
Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police - venturis_voice
https://medium.com/s/story/im-an-amazon-employee-my-company-shouldn-t-sell-facial-recognition-tech-to-police-36b5fde934ac
======
allthecybers
This argument conflates a number of issues and frankly loses steam on that
basis. The running list of demands so far: Don’t sell facial recognition,
don’t work with the government, kick a paying customer off of your system
because of who they provide services to and while we are at it you shouldn’t
be working with anyone I don’t like. Is that it? For now, but check back with
me cause I might want to add greedy investment firms to the list or any other
villain of the moment.

I really find it odd that all of a sudden tech employees are resistant to
supporting their own government. If it’s about the current administration -
they are gonna be gone in a couple years and you want another admin to be
years behind in capability?

The reason the internet and the tech industry as a whole exists at this point
is because of the defense technology complex.

If this really bothered people they would leave the nice paycheck and the
perks and go work for a co-op or a non profit or some other organization
untouched by anything unsavory.

~~~
spamizbad
A balance is going to have to be found here. A nightmare scenario for
technology is one where it’s perceived as boot-licky and enabling the worst
parts of government. Finding talent was hard even when tech was perceived as
good or at least neutral; if it’s seen as an imperialist cog or even just an
enabler for our governments bad behaviors it will make developing
organizations even harder.

~~~
ovi256
This talent scenario is a plausible one that could turn the balance from huge
companies taking all the oxygen out of the system towards smaller ones being
able to innovate again.

~~~
spamizbad
The problem is so few startups IPO and instead organize around becoming
acquisition targets for "huge companies" that would theoretically now be in
deep with the defense and law enforcement.

------
kodablah
> Amazon, where I work, is currently allowing police departments around the
> country to purchase its facial recognition product, Rekognition, and I and
> other employees demand that we stop immediately.

Ok, nod, nod...

> The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that
> powers much of ICE's deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web
> Services and to institute employee oversight for ethical decisions.

Nope, lost me. These should not be lumped together for a myriad of reasons.
First, you are diluting your original goal. Second, you risk AWS being seen as
non-neutral based on the whims of employees' feelings about a company (as
opposed to something illegal). Third, you cannot be consistent with this
approach (e.g. all the gov cloud stuff). Fourth, there is a clear delineation
between computing services like AWS and targeted software efforts like facial
recognition systems, like the difference between a phone company and a weapons
manufacturer. Fifth, AWS is not value added enough nor can it see enough of
what's going on with its customers for this to be any more than virtue
signalling.

If you want to ban companies you disagree with from AWS, I disagree with it,
but at least separate the requests. The Google employees you are following in
the footsteps of are not demanding that Android calling be disabled for
certain companies or Google search be restricted from use by them. Maybe
Amazon should also not ship any products to that company too?

~~~
paulcole
> Second, you risk AWS being seen as non-neutral based on the whims of
> employees' feelings about a company (as opposed to something illegal).

There are plenty of legal things that I think it’s fine with being non-neutral
on. A private company SHOULD be non-neutral based on the whims of the
employees! Who else steers their ship?

~~~
vorpalhex
Can AWS be non-neutral? Sure, legally and even ethically, that's fine.

If AWS is non-neutral, will that hurt their ability to attract clients?
Absolutely. I'm the first one in line to abolish ICE, but if AWS starts
kicking people they don't like off of AWS I'll also be the first one to stop
using it. Sure, we agree on ICE, what about companies that make violent video
games? Companies that make firearm accessories?

~~~
spaginal
Why abolish ICE? What specifically is the issue with ICE short of news and
celebrities demanding it because it’s in vogue?

They serve a legitimate law enforcement function in our country, which by last
check doesn’t have open borders and prosecutes those that cross illegally?

~~~
azemetre
Because ICE was the result of 9/11 hysteria, it's a government organization
whose duties were already being done elsewhere.

I don't think people realize it was only formed in 2003...

~~~
isoskeles
I don't see what it being formed in 2003 has to do with anything.

What exactly is being advocated in abolishing ICE when you bring up that
another agency was doing its duties? Are you saying that other agency can take
over those duties again?

Most of the abolish ICE crowd just wants to get rid of ICE and ICE's duties. I
don't think they want the CBP doing roughly the same thing ICE is doing.
They'll just demand we abolish CBP.

~~~
EpicEng
ICE is extremely militaristic in its approach. Think if it like replacing all
police officers with SWAT team members.

------
ENOTTY
> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from
> “increasing the lethality” of the military.

It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not
believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the
military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military.

Especially when the author follows up with this sentence:

> We will not silently build technology to oppress and kill people, whether in
> our country or in others.

That is the whole point of having armed forces! Armed forces exist to provide
achieve foreign policy goals (deterrence, coercion) through the credible
threat of its lethality.

These two sentences are fundamentally pacifist, which is okay if the author
claimed that mantle. But don't dress it up with a fake unifying clause like
"regardless of our views on the military".

