airbags and anti-lock
brakes and so on. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

~~~
baroffoos
> security (home/building/car entry, detecting suspicious individuals, known
> terrorists, past offenders, restraining orders)

So now we literally destroy the lives of anyone who has ever committed a crime
in the past. Imagine a world where every single store refuses you entry
because you stole something years ago.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
So we pass a law to prohibit that.

~~~
fiblye
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.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Laws are a high latency side-chain of power and authority.

That doesn't mean they are completely useless.

~~~
infinitezest
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.

------
mindgam3
One of the things that blows my mind about the current tech landscape is that
_Microsoft_ now appears to occupy the moral high ground with its stance
calling for regulation on facial recognition.

I grew up with a profound distaste for Microsoft's anti-competitive business
culture under Gates. But now I have to give credit where it's due. Even Apple,
which has come out with strong statements on privacy, is lagging behind MSFT
in this area as far as I can tell.

~~~
didibus
I'm pretty sure Microsoft sells facial recognition to government and military.
They have opposed some bills which imposed too strict restrictions on its use
as well if I reckon.

And Amazon has similarly suggested that there should be regulation put in
place.

Here's the thing, regulation is good in this case, as long as it doesn't
prevent Microsoft or Amazon from still selling the tech. That's why Microsoft
opposed certain proposed bans, but recommend for regulation.

Things like, having to get a warrant are good, because Microsoft still sells
the tech, but they don't get blamed when its use wrongly.

~~~
mindgam3
Do you have a source? I’m aware of Microsoft military contracts ie HoloLens,
but have no knowledge of facial recognition contracts.

Also source for amazon suggesting regulation?

~~~
didibus
For Amazon, I think that's what I'm thinking of:
[https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-joins-microsofts-call-
rul...](https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-joins-microsofts-call-rules-facial-
recognition/)

For Microsoft, I can't seem to find what I had read anymore, all Google result
seem overshadowed by articles of them "calling for regulation".

I did find these:

[https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-
rec...](https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-recognition-
just-not-these/)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cruel-to-stop-
gove...](https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-cruel-to-stop-government-
using-facial-recognition-2019-2)

[https://www.businessinsider.com.au/microsoft-china-muslim-
cr...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/microsoft-china-muslim-crackdown-ai-
partnership-complicit-2019-4?r=US&IR=T)

~~~
mindgam3
Interesting. Thanks for the context.

------
jcims
What was the point of taking this to shareholders? On what planet would anyone
expect them to vote any other way?

~~~
coss
Almost all blue collar employees (software engineers) are shareholders at
Amazon.

~~~
singron
Software engineers are white collar workers[0]. As far as I know, hourly
employees no longer get equity[1], and I would guess they comprise most of
Amazon's blue collar workforce.

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-
collar_worker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_worker)

1: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/amazon-hourly-workers-
lose-m...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/amazon-hourly-workers-lose-monthly-
bonuses-stock-awards.html)

~~~
coss
Sorry, working class (as some have said) or white-collar would have been a
better choice of words.

------
andrepd
It amazes me still how much power in our "democratic" system is help
completely outside of the control of the public. How some people, by virtue of
owning capital, are vested with such powers that can make or break the lives
of millions. Theirs are the decisions that can kill thousands or cause
suffering to millions.

Democracy is not a boolean. It's a continuum. To me, it means "power held by
the people whom it concerns". That's it! But even in our best democracies,
only _some_ portion of power is held democratically. Other decisions, often no
less impactful or critical or harmful (think polluting factories, advertisers
that insidiously manipulate people's psyches, governance of enterprises bigger
than many nations, etc), are done by undemocratic, unelectable, unaccountable
_elites_.

This needs fixing.

PS: this is bad even if the capital "well earned", for some definition of
"well earned", but it is especially aggravating when we're talking about the
Saudi royals or the Waltons of this world...

~~~
ageek123
Huh? If the government wanted to ban facial recognition, they could do it. Our
democratic system absolutely has the power to ban it. It hasn't been done,
presumably because there isn't a public consensus that it should be banned.

If you're arguing for public ownership of companies, that's literally
communism -- so not "democratic." But we don't need communism to regulate
facial recognition.

