Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See Surveillance Risk

Re:Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See S... by zaksoup on Tuesday May 22, 2018 @01:55PM (#17127968)

This is such a fascinating and interesting question. I highly recommend reading the book 'Automating Inequality'[0] if you haven't already. My initial reaction to this question was 'I certainly would prefer groups of humans making collective decisions over an opaque, proprietary, algorithm'. But then I also think back to the latest internet firestorm of the woman calling the police on black barbecuers over charcoal (this happened a block from my house). Can we actually trust people en masse to make collaborative decisions that generally avoid bias? Definitely not.

I think your comment may have changed my mind about the utility, objectivity, and overall value of amber alerts...

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Automating-Inequality-High-Tech-Profi...

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Re:Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See S... by eanzenberg on Tuesday May 22, 2018 @03:17PM (#17128616)

This is a case of "system worked as intended." Humans are fairly audit-able, can be seen, and public discourse can have its moment. Imagine if instead one of the thousands of street-cams was used to phone in the call to police. There would be no public discourse because of the invisibility of the actions.

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Re:Amazon Pushes Facial Recognition to Police, Critics See S... by steveeq1 on Tuesday May 22, 2018 @08:47PM (#17130685)

Wait, I don't get it. Someone was using charcoal as opposed to, say, wood? So what? Is that a fire hazard or something?

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