~~~
TelmoMenezes
> If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the
> lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having
> a military.

That doesn't follow. One can believe in the utility of the military while at
the same time holding that it must operate purely as a public service, so that
no incentives are created for a state of permanent war. Famously, an American
president expressed this very concern. I doubt that Dwight Eisenhower did not
believe in the utility of the military, given that he was a general.

~~~
ENOTTY
Unless the staff operating the public service receive no compensation at all,
then there is profit involved.

~~~
bootlooped
If you go down that road, then you would also have to conclude that all
prisons are for-profit prisons, since the guards are always paid employees. I
think that's misinterpreting or misrepresenting the way "profit" is being used
in this sense though.

~~~
chrisseaton
> you would also have to conclude that all prisons are for-profit prisons

Maybe there's an interesting thing to say here - some people people are
against for-profit prisons because they think they encourage imprisoning more
people as it creates more profit.

But if you have a non-profit, government-run prison in your local area, you
may still be encouraged to imprison more people as it creates more profit for
the local suppliers to the prison.

So yeah it doesn't matter if the final user is for-profit if you think there
is a risk that profit is driving something you don't want.

~~~
AlexandrB
> So yeah it doesn't matter if the final user is for-profit if you think there
> is a risk that profit is driving something you don't want.

This is a gross simplification that erases the very real differences between
the incentives of a government vs. a for-profit company. Not only is the
government accountable to its electorate, but a government that wants to save
money can take a much broader approach - for example by funding access to
mental health services - to keep people out of prison. Prisoners are expensive
to keep locked up!

In the final analysis, all prisons are non-profit. None of them generate any
value. They're all funded with taxpayer money that could be spent elsewhere.
It's just that in the case of private prisons that money goes to a company
that has no interest in saving the _government_ money by reducing the prison
population. Sure they'll try to run the prison efficiently, so they can pocket
the difference, but they want as many prisoners as possible to get a bigger
check from Uncle Sam.

------
edoo
I wonder if an argument could be made that this violates the 4th amendment
right to be free from unseasonable search. Collecting your travel movements
automatically without cause might apply. It is an interesting problem because
there is no expectation of privacy in public. If you venture into public the
police or anyone can stake you out and take pictures of you. Devices that do
this are just an efficiency increase. The true root of the issue might be
whether the government has a right to collect information about you at all.
Before taxes about 100 years ago they really had no reason to.

~~~
sys_64738
This is no different than a spotter LEO or witness recognizing you from a
mugshot or from video surveillance. It's just that it's done with EVERYBODY
now.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
But scale is an important difference in legality and morality.

Consider the following example. Calling someone to ask them on a date is
normal acceptable behavior. Doing it 20 times an hour, 3 hours a day, every
day, quickly becomes immoral and illegal.

~~~
sys_64738
At some point it has to change from legal to illegal. That is, with n calls
then you're still legal but that n+1th call makes you a felon. What is n?

What is n for facial rekognition?

~~~
anticensor
k (number of takes) does not matter. r (number of uses) does.

------
ta_egdhs
constitutional rights (and a culture that enshrines them as sacred) is just
one layer of protection for civil liberties. The other, Often overlooked layer
is the fact that running a dystopian state is uneconomical. For better or
worse this is the logic used by gun advocates, but it should also apply to
other areas.

technology can make it feasible to scale repression like never before. facial
recognition, big data, centralized Electronic banking are all enormously
powerful tools in the wrong hands. the guns of the 21st century are those made
by the subversive cypherpunk. cryptocurrency and encrypted chat come to mind.
In China the number one tool to oppose state censorship is not protest, its a
vpn.

at the end of the day if amazon doesn't do this someone else will. so long as
the tech is possible the gov will get their hands on it, and so far as the
tech errodes civil liberties it eventually will be used to do so.

Amazon can only hold back the tide for so long.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
"at the end of the day if amazon doesn't do this someone else will"

"If Amazon doesn't fuck over people someone else will, so who cares" is a shit
argument.

~~~
chrismeller
Personally, I see it as the opposite side of the same argument people use
about drugs - that simply banning things doesn't work, motivated people will
find another way to obtain them. There is no one more motivated and persistent
than the US Government... Even if all the US tech firms join together and
refuse to sell to them, the US is not the only country on Earth with tech
companies making innovations in this area.

