
A one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition - robbiet480
https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/we-are-implementing-a-one-year-moratorium-on-police-use-of-rekognition
======
chishaku
The ACLU is doing a lot of great work to hold government accountable when it
comes to facial recognition tech.

[https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-fbi-
face...](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-fbi-face-
recognition-secrecy)

[https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-dhs-
face...](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-dhs-face-
recognition-secrecy)

Would be great to see Amazon's support.

The ACLU ran an experiment with Rekognition and these are their findings:

"Using Rekognition, we built a face database and search tool using 25,000
publicly available arrest photos. Then we searched that database against
public photos of every current member of the House and Senate. We used the
default match settings that Amazon sets for Rekognition.

... the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them
as other people who have been arrested for a crime.

... Academic research [0] has also already shown that face recognition is less
accurate for darker-skinned faces and women. Our results validate this
concern: Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition’s false matches in our test were of
people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress."

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-
te...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-
technologies/amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28)

[0]:
[http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a...](http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf)

~~~
bko
I tried to recreate this using Rekognition. I used a public mugshot database.
Here are my results [0] if you're curious about what these false matches look
like.

[0] [https://medium.com/ml-everything/how-facial-recognition-
work...](https://medium.com/ml-everything/how-facial-recognition-works-
part-4-comparing-congressmen-to-mugshots-bf08b72c3c2a)

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Some of those false positives are laughably similar. I have no doubt an LEO
would be convinced they have the right suspect.

I actually think it’s probably better than most people’s naked eye recognition
in a crowd.

~~~
p1necone
Yeah, seems to me like the real problem is that people actually have a _lot_
of doppelgangers, and applying facial recognition to the entire population,
even if just as accurate as a real person is just not a useful thing to do.

~~~
setr
If you had accuracy similar to a human, and assuming this is an existing
procedure humans do use, then of course it's useful -- you're doing the same
task cheaper/faster.

Presumably you'd also use the same techniques as used by humans today to
narrow down further, like taking into account location, time, etc of match

~~~
couchand
Doing the same thing but faster and cheaper doesn't necessarily mean it's
better. If there's a high cost to a procedure, then the user would need to
show the value of checking a candidate in some other way for it to be worth
the effort. Making it easier and faster means you're more likely to check
against random innocent individuals.

~~~
randomdude402
Fast, cheap, good. You can only ever choose two.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Often, you are lucky to get one.

------
ipsocannibal
Step 2: End Ring contracts with police departments.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/five-concerns-about-
am...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/five-concerns-about-amazon-rings-
deals-police)

------
dfsegoat
AWS is running a nice screen here. I recall reading about Rekognition being
documented as having accuracy problems when individuals in question had darker
skin [2,3].

>> _" The latest cause for concern is a study published this week by the MIT
Media Lab, which found that Rekognition performed worse when identifying an
individual’s gender if they were female or darker-skinned."_ [1]

I can't really comment. Just recalled this in the memory banks and thought
they might address this directly [they may have].

1 - [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197137/amazon-
rekogniti...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197137/amazon-rekognition-
facial-recognition-bias-race-gender)

2- [https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/amazon-is-pushing-
facial-...](https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/amazon-is-pushing-facial-
technology-that-a-study-says-could-be-biased/)

3- [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ai-experts-take-on-
amazon-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ai-experts-take-on-amazon-after-
researchers-findings-of-racial-bias-in-facial-recognition-2019-04-03)

~~~
hpoe
There was a discussion on HN last week that I can't find where I was
enlightened to find out that one of the big problems around doing facial
recognition is proper lighting and without it you can't really build good
models and be able to really use the image.

As an extension of this photographs of individuals with darker skin required
more lighting than photographs of individuals with darker skin.

I don't know all of what goes into the ML for facial recognition and I am sure
there are people far smarter than me working on it (and making way more money
than me to boot), but I guess my thought here is that some variation of Poe's
Law applies. I know that people are quick to jump to condemn something as
racist but sometimes there really are just honest mistakes.

I have a hard time believing that anyone at any level of the AWS structure set
out to produce a racist facial recognition, but rather it may have just been
an honest over site and rather than rushing to crucify them we should instead
look at it as a learning opportunity to help develop further the field of
facial recognition.

