Amazon Is Now A 'Cheap Mass Surveillance' Dealer -- It's Selling Facial Recognition To US Cops

Amazon Is Now A 'Cheap Mass Surveillance' Dealer -- It's Selling Facial Recognition To US Cops
May 22, 2018
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...-sells-facial-recognition-to-american-police/

 

It's coming, so why begrudge Amazon?

 

MS Azure also has a cloud-based face-recognition service, which can be driven programmatically. I think they're all at it, and who cares about false positives?

 

Amazon defends providing police facial recognition tech
May 23, 2018
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44220037

 

It's all over spare me the outrage. The privacy cause is lost.

Let's work on helping the homeless, hungry & sick etc.

 

I'm not much into outrage. What's the point?

I do agree that "[t]he privacy cause is lost" -- for most people. That's the down side of Internet connectivity.

However, compartmentalization is possible. With some dedication to good OPSEC. Basically, you need skills of criminals and spies.

But so it goes. And it's a great hobby

Those are all worthy efforts.

Me, I focus on helping people reclaim some privacy.

 

"ACLU is delivering over 150,000 signatures to Amazon in petition against its government surveillance programs

The American Civil Liberties Union is delivering a petition to Amazon's Seattle headquarters today with more than 150,000 signatures. They are requesting for Amazon to stop providing the government with facial recognition technology..."

https://mashable.com/2018/06/18/aclu-amazon-surveillance-rekognition/?utm_campaign=Feed:+Mashable+(Mashable)&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed#1aduJzsW7Pq3

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-t...150000-people-tell-amazon-stop-selling-facial

 

I have one golden rule that I live by, and that is, I don't ever believe the government will make the world a better place for most people. The only thing the government is after is more control, power and profit over its citizens, and what better way to achieve that than using facial recognition to better monitor and control people for their own selfish control-freak, power-hungry, profit motive?

 

Well, some governments are much better than others. But, for the most part, they do serve the wealthy. Or themselves, which can be better or worse, depending on who's in control. A few extremely authoritarian ones do seem to serve the best interests of their citizens. As they define those interests, at least. Not that I'd want to live there.

 

I think it's businesses that want to spy on customers and profit from such, with governments riding along.

 

Orlando stops using Amazon's controversial facial recognition tech
But the Florida police department might re-up for the Rekognition program in the future.
June 25, 2018
https://www.cnet.com/news/orlando-stops-using-amazons-controversial-facial-recognition-tech/

 

"Amazon, Orlando Police Department reinitiate facial recognition pilot

The Orlando Police Department plans to restart tests of controversial facial recognition software made by Amazon after complaints about privacy prompted the department to halt the program last month..."

https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-and-orlando-police-department-reinitiate-facial-recognition-pilot/

 

Indeed. And some lawmakers have mugshots

 

Lawmakers Can't Ignore Facial Recognition's Bias Anymore
July 26, 2018
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-facial-recognition-congress-bias-law-enforcement/

 

Woah. One of them does have a mug shot And it's the angry bald white guy

 

Axon CEO Says Face Recognition Isn't Accurate Enough for Body Cams Yet
August 08, 2018
https://gizmodo.com/axon-ceo-says-face-recognition-isnt-accurate-enough-for-1828205723

 

So Rick Smith's just biding his time, recognising that they're going to get too much kickback at the moment, not that what's being proposed is unacceptable given the current policy and privacy debacle around face-recognition.

AFR has always been a disaster from the false-positives & false-negatives perspective - that's the crux of the matter, coupled with what public and private spaces now mean, what is a reasonable expectation of privacy and so on. Commercial and government entities are now engaged in their standard land-grab against the commons. 'Twas ever thus.

I'd also like to see some kind of creative commons type copyright on images which prohibited them from having computer based scene and face recognition being performed on them either commercially or without a warrant. Is anyone aware of such an initiative?

 

Sounds like a darned good idea but all the best hoping this will happen.

 

I'll propose the idea to CC to see what happens.

Of course, as copyright holder yourself, there's nothing to stop you asserting your own terms (you can apply whatever you like), which are potentially backed by powerful (read draconian) copyright laws. But only if you can afford the lawyers.....

 

Amazon worker pushes Bezos to stop selling facial recognition tech to law enforcement
October 16, 2018
https://thehill.com/policy/technolo...o-stop-selling-facial-recognition-tech-to-law

 

Amazon Execs Addressed Concerns About Amazon Rekognition And ICE At An All-Hands Meeting
November 8, 2018
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/amazon-all-hands-facial-rekognition-ice

 

Dems demand info on law enforcement's use of Amazon facial recognition tool
November 29, 2018
https://thehill.com/policy/technolo...enforcements-use-of-amazon-facial-recognition

Letter (PDF): https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Bicameral%20Amazon%20Recognition.pdf