Amazon Employee: We Shouldn’t Sell Facial Recognition Tech to Police

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

&gt; 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.<p>Ok, nod, nod...<p>&gt; The letter also contained demands to kick Palantir, the software firm that powers much of ICE&#x27;s deportation and tracking program, off Amazon Web Services and to institute employee oversight for ethical decisions.<p>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&#x27; 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&#x27;s going on with its customers for this to be any more than virtue signalling.<p>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?

&gt; Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military.<p>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.<p>Especially when the author follows up with this sentence:<p>&gt; We will not silently build technology to oppress and kill people, whether in our country or in others.<p>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.<p>These two sentences are fundamentally pacifist, which is okay if the author claimed that mantle. But don&#x27;t dress it up with a fake unifying clause like &quot;regardless of our views on the military&quot;.

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.

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.<p>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.<p>at the end of the day if amazon doesn&#x27;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.<p>Amazon can only hold back the tide for so long.

Don&#x27;t focus on profit, say the employee who focus on his pay.<p>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&#x27;t want to hear &quot;sorry, no rise for you, but you should be happy, we didn&#x27;t sell our product to the police&quot;.<p>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&#x27;s why they are still there.<p>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.

When it comes to enabling domestic surveillance there is too much focus on Amazon&#x2F;Google&#x2F;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.<p>This is like blaming whatever company makes M113s when they wind up in the hands of local police.<p>Now, I don&#x27;t consider Amazon or the bureaucrats who are rubber stamping the paperwork for APCs to be blameless but they&#x27;re definitely not the root cause. The fact that there is a domestic market for this crap it the root of problem.<p>This is also something that voters have a lot of power to chance because it&#x27;s a city&#x2F;town level issue and while it&#x27;s getting cheaper all the time implementing a surveillance state still is still expensive so there&#x27;s an avenue to drum up bipartisan support for not doing it.

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&#x2F;CV) but can be used extremely unethically at the same time. It&#x27;s like a razor sharp double-sided blade.

I applaud the authors of this letter. It&#x27;s an open question whether an open, democratic society can exist in the world of computational media. If it can, we&#x27;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&#x27;s left of the old paradigm. I would love to see more folks in tech running for office.

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

&gt;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<p>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.<p>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.

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

I think it&#x27;s important to note this person has to remain anonymous just to voice their concerns about the their employer<p>&gt; This person, who has spoken with me on the condition that their name not be revealed for fear of professional retribution<p>This is not how an workplace environment should be. Don&#x27;t one of Amazon&#x27;s leadership principals talk about being vocally self-critical?<p>Yet they drive such a fear mongering culture where unless you&#x27;re making soft complaints you have to be silent or anonymous for fear of being fired.

As a personal investor I hold a few Amazon stocks (yes, not much, but I have a small bet on Amazon).<p>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.<p>A consumer dependent company like Amazon should avoid getting into ethical issues. Because it limits long term growth.<p>At least that&#x27;s my two cents.

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?<p>As to increasing lethality, wouldn&#x27;t this in effect be decreasing the risk of collateral deaths?<p>The bigger issue to me is probably unsupervised police usage at a local level. That said, the tech exists and will be used. I&#x27;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&#x27;m in favor of most technology that reduces costs and mitigates risks.<p>That&#x27;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 &quot;terrorism&quot;), without that country&#x27;s permission. I wouldn&#x27;t want China, Russia, Mexico or Canada flying armed drones over the U.S. and don&#x27;t think the U.S. should be doing it either. That doesn&#x27;t mean I don&#x27;t think drones should exist. Policy, use and technology are not the same and shouldn&#x27;t be conflated like this.

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.

If I understand correctly, Amazon employees want Amazon to police the police with respect to ethics? Wouldn&#x27;t lobbying government and educating the public work better?

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.<p>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.<p>Imagine walking into a group of sales or engineering folks celebrating a new deal or release at a restaurant and berating them on &#x27;surveillance and ethics&#x27;. 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.<p>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.

This effort is wasted. If Amazon doesn’t sell it someone else will (most likely on top of AWS).<p>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 <i>and</i> you won’t just have them going to another vendor.

I don&#x27;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.<p>If I&#x27;m gonna sell out to the war machine, I want to at least make that decision myself ahead of time.