EDIT: I wanted to clarify that although I don't think it was done purposefully
I don't think it doesn't bespeak a problem; my intention was rather to serve
as a suggestion that we should sometimes temper the often strong reaction
produced when labeling something racist, and focus our efforts on identifying
and solving the issue rather than trying to act punitive. To forestall
objections I do recognize this is an issue that does require correction, and
that it does bespeak a larger societal problem that has real consequences for
real people ever day, but in my experience we will get more progress by
attempting to work together in a spirit of cooperation rather than a spirit of
anger and vengance.

~~~
coderintherye
This is EXACTLY what people are trying to raise awareness of. This is implicit
bias. It doesn't matter if people have "good intentions" or made "honest
mistakes" if the tool is implicitly biased. This is why having a diverse team
working on a project is important, because it will help call out these issues
early rather than after they have been put in production.

It's also not purely a technical problem, if you feed the model only pictures
of white and asian male college students then it's no surprise when you get a
model that biases towards recognizing white and asian male college students
(which is exactly how several prominent models were trained).

~~~
zerocrates
Biased algorithms/models are particularly dangerous because they tend to
provide a veneer of objectivity (plausible deniability if you want to put a
more cynical lens on it) that could frustrate attempts to hold users
accountable.

~~~
dkn775
Agreed. A huge problem I haven't been able to think of is the (already
happening in masse) practice of targeting black people because the data says
so. However over time police Dept invests data capture resources in "bad
areas" \- which may have a lot of black residents. I wonder how to separate
the defense that some black areas are obviously bad and why would a dept put
surveillance resources in a good neighborhood?

I personally feel it's wrong but that's one thing I've always got hung up on
in building a critique.

------
ardy42
> We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to
> govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days,
> Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year
> moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules,
> and we stand ready to help if requested.

That's a little weak. If they were serious, the moratorium would extend
indefinitely, or until such rules were in place.

One year might just be long enough for the fervor to die down, so they don't
take such a PR hit when they resume sales.

------
smashah
What about in the UK? At the BLM protest, the police rub around with their
camcorder on the stick to justify kettling people for 4+ hours and squash
people's will to protest. They require you to show your face or arrest you.
All because they want to use Rekognition to cross reference everyone's face.

~~~
isolli
That is troubling. Do you have references for that?

~~~
smashah
[https://twitter.com/alessadavison/status/1270430150254084096...](https://twitter.com/alessadavison/status/1270430150254084096?s=19)

Plus corroborating anecdotes from people I've met at the protests.

I always make sure I'm out of the way when these monkeys start kettling
protestors

------
deeblering4
This reads to me as simply “oops bad timing this year, let’s try again next
year”. Yeah, sure, whatever Evilcorp.

~~~
elmo2you
I believe that you that's a fairly accurate assessment. More so, the whole
thing is kind of a red herring.

Facial recognition technology is, after all is said and done, probably illegal
in any country that implements the protection of basic human rights into its
national laws. If countries (including the USA) do not, it says enough of its
own about them. Nor has the idea of (national) exceptionalism ever produced a
more equal and/and fair society. AFAIK, not a single in all history.

For those who like to argue that such technology could be legalized when
people (collectively) agree with its use through political consensus (aka "the
people", through politicians, voted for it), there are good reasons for why
basic human rights are defined as "inalienable". Regretfully, many countries
have nonetheless ignored that fact, whenever it suited the personal interests
of politicians and those that stand behind them in the shadows.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a
merger of state and corporate power” ― Benito Mussolini

------
detaro
Wonder if that extends to the Bodycam analysis services running under a
different brand, which allows searching for people based on various criteria
and matching against a watch list?

[https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS88XH_2.0.0/iva...](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS88XH_2.0.0/iva/ref_analyticpbwc.html)

~~~
bigiain
Wasn't yesterday's facial recognition news all about how IBM weren't making
enough money ... oh, hang on <check notes> decided to take a moral stance
against law enforcement use of facial recognition?

(while cynically trying to link an organisation who built themselves providing
IT services to nazi genocide, with the ethical side of the current police
brutality protests... :sigh: )

~~~
kitd
_built themselves providing IT services to nazi genocide_

Seriously?

~~~
the_pwner224
They did make many sales to the Nazis, of computers as well as whatever
software stuff that went along with that, including stuff designed to support
their Jew/\+ extermination operations. I recall it from an article (on HN?)
some time ago about U.S. companies that helped the Nazis. But there's tons of
stuff about it on Google.

~~~
kitd
_of computers as well as whatever software stuff that went along with that_

Well, that is categorically wrong, given the history of computing.

But anyway, the implication in the previous comment was that IBM were built on
the business of exterminating Jews, which is frankly ridiculous given that
they started business 30 years before the Nazi party even came to power.