~~~
pteredactyl
Exactly. Does Amazon have an army more powerful than the US? No? Then
absolutely the government can regulate corporate America. It's a matter of the
will of the people.

Edit: 20 bucks OP (andrepd) has an Amazon Prime account.

~~~
andrepd
>Absolutely the government can regulate corporate America. It's a matter of
the will of the people.

The issue (or rather, one issue among many) is that that isn't so
straightforward. There is an inherent assymetry: a trillion dollar corporation
can influence the government at a scale so staggeringly huge and pervasive
there isn't even a comparison that can be made with the power and influence of
a regular Joe. They can lobby government, bribe politicians, run ads, put on
massive campaigns, all of which distort government into their hands.

>Edit: 20 bucks on OP (andrepd) having an Amazon Prime account.

Cute of you, but no. I've bought things from amazon 4 times since 2015 (I just
checked).

~~~
pteredactyl
>There is an inherent assymetry: a trillion dollar corporation can influence
the government at a scale so staggeringly huge and pervasive there isn't even
a comparison that can be made with the power and influence of a regular Joe.

Where does Amazon's power originate from?

------
Vordax
What I really wanted was facial recognition in Google Glasses. I hate it when
I am in the store and someone comes up and says Hi <name> hows the wife and
kids, and I am like "who is this....". Would be great to say "Hey Bob, doing
good" :)

~~~
malandrew
I'm sitting here imagining a very distant future where the part of the brain
that recognizes faces eventually becomes vestigial and we end up relying on
technology to recognize the people in our lives.

Basically acquired prosopagnosia.

~~~
sunsetMurk
Almost feel like that's not so distant. Imagine how fewer people we would
recognize if we weren't regularly pinged with an update about them or their
picture scrolled passed on a device.

~~~
Dylan16807
That sounds like the tech helping memorize faces, the exact opposite?

------
tanilama
And that is good news. Company should focus on making good services and good
profit, not virtue signaling on political fluff

~~~
hannasanarion
It is not "virtue signaling" to choose to stop doing evil.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Just a reminder that like encryption, facial recognition is just applied math.
Why are people trying to ban math?

~~~
chmod775
First off, this was specifically about banning the _selling_ of facial
recognition software to specific players.

Also: Just a reminder that nuclear bombs are just physics is just applied math
(kinda).

Just because what you're doing is rooted in the field of mathmatics doesn't
automatically mean you should be doing it or selling it, especially when your
application is crossing into the physical world where there is the wellbeing
of humans to be concerned about.

Even if the entity you're selling to could just very well build it themselves,
it still doesn't remove your moral obligation to not be the one providing it.

------
malvosenior
Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can
never put the tech genie back in the bottle. Especially since presumably many
of the foundation layers of this technology are open source with wide scale
applications. Will they outlaw machine learning? TensorFlow?

Obviously whatever Amazon is doing is more complicated than throwing a ton of
face images at TensorFlow but as technology progresses, the advances will
bubble up to the application layer.

The thought that you could even regulate facial recognition just shows how out
to lunch lawmakers and the media are when it comes to technology, how it's
developed and how it's deployed.

~~~
munk-a
> Regulating this technology seems like regulating encryption. Futile. You can
> never put the tech genie back in the bottle.

We've (effectively) put chemical warfare back in the bottle, regulations can
be quite effective in shifting the public perception - but I won't argue that
it's hard to do.

~~~
malvosenior
Chemical weapons have no consumer applications and are very difficult to
create. This is more like trying to put DeCSS back in the bottle:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS)

------
fooblitzky
"The proposals faced an uphill battle. Amazon’s board recommended against
them" \- for those not aware, the way shareholder voting works for Amazon, is
that shares that aren't voted are assumed to vote the same way the board
recommends. This means to get any proposal different to the board's
recommendation, you need to get more active voters for the proposal, than
those opposed + not voting.

There was a shareholder proposal recently to make the default for non-voters
abstain instead of "whatever the board wants", but the board recommended
against it and it was defeated.

------
jxramos
What’s the backstory here? Did Amazon ban some facial recognition product it’s
developed from being used in certain circumstances and the shareholders
overturned that decision?