So in that sense, yes, they'll keep looking and someone else absolutely will.
As someone pointed out below, the real solution is to have them lobby the US
Government to give up their pursuit, anything else is just a delaying tactic.

~~~
nostrebored
People who don't think that the NSA already has technology that even casinos
use have their heads in the sand.

~~~
chrismeller
I also firmly believe that is true and we’re making a big deal out of
absolutely nothing with these kinds of open letters.

------
GuB-42
Don't focus on profit, say the employee who focus on his pay.

The real reason why people work at Amazon is because the pay is better, or the
perks are better than the other jobs they applied to. If they go see their
boss in order to negotiate a rise, they don't want to hear "sorry, no rise for
you, but you should be happy, we didn't sell our product to the police".

The vast majority of employees are motivated by their pay. And in order for
them to get paid, their company has to make money. They want their boss to
make them rich, and this is what their boss is doing by putting profits over
people, and that's why they are still there.

There are a few people who care more about the cause their work serve than
money, they are often found in nonprofits, much less so in tech giants.

~~~
Brybry
Money is most definitely not the only thing employees care about.

When you're picking a job you care about location, stability, company culture,
hours, vacation policy, etc.

I know plenty of people who have taken lesser paying jobs for a large variety
of reasons and morality is definitely one of them. If you're against the death
penalty then it's a bit hard to justify working a court job that puts people
on death row.

You, personally, may only be focused on your pay but that doesn't mean the
vast majority of people are.

Glassdoor certainly hints that this is not true for most people. [1][2]

[1] [https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/salary-happiness-
research/](https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/salary-happiness-research/)

[2] [https://www.glassdoor.com/research/more-money-change-
value-a...](https://www.glassdoor.com/research/more-money-change-value-at-
work/)

------
dsfyu404ed
When it comes to enabling domestic surveillance there is too much focus on
Amazon/Google/etc and too little focus on the voters and city governments that
seem to be perfectly ok with their police departments engaging in this sort of
crap.

This is like blaming whatever company makes M113s when they wind up in the
hands of local police.

Now, I don't consider Amazon or the bureaucrats who are rubber stamping the
paperwork for APCs to be blameless but they're definitely not the root cause.
The fact that there is a domestic market for this crap it the root of problem.

This is also something that voters have a lot of power to chance because it's
a city/town level issue and while it's getting cheaper all the time
implementing a surveillance state still is still expensive so there's an
avenue to drum up bipartisan support for not doing it.

------
Rainymood
Hopefully my opinion is not controversial but the tech behind this is really
cool. It is equally easy to imagine a future where this tech is helpful and
beneficial for all society. It is also equally easy to imagine a dystopian
future where this tech is used by evil authoritarian governments. I am
personally very conflicted on this issue because the tech is really cool
(actual big data machine learning/CV) but can be used extremely unethically at
the same time. It's like a razor sharp double-sided blade.

~~~
finnthehuman
But you’re not describing a double sided blade (that “cuts both ways”), you’re
saying that sword making is cool.

~~~
tokyodude
How is it not a double sided blade.

Better surveillance would catch and/or possibly stop car thieves, bike
thieves, muggers, vandals, robberies, some rapes, life threatening drivers,
hit and run drivers, bad cops.

I get that there's no magic wand to make sure the tech is only used for good
but that's true of pretty much everything. Knives can be used to cut food or
to stab people.

~~~
Rainymood
To follow up on this, I actually had a philosophical debate with myself about
the following statement: "Anything that can be used for good, can be used for
evil."

The point I'm trying to make is that by inventing something "good", you can
_always_ use it for "evil" by witholding it from someone. You invent a new
medicine to cure cancer? Give it to the highest bidder and leave those who
can't pay for it to die, this could be seen as "evil" in my eyes.

I haven't studied philosophy so I'd love some pointers to authors who touch
upon this subject or whatever its called.

------
cproctor
I applaud the authors of this letter. It's an open question whether an open,
democratic society can exist in the world of computational media. If it can,
we'll either need a well-educated citizenry or a benevolent oligarchy of
people who are skilled, knowledgeable, and wise in the use of computers. We
have done a lousy job of ethical political leadership so far, preoccupying
ourselves with profitably dismantling what's left of the old paradigm. I would
love to see more folks in tech running for office.

~~~
flomble
When I picture a person in tech successfully running for office, I imagine
precisely someone who has excelled at "profitably dismantling what's left of
the old paradigm". Unfortunately, technical ability, business savvy, ability
to understand social, political and bureaucratic systems in motion and strong,
reasonable ethical convictions are all mostly orthogonal and rare qualities.

------
Shivetya
I am of the opinion that facial recognition technology is a good tool to
produce and sell to the police provided it is burdened with significant
regulation to prevent abuse. this includes short term expiration of all
imagery gathered, access by public warrant only, and full public auditing.

the reason I am of this view is that if can reduce the impact of the police on
innocent people the better and I think that a system which can eliminate
people as suspects is the true value here. anything that stops the nonsense or
need of no knock warrants and other brutality the police have been caught
doing.

the face id tech should work both ways, identify the police and policed.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that
powers much of ICE’s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services

The number one thing that will make large companies reject cloud computing is
any hint that why will be kicked off because their legal business goes against
the mores of the US West coast tech workers. If Palantir gets kicked off, how
long until these same workers call for banning Boeing. A lot of these large
conglomerates have at least a division that is involved in the defense
industry.

A final point. If you think that facial recognition is too dangerous to sell
to police, why are you selling this dangerous technology to corporations where
the potential for abuse is still there but with less oversight? Also, if. the
police can’t buy this technology, they will buy the service from a middle man
that buys it from Amazon.