Note, I'm not claiming IBM didn't get involve with the nazis. The German
subsidiary certainly did business with the Nazis, including with their
processing of Jews and minorities. Thomas J Watson even received an award from
them. But, IIRC, he realised he'd been set up as a publicity stunt and gave it
back. Once the war started, the German subsidiary bought themselves out and
became independent.

It should be noted that IBM in the US has a history of introducing policies
ensuring equality and diversity in employment that precede similar federal
legislation, sometimes by decades.

And yet it's only the Nazis thing everyone brings up.

------
ErikAugust
Has anyone ever here actually demoed Rekognition? I did two years ago, maybe.

From that, I felt like it doesn't work and shouldn't be used in production,
never mind police production.

~~~
coderintherye
Yes, we ran it against our borrower image set and the results were atrocious,
those this was now a couple years past. Never tried again after that.

~~~
ciarannolan
> we ran it against our borrower image set

Why?

~~~
coderintherye
It was experimental for trying to help identify repeat borrowers, that way we
could link to their previous loan.

Separately, we experimented with various vendors "face detection" (not whose
face, but rather just "is there a face") just to see how many faces appeared
in a photo, because for group loans you needed at least 75% of the borrowers
present in the photo. If this didn't happen then it meant the loan didn't get
posted and someone would have to go back and get all the borrowers together
again for another photo which is laborious and inefficient. Much better if you
could give the feedback upfront. Granted, as I noted in another comment, at
the time all the major vendor's tools had abysmal accuracy and we abandoned
the effort.

~~~
ciarannolan
Interesting, thanks!

------
hpoe
I see this as an extension of the Facebook <moderating/censoring> discussion,
which is really a broader question of what moral obligations do corporations
have beyond following the law and trying to provide the optimal product to
their consumers?

Also there seemed to be no substantive discussion prior this about the police
using Rekognition until it became a hot button issue. What will the widespread
effects be if corporations start allowing their decisions to be governed by
<outrage of the mob/principled consumer pressure>?

Finally I wonder how they will implement this, I mean after all I can sign up
and start using any AWS service with just a credit card what's to stop police
departments from simply using a corporate card and signing up for a different
account? Also does this apply to just local PDs or does it extend to the FBI,
NSA, CIA, or other 3 letter government agencies?

Disclaimer: The purpose of these comments are intended to be observational not
advocational.

~~~
albntomat0
Similarly, I would argue that we don't want to be reliant on corporations to
determine what the lines are themselves, as they should not be de-facto moral
authorities. Determining what is acceptable needs to come from our society as
a whole, through reasoned debate and proper functioning of government.

~~~
tdfx
> through reasoned debate and proper functioning of government.

Yikes. Is there a fallback option?

~~~
albntomat0
The other options seem to be the benevolence of Bezos or Twitter condemnation,
so not really.

~~~
kmonsen
Still better in some cases than relying in government taking action :-(

Note that this is a one way relationship, corporations must comply with laws,
but can also do other things.

~~~
albntomat0
I'd say "better" as in "more likely", but I'm still not a fan of a handful of
SV folks being the moral decision makers for the world as the general order of
things.

I'll gladly accept additional benevolence from them though! Just not as the
sole power in the area.

------
Terretta
It's probably the legal and PR teams' fault, but this surely could have been
worded to sound less like potential corporate doublespeak:

 _" We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations
to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent
days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year
moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and
we stand ready to help if requested."_

Dead giveaway is that Legal and PR teams relentlessly edit out self-agency.

------
superzamp
I remember at the AWS summit maybe two years ago, they were casually
showcasing how some police depts were using Rekognition. Oh my, what a culture
shock. How can you basically foreshadow 1984 on stage without blinking an eye?

------
deegles
"We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to
govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology"

Or you know... you could do it yourself. Ethics don't have to come from
regulations.

~~~
txcwpalpha
That's exactly what they're doing?

But Amazon can only control its own offerings. It can't control what any other
company that offers facial recognition does, and they probably know that as
soon as AWS steps back, some other AI company with less ethics (or cynically,
less care of public pushback) will swoop in without hesitation. The only way
to stop that is regulations.

~~~
deegles
They've had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing and they actively
worked against it. In the last year people were so upset about Rekognition
that they organized a shareholder proposal (it was defeated)[0]

While it's good that they are doing the moratorium, I think it's hardly
applause worthy for them to have needed this much backlash to act.

Also, I'm not impressed by the argument that other people might offer face
recognition. This is about Amazon's actions.
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/28/amazon-facial-
recognition-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/28/amazon-facial-recognition-
vote/)

------
siruncledrew
What prevents a private company (ex. Clearview) from using Rekognition to
accomplish the same thing for the police as a government-contractor?

Without any kinds of laws, wouldn’t things like this incentivize new niches to
popup to milk money from the government?

------
boomboomsubban
Isn't it open to anyone with an AWS account? So how are they even trying to
implement this and what would be stopping any third party from using this to
submit reports to law enforcement?