~~~
fooblitzky
No, some shareholders brought forth a motion to ban the product at the
shareholder's meeting, and it was voted down.

------
microdrum
Security cameras are already everywhere. So, um, should there be a law that
only human retinas can look at them? Why allow recording of the feeds, for
that matter?

------
Traubenfuchs
Why would shareholders reject something that can make them money? This is not
a charity.

~~~
rospaya
Conscience?

------
KorematsuFred
What is wrong with facial recognition ? The problem should be government using
it to enforce laws. Even that is debatable. Most public spaces are currently
under surveillance.

------
danielovichdk
Dont buy from Amazon.

How hard can it be

~~~
xfitm3
Surprisingly difficult. Winding down from Amazon personally has taken months,
but thats futile. At work I spend 8 figures a year on AWS.

~~~
munk-a
AWS definitely has competitors you can switch to pretty easily, I think
Amazon's retail side is the harder portion to jettison.

~~~
xfitm3
Do you use AWS? It's extremely difficult to move away if you use services like
RDS, ElasticSearch, ElastiCache, Lambda, KMS, parameter store, etc. It will
cost a couple years of ops time to reliably migrate to a competitor like GCP +
change work patterns. Not to mention that Google products like Functions are
still alpha and unreliable.

------
m-p-3
Looks like Amazon is incapable of policing itself then.

------
exabrial
Progressives are progressive until it's their own backyard. Great article
about that earlier today on HN.

~~~
SeanBoocock
I don't understand this comment. Being critical of the implications of facial
recognition technology doesn't map cleanly along the political spectrum, but
the most vocal criticism has come from the left. Amazon shareholders largely
consist of institutional investors whose interests (and politics) tend to the
more conservative.

In what sense are progressives being hypocritical here? As far as I can tell
progressive (leaning) employees and other minority shareholders proposed an
initiative that was rejected by the majority, more conservative shareholders.

------
llamataboot
Ah, the public corporation! Fictive structures created so that profit-making
shall never be interfered with by moral or ethical concerns!

Just creating shareholder value, what else can you expect us to do!

~~~
mc32
Public corporations, private corporations, state-owned, party-controlled
corporations. It doesn’t matter. At least public corporations are known to bow
to pressure.

I think ownership is irrelevant. What matters is lawfulness and what remains
lawful after pressure or indifference from the constituencies.

Hand in hand with this is the rule of law. Some countries on paper have great
liberties and rights for their people, but in practice it’s up to the party to
interpret and enforce (as in the great purges, etc,)

~~~
roenxi
> What matters is lawfulness and what remains lawful

To expand on that idea - if something is both lawful and profitable, you have
to have an almost absolute consensus amongst the people capable of doing it
that it should not be done. Otherwise, potentially even if 1 person thinks it
is fine, then they will be the one to do it.

Typically this is the main strength of the economic system - jobs that people
don't want to do get allocated to the person who has the least problem with
doing it.

The threat here was never the development of the technology - it is obvious
that it is coming - the issue here is government demand. A corporation can
only do so much with my face that annoys me - the government on the other hand
can make life really miserable.

~~~
solveit
> if something is both lawful and profitable, you have to have an almost
> absolute consensus amongst the people capable of doing it that it should not
> be done.

Sure, but you just need a weak consensus amongst everyone that it should not
be done to make it unlawful.

------
jokoon
Shouldn't this technology be outlawed outside law enforcement?

It sounds like it can be used like a powerful tool.

~~~
sneak
Why should private analysis of photos legally acquired be illegal?

If computers are legal and software is legal and photography is legal, it
seems to me that running your own software on your own computers over your own
photos should be legal.

I don’t like the implication either, but I think perhaps the thing we should
be looking at is why it is legal for companies to take photos of us for
commercial purposes without our explicit consent. I also feel it would be much
more practical to regulate and enforce than regulating what algorithms they
get to use on already-captured imagery.

~~~
mLuby
Right, so parent is suggesting making facial recognition software (as a class)
illegal. You'd still be able to use your legal computer to analyze legal
photographs, but we could, as a society, say it is a Bad Idea™ to make that
analysis trivial.

Alternatively we could say that everyone should be able to do facial
recognition analysis, but then access to the photographs becomes the
gatekeeper of power.