~~~
bnt
Kicking a high-profile account like Palantir off of AWS would probably have a
domino effect which would result in pretty much every big player moving to
custom data centers (or preparing a plan-b just in case it happens to them).

~~~
sjg007
I mean people used to have data centers before.. and most big players already
do have their own data centers.

------
turdnagel
Stopping facial recognition tech is not the solve. The problem is surveillance
- that’s what we ought to address.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Agreed.

Software doesn't run oppressive surveillance states. People run oppressive
surveillance states.

~~~
onemoresoop
Thats similar to "guns dont kill people, people do". But the more guns are
available the more people are being killed. Similar with this story, the more
the facial recongition technology evolves (without ethical considerations) the
more the surveillance states accomplish their jobs

~~~
jki275
Are you sure your premise is accurate? There are consistently more murders in
cities throughout the US where gun ownership is heavily restricted or de-facto
banned -- Chicago, DC, etc.

Out in the wild west, where there are _more_ guns, there are fewer killings
(per capita and absolute).

------
burger_moon
I think it's important to note this person has to remain anonymous just to
voice their concerns about the their employer

> This person, who has spoken with me on the condition that their name not be
> revealed for fear of professional retribution

This is not how an workplace environment should be. Don't one of Amazon's
leadership principals talk about being vocally self-critical?

Yet they drive such a fear mongering culture where unless you're making soft
complaints you have to be silent or anonymous for fear of being fired.

~~~
zdragnar
I think there's a difference between speaking up internally and bad-mouthing
your employer in public (especially to the press).

I can't think of any company that would let that slide.

~~~
burger_moon
You would consider this article bad mouthing amazon?

The way I interpret 'bad mouthing' is saying things which are false, or
misrepresenting what Amazon is does.

I don't think the author made any misrepresentations of what Amazon is doing
with their involvement but rather bringing to light that employees do not
agree with their policies, that to me anyways is in a different category than
bad mouthing.

------
jopsen
As a personal investor I hold a few Amazon stocks (yes, not much, but I have a
small bet on Amazon).

Nevertheless, I see a huge risk to doing this kind of business. Short term
there might be profit, but long term it hurts your brand with consumers and
erodes trust.

A consumer dependent company like Amazon should avoid getting into ethical
issues. Because it limits long term growth.

At least that's my two cents.

~~~
macspoofing
>but long term it hurts your brand with consumers and erodes trust

In crazy circles maybe. I'm not seeing any sort of backlash against the
military as Americans generally have a very positive view of it.

~~~
SauciestGNU
I think it's disingenuous to call anyone opposed to persistent surveillance
and the military "crazy". There are numerous reasons people would be opposed
to those institutions and practices. And the more abused those things are, the
more people will likely oppose them.

~~~
macspoofing
>I think it's disingenuous to call anyone opposed to persistent surveillance
and the military "crazy"

I didn't label people who are against 'persistent surveillance' as crazy. I
don't know why you attributed that to me. Though I will state that there is
nothing wrong with an American company providing services to the American
government. If you hate 'persistent surveillance' look to Congress, not
contractors.

To extend my point to the military, it is unreasonable to label an American
company providing services to the American military as intrinsically
unethical.

------
tracker1
I may have a slightly bent view on this... the technology exists, is being
created, and is getting commoditized. Why increase the cost to taxpayers?

As to increasing lethality, wouldn't this in effect be decreasing the risk of
collateral deaths?

The bigger issue to me is probably unsupervised police usage at a local level.
That said, the tech exists and will be used. I'd rather it were less costly.
We, as a nation (in the US) already spend far more than we should be on the
military. I'm in favor of most technology that reduces costs and mitigates
risks.