~~~
ajhurliman
If you're spending enough on AWS, the interaction isn't completely faceless.
You'll usually get an account manager assigned to you and they might suspect
something is up if they have a lot of mug shots coming through.

If it's a third party with a new name unrelated to law enforcement, that
complicates the chain of custody and probably wouldn't be worth it to any
agencies to set it up to skirt a 1 year moratorium, even if someone at the
agency thought it was a good idea to try and flout Amazon's policies (they
definitely won't, agencies just don't move that quickly).

That being said, there's no way to guarantee that it won't be used, but it
would be difficult for LAPD to be running at scale with nobody raising any
flags.

~~~
joncrane
>they might suspect something is up if they have a lot of mug shots coming
through

Can AWS see the images used with Rekognition?

------
trynewideas
[https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/10/amazon-rekognition-
morator...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/10/amazon-rekognition-moratorium/)

> Amazon is known to have pitched its facial recognition technology,
> Rekognition, to federal agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
> Last year, Amazon’s cloud chief Andy Jassy said in an interview the company
> would provide Rekognition to “any” government department.

> Amazon spokesperson Kristin Brown declined to comment further or say if the
> moratorium applies to federal law enforcement.

------
mmanfrin
AKA 'We're going to sell it to police but only after people stop looking'

------
badRNG
What is the difference between Rekognition and Clearview AI? I'm assuming that
Rekognition is just using government photo databases rather than social media?

It seems that Amazon has a far better reputation on HN compared to Clearview
AI. Is that deserved?

~~~
Grimm1
Rekognition is just their normal CV offering you can use for anything from
what I know.

------
m0zg
Anyone with a modicum of skill and a few GPUs can do what Rekognition does
using code freely available on GitHub and public datasets. This cat is _way_
out of the bag.

------
kingo55
It's always a slippery slope when companies morally compel themselves to block
use cases from their service.

I welcome this move from Amazon, but I hope it doesn't foreshadow more moral
bans in future e.g. spurred on by the next angry mobs who will try to limit
free speech in society.

~~~
genoapol
I hope unpolished technologies that put already marginalized groups in more
potentially deadly and unecessary interactions with the police get binned.

If anyone has a hard time empathizing here, imagine your kids in the false
positive person's shoes.

------
samstave
So i have a schitzo view on subjects like this;

1\. I am against places that say “photography prohibited - private property” —
if i can see it, i should be free to photograph it.

2\. I am against ANY use of facial recognition ever anywhere. I own my face
and i am allowed to keep it private if i choose to.

So,yes completely schitzo and i realize this.

But its not an evenly distributed spectrum of a problem. Its a weighted web of
nuanced issues.

I just dont know how to balance it.

Id love to discuss this if anyone is open.

~~~
8note
If you're showing your face everywhere, you aren't keeping it private.

You are in control of whether your face can be seen

------
th0ma5
What opportunities exist for use of facial recognition by protest groups and
citizen watchdogs? Any products? Any success stories?

------
1-6
This reminds me of an FBI agent who likes to keep his gun in his back pocket
and have it bulging out, just to impress people who knew what he did. I can't
imagine how a few bad apples within the police force would sit behind a
computer playing with Facebook profile pictures and matching them against
Rekognition.

------
presty
Does anyone know how exactly is the Police integration done with Rekognition?
I mean, they must have it integrated into their IT systems, right? Who did
that integration? AWS itself? Or some consulting companies? Or the PD's Tech
Department?

