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Re:Amazon Execs Addressed Concerns About Rekognition/ICE at ... by hcg on Thursday November 08, 2018 @07:23PM (#18411361)
First off, I disagree. Any scientist should be aware of what they are building.

Second, they actively market to law enforcement.

Re:Amazon Execs Addressed Concerns About Rekognition/ICE at ... by nlarew on Thursday November 08, 2018 @07:31PM (#18411414)
Fair enough if you disagree!

Regarding actively marketing to law enforcement, is there any law enforcement use case that is not unethical? For example, if a facial recognition system is set up to only alert on faces that are listed in the Interpol Most Wanted list is that system unethical?

It seems that there's a moral line between identifying faces and profiling/targeting people arbitrarily. It's impossible for Amazon to know how any given customer will use its products before they actually use them so the only reasonable ethical expectation is for Amazon to outline improper uses in its TOS and go from there.

EDIT: What if the above facial recognition system doesn't use automated software but instead relies on humans reviewing video feeds and trying to determine if a face matches one on the list? Does that change anything?

Re:Amazon Execs Addressed Concerns About Rekognition/ICE at ... by jryle70 on Thursday November 08, 2018 @09:02PM (#18411844)
So marketing to law enforcement is unethical? What about all the database vendors that sell to law enforcement -- Oracle, Microsoft, or Postgres? Can't you see the nuances in that?

Law enforcement is the tool designed by the society to maintain the law. That inevitably lead to conflict with civil rights and abuse of power. A healthy democracy needs to protect human rights while giving the law enforcement the tools they need to effectively do their job. Constitution, legal framework, and freedom of expression are essential.

Re:Amazon Execs Addressed Concerns About Rekognition/ICE at ... by hcg on Monday November 12, 2018 @04:30PM (#18436040)
> So marketing to law enforcement is unethical?

Yes. The police state is unethical and doing anything to further it is unethical.