That's not to say that I approve of the use of drones on sovereign soil we are
not actively at war with (the country itself, not "terrorism"), without that
country's permission. I wouldn't want China, Russia, Mexico or Canada flying
armed drones over the U.S. and don't think the U.S. should be doing it either.
That doesn't mean I don't think drones should exist. Policy, use and
technology are not the same and shouldn't be conflated like this.

------
jcoffland
Amazon is in it for the money. Appearing to be socially just is part of the
marketing plan. Corporations are as much the problem as governments. But of
course most the people here work for corporations.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
HN is a forum for startup founders and entrepreneurs.

~~~
C1sc0cat
I thought it was for "hackers" not MBA's

~~~
krapp
It's owned by a Silicon Valley startup accelerator, so even if HN is for
"hackers" (for some arbitrary definition of the same) it will also never _not_
be for MBAs.

------
neom
If I understand correctly, Amazon employees want Amazon to police the police
with respect to ethics? Wouldn't lobbying government and educating the public
work better?

~~~
elicash
I only know about this issue because of these Amazon employees.

So I'd say they were QUITE effective at educating the public by taking this
stand. We spend half our waking lives at our workplace, and the places we work
are often tremendously powerful. The idea that you shouldn't take action as
employees seems like giving up a tremendous amount of opportunity at creating
change.

------
throw2016
This is where the free market system falls apart. It has no opinion on ethics,
only profits. Companies are put together to produce, market and sell
surveillance tech to schools, corporates, communities, the police and even
nation states.

Individual ethics are meaningless beyond signalling against a system.
Individual components may have ethical concerns but the system is incentivized
to grow and it has.

Imagine walking into a group of sales or engineering folks celebrating a new
deal or release at a restaurant and berating them on 'surveillance and
ethics'. That shows you the dissonance of your expectation and the disconnect
of ethical concerns from businesses. And the impotence of individual ethics in
a system.

The only thing that can counter this are explicit laws against this kind of
damaging behavior and rule of law. Individuals are not allowed to do whatever
gets them profit, they have to operate within ethical constraints, to advocate
businesses not operate in an ethical context and to leave everything to
markets is advocating lawlessness. And the system does respond in some cases
like in drones, 3d printing of guns. Those are not free for all. Surveillance
is a failure of regulation.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> This is where the free market system falls apart. It has no opinion on
> ethics, only profits.

"We won't sell this technology to anyone who wants to use it to oppress people
even though we could make a huge amount of money doing so" seems to suggest
otherwise.

~~~
insickness
That keepaway strategy doesn't work for guns. There's no reason it should
should work for other technologies.

~~~
Pfhreak
[Citation needed]

------
jedberg
This effort is wasted. If Amazon doesn’t sell it someone else will (most
likely on top of AWS).

If they actually want to see change, they should be asking Amazon to use their
clout to lobby the government for strict regulations around facial
recognition. Then all agencies would have the same rules _and_ you won’t just
have them going to another vendor.

------
CoryG89
I don't personally have a problem with Amazon selling tech to police or
militaries. I would, however have a problem working for Amazon while not
realizing that my work is being directly utilized by the military.

If I'm gonna sell out to the war machine, I want to at least make that
decision myself ahead of time.

------
rayvy
I really hate that 50% of this thread has ran off on a military-related
tangent. Could have been a good discussion about facial recognition, morality,
and authority, but instead, because one looney posted some "super-uber-pro-
military" comment, the first 50% of my scroll is related to that _one topic_.

Will post this in ASK HN another time, but HN _really_ needs some sort of drop
down mechanism where we can show/hide a top-level comment's thread at will
(mobile & desktop). Makes no sense the way this current setup is.

[edit]

Ruins the UX when I have to scroll _aaaallllllll_ the way down to get to the
top level comments. Not saying we should discourage constructive discourse by
_any_ means. Just saying we need to better organize how that discourse is
reflected, so as to make for a better UX.

~~~
yesenadam
You know about clicking on the [-] next to the offending top-level comment,
right? Seems it solves that problem.

------
writepub
Funny how activist employees don't trust governments and other authority
figures, but gladly violate the trust of the hand that feeds them by leaking
stories when they don't get their way at work. Happens at AWS, Google, MSFT,
...

AWS is an infrastructure company. AWS' employees suggesting service denial to
people with opposing political viewpoints is like asking AT&T to deny phone
service to someone based on their politics. Please, take an orientation course
on political tolerance, instead of making preposterous & unprofessional
demands at work.

No company can rely on AWS if they're at risk of service denial based on
politics. Today, AWS might be left leaning, but tomorrow things may change to
the other side. Politics is best left out of business

------
exabrial
Also please stop voting to fund these projects. Local and national budgets are
way bigger than they need to be as is to provide the basic necessities of
society and anything charitable is best handled independently; not through the
government.