------
MattGaiser
Then won’t departments just go to the highly secretive companies like
Palantir?

~~~
notriddle
This is why the blog post includes a note on how they want it to be illegal.
It'll still happen, but in order to keep it secret, they'll need to employ it
less often.

------
jariel
There's a lot of talk about the technology - but this aside, why are police
even using this?

We don't need this kind of hyper surveillance for common crime, people with
warrants, it's just too much of an intrusion.

I can see this being used in certain places for 'high value individuals' such
as those marked by the FBI (major crimes, multiple murders) or literally
'terrorists' \- but for regular crime, I think it's way too much.

We can't be under constant surveillance by the police computers that's just no
way to live.

------
downerending
Arguing in the other direction, it turned out to be very important that Floyd
killing was captured on video and the killer identified.

Since that happened, there have been dozens (at least) of murders and vicious,
life-changing assaults, most captured on video. I'd be very happy to see every
one of the bad guys identified, and this seems like it would be effective
toward that end.

------
ConradKilroy
Also check out 'Data for Black Lives' organization, they had been working
closely with ACLU on this matter.

------
samstave
“Police use” == contractors providing subsequent services to said police and
bilking tax payer money for said service, with likely companies founded by
public servants’ significant others to do said billing (remember this actually
happened in 2009 by wives of bankers setting up companies to get bailout
funds)

------
a3n
"We are implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition" ...
until this whole thing blows over. /s

They're leaving money on the table, but it will still be there in a year, and
they'll only miss whatever Amazon's functional analog of "compound interest"
is.

~~~
deft
Yeah holy... So in a year from now the cops can resume evil behaviour?

~~~
txcwpalpha
My guess is that they don't view facial recognition as an inherently bad
thing, but they do view it as bad when wielded by bad actors (such as the
current police environment).

The optimistic view is that this moratorium is to see if police departments
truly do reform themselves over the next year to the point where they can be
trusted to use facial recognition again. I hope a reevaluation takes place
then.

------
lemmox
I wonder if this means that existing customers/products had to stop using the
service? If so this might be the first time I recall seeing a cloud vendor
flex like this.

CTOs of city and law enforcement orgs are probably seriously questioning the
vulnerability of relying on cloud SaaS.

------
samstave
Super funny thought:

The reason why super heroes wear masks and capes is to avoid facial and gait
recognition cameras!

------
ikeyany
Why do they say Congress is ready to take on this challenge? Congress hasn't
passed a thing yet.

~~~
thephyber
"ready to take on" sounds more like the beginning of the funnel.

"hasn't passed a thing" sounds like the end of a Congressional funnel.

edit: this just purely a retort about the specific complaint of the parent. I
don't deny that Congress hasn't actually done much useful to forward the
policy changes I would deem desirable here.

------
737min
Does the same apply to users from mainland China or companies like Zoom? If
not, why not?

~~~
eunos
China got their fair amount of Computer Vision companies anyway. Sensetime,
yitu, megvii, cloudwalk and so on. I even heard one using Gait analysis but I
forgot the name.

------
jonplackett
Can someone explain what has kicked off this retraction from face recognition
from IBM and now Amazon? I mean it’s always had dubious uses. What has made
this happen right now?

~~~
pvaldes
Probably that everybody is using masks so the system lacks of essential parts
and does not work anymore until is rebuilt and fixed. There could be also a
risk of database being tainted by masks with something print over it, like
lips, wrinkles in the mask, or even the face of somebody.

And of course you can not require citizens to show the face and to cover the
face at the same time, so to try to publicly denounce people with the face
covered as delinquent wannabe is not possible at this moment.

But I'm just speculating.

~~~
1-6
You have a point there. I can see people continuing to wear masks even after
the order is lifted across cities.

~~~
pvaldes
Taking in mind the US healthcare system, americans should have a bigger
incentive to wear masks than south koreans, if only for protecting themselves
and their families from hospital bills.

------
1-6
I can see how this decision would stop immediate problems following recent
events. However, in the long-term, wouldn't machine learning help regulate and
fix human bias?

------
robbiet480
Better than nothing I guess but still not a perfect solution.

~~~
iris18
> Better than nothing I guess but still not a perfect solution.

------
coronadisaster
Are they still sharing Ring doorbell videos with police?

------
sneak
Is this a moratorium on sales, or are they shutting off the service of cops
using this? Will this apply to feds and US military, as well?

------
woodruffw
As we all know, every moral issue has a 1-year expiration date.

~~~
cle
Every moral issue is also black-and-white and requires no practical (or
ethical) implementation plan.

------
blickentwapft
The cynic might say “because in a year this will all have blown over and we
can get back to selling”.

------
rhema
You don't really need facial recognition once you have enough data from
contact tracing.

------
1-6
Ahh, one more year until I finish creating my fake digital self and delete
fingerprints.

------
raxxorrax
I call this profiteering on dilemma. Disgusting in my opinion. Just my
opinion.

------
_bxg1
"We are waiting until the current news cycle has blown over"

------
talkingtab
Not Enough. Period.