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 &quot;super-uber-pro-military&quot; comment, the first 50% of my scroll is related to that <i>one topic</i>.<p>Will post this in ASK HN another time, but HN <i>really</i> needs some sort of drop down mechanism where we can show&#x2F;hide a top-level comment&#x27;s thread at will (mobile &amp; desktop). Makes no sense the way this current setup is.<p>[edit]<p>Ruins the UX when I have to scroll <i>aaaallllllll</i> the way down to get to the top level comments. Not saying we should discourage constructive discourse by <i>any</i> means. Just saying we need to better organize how that discourse is reflected, so as to make for a better UX.

Funny how activist employees don&#x27;t trust governments and other authority figures, but gladly violate the trust of the hand that feeds them by leaking stories when they don&#x27;t get their way at work. Happens at AWS, Google, MSFT, ...<p>AWS is an infrastructure company. AWS&#x27; employees suggesting service denial to people with opposing political viewpoints is like asking AT&amp;T to deny phone service to someone based on their politics. Please, take an orientation course on political tolerance, instead of making preposterous &amp; unprofessional demands at work.<p>No company can rely on AWS if they&#x27;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

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.

&gt; Selling this system runs counter to Amazon’s stated values.<p>This is exactly in line with Amazon&#x27;s values and past practices.<p>&gt; Bezos suggested we wait for society’s “immune response.”<p>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.<p>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.

It&#x27;s a little backwards. You&#x27;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&#x27;re reducing the false positives inherent with human intervention in an already established system.

This reminds me of those red light cameras. The only thing they protect is the funds they generate giving out speeding tickets. What&#x27;s worse is I also got in a wreck once after one of the cameras lit up a dark intersection to take my plates.

Purely a question.<p>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?<p>Weren&#x27;t languages like Ada developed for and financed by the DOD?

Such tools and technologies WILL be used - regardless if it&#x27;s legal or illegal. They will be used at least in HIDDEN ways by security agencies in - at least - some places on the earth...

&gt;Amazon’s ‘Rekognition’ program shouldn’t be used as a tool for mass surveillance<p>I agree with this, but it leaves the question: what else is there for it to do?

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

Click bait journalism. Pointless article. Bad journalism tricking you for ad dollars with nonsense.<p>I am a lead software scientist in the Facial Recognition industry. Amazon&#x27;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&#x27;s stock, not for actual serious FR use. It is not appropriate for any serious FR use. It&#x27;s a toy.<p>I&#x27;ll say that again for those in the back: it&#x27;s a TOY, expensive and hardly works.

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

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

I wonder if Amazon Go is used to improve Reckognition&#x27;s computer vision algorithms.

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

&gt; 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.<p>... 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].<p>&gt; 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.<p>Mentions the Maven contract but not Dragonfly, at least not directly.<p>The worst part is that I don&#x27;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 &quot;Nazis&quot;.

A political piece of text (to not say crap)

I would say appeal to the Constitution: facial recognition violates a person&#x27;s 4th Amendment rights.<p>But alas, both liberal and conservatives have weakened the 1st Amendment to be &quot;only speech we agree with&quot;, the 2nd to &quot;Only squirt guns&quot;, and the 5th&#x2F;14th doesn&#x27;t apply to accusations from 38 years ago.

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.

I wish these people wouldn&#x27;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?

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

I&#x27;m decidedly against government surveillance, but it feels like our government are deliberately inviting crime to further the needs and arguments for complete surveillance.<p>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&#x27;m at the point where unsolved crime bothers me more than protecting people&#x27;s privacy, so it evidently works.<p>It&#x27;s ironic how the people who want open borders are creating their own dystopian future, but are too short-sighted to realize how they&#x27;re being used.<p>In the end, the borders will be closed and we&#x27;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&#x2F;worse off will also be negative.

Until you are a victim of a crime and facial recognition helps to find the perpetrator and you suddenly change your mind.<p>&gt; 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<p>And... I can tell this post is going to be west-coast extreme liberal biased.

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

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

Won&#x27;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..

&quot;If we want to lead, we need to make a choice between people and profits.&quot;<p>As an AMZN shareholder, I pick profits. Well, growth actually.