------
kevin_b_er
> Selling this system runs counter to Amazon’s stated values.

This is exactly in line with Amazon's values and past practices.

> Bezos suggested we wait for society’s “immune response.”

Bezos wants to make as much as possible off this until its no good anymore.
Operating in the margin of what is acceptable is opportunity, to refashion his
famous quote.

I think the author is in some westcoastish bubble of thought that has obscured
a fresh view of how Amazon acts. Bezos wants to bring in more cash flow and
selling more is how it is done.

------
cyclingswitch
It's a little backwards. You're not actually making the military more lethal
by selling them facial recognition tech. You are making them more accurate.
Right now, an 18-25 year old looks at a (often) blurry video and tries to say
if something is a weapon. With visual recognition technology, you actually
decrease the false positives. Same with police. You're reducing the false
positives inherent with human intervention in an already established system.

~~~
Nasrudith
While ideally that may be the case machine learning is infamous for its false
positives even without malicious actors causing toy turtles to be seen as
rifles. Even if it has advanced enough to not see desert landscape photos as
nudity.

Relying on inaccurate information is more dangerous not less. Not to mention
the potential pretextual abuses - drug sniffing dogs are infamous for being
trained to be four legged probable cause and field drug tests are a sick joke
that makes a mockery of chemistry akin to declaring anything with a PH below 5
is an explosive because picric acid is an explosive.

------
jhabdas
This reminds me of those red light cameras. The only thing they protect is the
funds they generate giving out speeding tickets. What's worse is I also got in
a wreck once after one of the cameras lit up a dark intersection to take my
plates.

------
aikah
Purely a question.

What are significant examples of internet related technologies that were if
not invented, developed or had their development funded by the US military, if
any?

Weren't languages like Ada developed for and financed by the DOD?

------
pulse7
Such tools and technologies WILL be used - regardless if it's legal or
illegal. They will be used at least in HIDDEN ways by security agencies in -
at least - some places on the earth...

------
finnthehuman
>Amazon’s ‘Rekognition’ program shouldn’t be used as a tool for mass
surveillance

I agree with this, but it leaves the question: what else is there for it to
do?

------
effnorwood
It’s not for the police. It’s initially for the TSA.

------
bsenftner
Click bait journalism. Pointless article. Bad journalism tricking you for ad
dollars with nonsense.

I am a lead software scientist in the Facial Recognition industry. Amazon's
‘Rekognition’ service is a sad, expensive joke. No body takes that software
serious. It is poor quality. It is expensive. It is marketed to the consumer
public for Amazon's stock, not for actual serious FR use. It is not
appropriate for any serious FR use. It's a toy.

I'll say that again for those in the back: it's a TOY, expensive and hardly
works.

~~~
Pfhreak
You have a lot of experience in the industry, and are able to make your own
evaluations of a product based on (I'm guessing) years and years of daily
interaction with that domain.

Do you think police departmant purchasers are as well informed as you are?Able
to make the same thorough analysis?

What happens when a facial recognition product that you believe performs
poorly is used and everyone thinks it performs well? (Hey, we made all these
arrests based off this product, it's really working well for us!)

~~~
bsenftner
Police departments are not well informed at all; and they are the constant
targets of manipulative, fact-free marketing.

Thank gawd they can't just go out and purchase any security / surveillance
technology they fancy.

Typically a trial / vetting period is used to test a given system for accuracy
as well as ability to integrate with existing systems, plus the over all
expense of operating the system over time.

This is when Rekognition falls down, because the accuracy is too wide, the
system requires human operators to make up for the lack of accuracy. Then the
monthly is expensive to use it is high. Plus there is a perceptual disconnect
officers have with the FR system operators required to maintain Rekognition:
these operators more or less become FR specialists, with salaries to match,
but their actual moment to moment work is closer to a security guard, with
their technological knowledge only needed for moments at a time. Police
department Directors have a hard time justifying these new roles, in light of
the multiple new high expenses required to use Rekognition.

------
booblik
The police will get the tech from one company or another. The only question is
how much it is going to cost to taxpayers.

------
harryf
I guess Bezos sees this as a strategic play to leapfrog Facebook on knowing
who everyone is.

~~~
sudhirj
This is FUD - AWS, as opposed to Amazon the e-commerce company, has pretty
strict walls between itself and the data of its customers. In these cases the
data is owned by the police department and AWS or Amazon won’t be allowed to
use or profit from it. Unless there’s some kind of special agreement in
exchange for a discount, which I doubt very much.

------
Lich
I wonder if Amazon Go is used to improve Reckognition's computer vision
algorithms.