Yet another PR move to placate rather than address the problem.

------
allears
Translation: We already made a bundle on this, but we're seeing too much
pushback, so we're getting out before the downside eats into our profits.

~~~
solidasparagus
It's reactions like this that make companies not want to even try. "People are
going to bitch whether we sell to the police or not so there is no upside to
stopping". Why not have a little positivity that AWS is finally restricting
access to their technology beyond what is legally required?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Go all in then. Disallow the use of the technology without independent
oversight. But don't do a half hearted measure because you're unwilling to
commit, or you're going to grasp for some positive PR.

> Why not have a little positivity that AWS is finally restricting access to
> their technology beyond what is legally required?

Because it's not enough. "Please sir, may I have some more" is not how you
address the weaponization of technology by a trillion dollar org.

~~~
sgift
Independent oversight? So .. like from a government? Cause that's the
definition of independent, from the people for the people. And if the next
answer is "that's not how government is in reality" neither is any other
'independent' oversight. Humans are easily corruptible. We better find a
solution for this problem or all that will happen is an endless line of
watchers watching other watchers.

~~~
toomuchtodo
_Humans are the only solution_. Rational humans are never going to rely on
technology alone for enforcement, governance, and/or oversight. If you have a
problem with the humans currently making decisions, find better humans. Checks
and balances.

Don't like the Big Tech corporate surveillance state? Write better laws
regulating them. Don't like the people writing laws currently? Vote and run
against them. Still not heard? There are yet more avenues for recourse.

The idea that technology is going to fix these problems holds no basis in
reality.

~~~
sgift
Seems I misunderstood your previous post, cause everything you wrote I agree
with completely.

My only point here is: Currently, people do not trust independent oversight
(read: government). And there are probably a few good reasons. So, I don't see
how saying "Amazon should only sell this technology with independent
oversight" fixes anything as long as the trust problem isn't solved.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Definitely talking past each other. You must solve for X, where X=trust.

------
demarq
This is an important step

~~~
raxxorrax
No, this is more likely simple opportunism. They want to supply the police of
course, just not yet when public opinion is against police.

------
keithyjohnson
Keep it up

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noway421
Amazing news!

------
1-6
So... cloud service providers now have the right to determine what services
they want to allow and what they want to shut off? HAL 9000: "I'm sorry Dave,
I'm afraid I can't do that"

~~~
ricardobeat
No, they have always had that right, as does any other private business. You
can always refuse service if it is not on discriminatory grounds (gender,
sexuality, ethnicity, religion or disability).

~~~
heavyset_go
Sexuality is only a protected class in some states, and sexuality isn't a
protected class at the federal level.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of places in the US where one can experience
legal discrimination based on their sexuality in housing, employment,
education, health insurance and healthcare. There are several maps here[1]
that show where those places are. Many of them don't classify violence
motivated by the victims' sexuality as hate crimes, either. There's also a
table here[1] that summarizes the discrepancies in the US.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_States#Anti-
discrimination_laws)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_States#Summary_table_of_LGBT_rights_in_the_United_States)

------
lgleason
Pretty soon you will see telephone companies refusing service, car companies
refusing to service cars etc. based on a moral judgement of the customer. Then
whey will finish the process of getting anybody accused of wrong-think purged
from employment etc.. Hmmmm, where is history was that tried before? What
could possibly go wrong?

~~~
boustrophedon
This is already the case today under capitalism. A business may refuse service
to anyone provided they are not a member of a protected class (the Civil
Rights act and the ADA define a few).

~~~
DaniloDias
It’s more disturbingly the case under whatever economy China runs.
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-
soci...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-
credit-laboratory/)

~~~
boustrophedon
China's economy is a form of capitalism called state capitalism.

------
throwawaysea
Personally I am pro facial recognition being used, and believe it is very
necessary if police budgets are cut and patrols are reduced. We need a way to
hold criminals accountable and bring them to justice. Cameras with facial
recognition let us identify their location and send police officers to
apprehend criminals, instead of relying on the random chance that an officer
spots someone while driving around and matches their face with a list of perps
they've seen before.

I haven't heard of any police departments using facial recognition as a
definite match. All of them use human confirmation. So basically, the number
of false positives does not matter - it's more that facial recognition reduces
the total amount of data to a more manageable number that are scrutinized by
human eyes.

I don't know why people would be against this. Steps like this moratorium just
seem like posturing or an overreaction. The recent policing incidents that
have been in the news do not involve facial recognition and there is no reason
to tie them in.