------
rl3
What happens when they combine this with image enhancement powered by deep
learning?

~~~
faceplanted
Legally, not much, machine learning image enhancement is essentially
probabilistically guessing the inbetween pixels of an image, if you use it for
actual work and not art you're just asking to have your evidence thrown out of
court and run into the same misrecognition problems humans face.

~~~
rl3
I agree it seems absurd on the face of it (forgive me), but with enhancement
techniques going mainstream elsewhere, I could see it happening with
surveillance applications. Sure, the false positive rate will go up, but it
might help generate legitimate matches that otherwise crack cases even if the
recognition footage itself can't be relied upon in an evidentiary capacity.

Speaking of, Pixel 3's new enhancement feature[0] is now mainstream. If these
end up mistaken for originals, it opens up an evidentiary Pandora's box. Then
again, much poorer quality image enhancement has been around forever now (e.g.
"digital zoom").

[0] [https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/see-better-and-further-
wit...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/see-better-and-further-with-super-
res.html?m=1)

------
mooseburger
> in the United States, a lack of public accountability already results in
> outsized impacts and over-policing of communities of color, immigrants, and
> people exercising their First Amendment rights.

... in the United States, a lack of public accountability already results in
outsized impacts and over-policing of [progressive ingroup], [progressive
ingroup], and [progressive ingroup].

> We follow in the steps of the Googlers who spoke out against the Maven
> contract and Microsoft employees who are speaking out against the JEDI
> contract. Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be
> profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. We will not
> silently build technology to oppress and kill people, whether in our country
> or in others.

Mentions the Maven contract but not Dragonfly, at least not directly.

The worst part is that I don't even disagree with the letter, but I doubt the
author has principles as much as he has tribal allegiances. I suspect he would
be all-in on this tech if it came with some sort of guarantee it would only be
used on "Nazis".

------
jothezero
A political piece of text (to not say crap)

------
exabrial
I would say appeal to the Constitution: facial recognition violates a person's
4th Amendment rights.

But alas, both liberal and conservatives have weakened the 1st Amendment to be
"only speech we agree with", the 2nd to "Only squirt guns", and the 5th/14th
doesn't apply to accusations from 38 years ago.

~~~
krapp
>But alas, both liberal and conservatives have weakened the 1st Amendment to
be "only speech we agree with", the 2nd to "Only squirt guns", and the
5th/14th doesn't apply to accusations from 38 years ago.

Meaningless hyperbole.

------
gaius
This technology is the very definition of dual-use. There’s fundamentally no
difference between a tool that can do “cat or not cat” and one for “terrorist
or not terrorist”. The only difference is that people using for the latter
probably don’t understand its failure modes and are taking its output very,
very seriously.

------
M_Bakhtiari
I wish these people wouldn't automatically assume everyone who reads their
articles are Americans or otherwise intimately familiar with US institutions.
What exactly is it that ICE does that is so bad?

~~~
forgottenpass
They're a country-wide law enforcement agency for immigration law (ICE:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

A big issue in our current politics is immigration policy, and there are
segments of our population that dislike the current law so strongly they
believe it should be go unenforced until the legislature writes an immigration
law that they do like.

A lot of the dislike towards ICE is pointing out the harsh reality of any law
enforcement agency ("putting people in cages", etc...), and holding that
against them in the context of policy they dislike.

Edit: I'm trying to state this plainly for an outsider without showing my hand
on our immigration policy. Even for a less-heated topic (e.g., obvious
parallels with federal marijuana laws, selective enforcement thereof, and oft-
abused LE powers both mundane and created specifically for the war on drugs)
I'd frame it the same way.

~~~
M_Bakhtiari
I see. Thanks for the explanation. That’s a cause I can get behind, it would
be handy for myself and my countrymen to be able to enter the US without a
visa. Abolishing the equivalent border enforcement agency of Iran, not so
much.

------
claydavisss
Eventually all the tech CEOs will reach the same conclusion: the company
cannot be run by mob rule.

------
yAnonymous
I'm decidedly against government surveillance, but it feels like our
government are deliberately inviting crime to further the needs and arguments
for complete surveillance.

Now that violent attacks against the police and emergency services, stabbings,
rape, murder and generally a complete refusal to accept the law become more
common, I'm at the point where unsolved crime bothers me more than protecting
people's privacy, so it evidently works.

It's ironic how the people who want open borders are creating their own
dystopian future, but are too short-sighted to realize how they're being used.

In the end, the borders will be closed and we'll end up with not only a lot
more problems and surveillance that none of us wanted, but the net result of
people being better/worse off will also be negative.

~~~
planb
> Now that violent attacks against the police and emergency services,
> stabbings, rape, murder and generally a complete refusal to accept the law
> become more common [...]

Citation needed.

~~~
yAnonymous
Which one do you want citations for?

These are all publicly accepted problems by now, so I'm not going to do a
writeup for all of them just because one person asks for it.

Your downvotes change nothing, by the way. This is not a sinister outlook,
it's already happening right now and I'm provably right.

We get more police and they get more permissions, including broader
surveillance, and they're looking to adopt tasers like in the U.S. The last
few years did this and hardly anyone is arguing it anymore.

The surveillance state you don't want is coming, and you are the reason.

~~~
bun_at_work
OP is asking for citations regarding the rise in crime you referred to.
Understand - crime rates have been going down historically. Things are not
getting worse, they are getting better. While that doesn't mean everything is
OK yes, crime is going down. Therefore, your argument for increased
surveillance because of increased crime is wrong.

In short, crime is getting better, not worse, and your argument for increased
surveillance is the one given to you by those who already want increased
surveillance.

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

[https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2017/dec...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2017/dec/04/jeff-sessions/violent-crime-some-still-well-
historical-highs/)

[https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/homicide-
rate-1950-2014](https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/homicide-rate-1950-2014)

~~~
yAnonymous
I never said that crime as a whole increased, but the violence reached a whole
different quality. You (deliberately?) misinterpret comments you don't agree
with.

Stabbing people -which was never a big issue- has become very common, for
example. Kicking people when they're down and out etc. Hurting people for fun.
Someone I knew was stabbed and murdered for no reason at all. Not even a
robbery. Just killed.

Even in fights, there used to be some unwritten rules of respect and common
sense, but they're gone. The people who are responsible for most of these
violent crimes brought this crap with them.

It's gotten to the point where knives are forbidden in certain areas and knife
bans are under consideration.

I'm talking about Germany, by the way. How about you are a bit more open-
minded and stop assuming other users' nationalities?

~~~
Pfhreak
>I never said that crime as a whole increased,

> generally a complete refusal to accept the law become more common

I definitely read your original comment as suggesting that, in general,
lawlessness was on the rise.

------
nodesocket
Until you are a victim of a crime and facial recognition helps to find the
perpetrator and you suddenly change your mind.

> The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that
> powers much of ICE’s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web
> Services

And... I can tell this post is going to be west-coast extreme liberal biased.

~~~
hueving
>Until you are a victim of a crime and facial recognition helps to find the
perpetrator and you suddenly change your mind.

Appeal to fear. Why is it you think that justification doesn't work for
illegal search and seizure?

~~~
sureaboutthis
In the same way, not wanting to let the police have this technology due to
concern of surveillance is appealing to fear.

People forget that, in the USA at least, the police investigate and pursue
crimes that have already been committed. They do NOT pursue crimes that have
not happened and do NOT scan for people who have not committed a crime. As you
all should know, license plate scanners, for example, are looking for specific
plates of people who have already committed crimes.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Best thing to do about it is limit the reach of your message with a paywall.

------
mantas
Yeah, better waste public $$$ by forcing government to create in-house
solution

~~~
v_lisivka
But, it will be open-source, which is good.

------
product50
Won't the tech be built regardless of Amazon? It is either SV companies help
with it and reduce costs or else blood-suckers such as IBM will come in with
their contracts and low tech but costly solutions..

~~~
hueving
Make up your mind, will the solution work if IBM makes it? If so, then it's
not really low tech. If not, then Amazon staying out of the game did exactly
the right thing because all of the capable people abstained.

~~~
product50
I mean, it can work but not perfectly. For face recognition tech, accuracy
matters and my hypothesis is that Amazon could do better vs. IBM. And Amazon
doing it could be much cheaper and better. The taxpayers money will be spent
regardless and in one case it would be more efficient.

~~~
hueving
If it's inaccurate it's a failure or it won't be widely deployed. It's idiotic
to make a perfect surveillance machine using the excuse that, if you don't,
someone will make a crappy one.

This is about it being an unethical thing to make, not wasting taxpayer money.
The optimal outcome is that it is a complete failure and the government learns
not to do it again.

------
User23
"If we want to lead, we need to make a choice between people and profits."

As an AMZN shareholder, I pick profits. Well, growth actually.

~~~
dwb
How do you justify this ethically?

~~~
abc-xyz
If given the choice between (1) increasing their personal wealth by 1% + tech
that will violate billions of people's rights and result in the death of
millions, or (2) no increase in wealth + no surveillance tech, then I'm afraid
a disheartening large percentage will pick option 1 and find a naive and
shortsighted way to justify their decision.

~~~
tokyodude
Fortunately that's not the choice being presented. The choice being presented
is developing a tech that has just as many positive uses as negative just like
many things. Cars can carry people or weapons. Knives can be used to cut food
or stab people. Facial recognition can be used to stop crime or harass.

