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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

I agree with Andy. It's not up to the company to protect civil rights through limiting the use of their product -- that's the job of the government. If Amazon stopped allowing law enforcement to use their products, someone else would literally just resell their products, because there is no way you can enforce every use, and you've just kicked the can down the road.

If Amazon really wanted to take a stand on this, they would use their massive size and lobbying power to lobby the government to put in new rules and laws about the use of facial recognition technology.

Not only would that help everyone at once, but it would also protect their profit margins because then every company has to play by the same rules, thus allowing them to justify the expense to their shareholders. It's a win all around.

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It's the responsibility of all of us to protect civil rights.

Like I said in my post, I think they should, but not through banning use of their product. They should be protecting civil rights through lobbying.

So you think they should protect civil rights through lobbying while simultaneously profiting off of the erosion of civil rights? What about leading by example?

Telling Amazon to lead by example is about as fair as telling Warren Buffet to "just pay more taxes then" when he complains that rich people don't pay enough taxes. It doesn't work when only one player does it. That's why Amazon should lobby, and that's why Buffet spends his time lobbying while simultaneously employing accountants to reduce his tax bill.

Why is the argument that they must profit off it while legal while also lobbying against it? Why can't they lobby against it and not profit from the erosion of our civil rights?

Large corporations have a Board of Directors composed of people voted into the position by shareholders. This means that large corporations need for the most part to do what shareholders want, or else they will be voted out.

There's also a matter of business competition. If Amazon stops worrying about profits, leverage, and expansion, that leaves areas that competitors can move in _within their domain_. This is why it seems all the big organizations behave sociopathicly: it's required to be on top.

Laws are designed to create limits on corporations to explicitly express how big businesses can behave, and it's not the businesses fault that those laws haven't been keeping up with the times.

Kant would like a word with you about moral imperatives.

If you think something is unethical, then facilitating it for a profit is also unethical. If you don't think it's unethical, fine, but you don't get to have it both ways.

I don't think using facial recognition is inherently unethical. I think what you do with it may be unethical. That's why government regulations would be much more effective here.

What about the civil rights of American citizens who don't want their votes and social services diluted by illegal immigrants unlawfully entering into the country?

No, illegal immigrants voting directly is not what I mean. But their children vote.

Just so happens the fastest demographic growth especially in the lower border states is the same as those which are immigrating illegally. They vote 70% for liberal policies and politicians. Is this fair to American citizens who may ideologically oppose these voters but can't illegally import their own votes to keep pace?

Are you suggesting that it’s not fair for individuals to vote who have a constitutional right to vote?

Instead of attacking the constitution I’d suggest critiquing the parties (and their policies) in power.

Why do you want to cite the legality of 2nd generation voters voting, but not cit the illegality of their parents coming here?

It's not fair to embrace law breaking when the consequences disenfranchise 1 party, 1 ideology, along w/ the pressure it applies to wages and social services demands.

I'm quite simply stating, it is unfair to turn your back on law breaking that may benefit some people (and of course certainly benefits the immigrant) while harming others, who happen to be citizens the law is designed to protect.

Can you articulate to me why you think we even have a law against illegal immigration, before you dismiss my point of view out of hand?

> it is unfair to turn your back on law breaking that may benefit some people (and of course certainly benefits the immigrant) while harming others

Who exactly is harmed by someone coming to this country? They don't qualify for any benefits paid for by tax dollars. They do however pay taxes. So in fact they are a net positive to anyone who is already here.

I'm curious how you think they harm a citizen just by being here.

Taxes and cost/benefit aside, do you believe there should be no borders?

I believe we should have borders, but I think we should let anyone in who wants to come in, once they've gone through a criminal background check.

In other words, same policies as we have now, but no quotas on any type of visa.

You know, the way it was for the first 150 years of this country.

You're in favor of potentially billions of people going to the US on visas?

Do you support the same policies for other countries, like Israel for example?

Your comments that there have never been visa limits before, and that illegals are a net benefit are arguable at best.

Well before 1882, the United States had a completely open border. Anyone could enter at any time. There were some rules in place to expel certain people, but anyone could come. And the first quota was the Chinese exclusion act of 1882, born out of pure racism of the Chinese.

Ellis island opened in 1891. At that time they only excluded the sick and known criminals.

It wasn’t until 1921 that general quotas were put in place.

So you’re right it wasn’t 150 years, it was only 145. If you don’t count the 150 years before that when we were a British colony with open borders.

And billions would not come to the US. The poorest person in the US is still in the top 15% worldwide. So unless you’re one of the 1 billion in that group you probably aren’t coming here. And of those one billion, 400 million already live here and many of the rest live in Europe and have it better there than here. So no I’m not worried about it. They would still need a job or they would t survive long.

Israel is a special case, but yeah I think they should have secure borders with no quota too.

The hundreds of thousands of visa overstays translates to potentially unlimited migration under your idea.

This is not 1882 anymore.

The point you made above was that the illegal immigrants are "diluting your vote":

> What about the civil rights of American citizens who don't want their votes and social services diluted by illegal immigrants

This is a misrepresentation of the facts. Yes its true that these children would not have been American if their parents hadn't immigrated to America. However, they _were_ born in America and the immigration status of their parents has no legal baring on their citizenship or right to vote. They have as much of a legal right to vote as any other American.

The enforcement (or non enforcement against illegal immigration), and the presence of (or lack of) a strong border... And additionally just a larger proportion of legal immigration from 1 area since 1965 immigration act, have had massive effect upon demographic change.

I know they were born here. Despite some controversy over birthright citizenship, I get that they are legal. Not in dispute here. Where is the misrepresentation that if we had less Hispanic illegal immigrants we'd have less Hispanic population and voters?

California was long a red state. It also had about 90% white voters for a long time. As it has become majority minority, it has gone strongly blue. Look at demographic breakdown of issues and elections and the reason is obvious.

A conservative should be ok with this?

> It's not up to the company to protect civil rights through limiting the use of their product -- that's the job of the government.

People and companies have a responsibility to behave ethically, whether the law specifies that or not.

Is there anything inherently unethical about facial recognition technology or does the concern lie in the potential for misuse and profiling by law enforcement?

AFAIK Rekognition just takes in a face and spits out an ID that you can use to identify an already known face. This doesn't seem inherently bad to me. Any misuse or profiling in this case is designed, managed, and implemented by law enforcement and the moral responsibility lies with those who create the policy, not a tool that they use to enforce it.

There's nothing inherently unethical (read: necessarily harmful) about building and selling facial recognition technology.

Nor is there anything inherently unethical (read: necessarily harmful) about manufacturing and selling opiates, narcotics, bombs, or guns.

The issue comes down to where along the product lifecycle you decide to end or limit the responsibility for how the product you build and design is used. And the mental calculations you do to weigh the positives/negatives of the technology you create and sell.

Obviously a manufacturer of bombs knows their product is going to be used to kill. If your code of ethics dictates that murder is bad, the calculation becomes - how "involved/complicit" am I in murder if I build the tools to murder, but don't use the tools myself. If we don't kill the bad guys, they might kill us. And hey, everyone in this society that pays taxes to fund these military and defense programs is complicit. I'm just doing what society needs to protect itself.

With facial recognition technology, if your code of ethics dictates that potential invasion of privacy/government tracking is bad, you would do a similar calculation. These people tracked are already in a database of "bad people" (aren't they? am I and my family in a database? do I have anything to hide?) - and society dictates we need this for our own protection, so what's the problem? If I make enough money selling these systems, I can buy my way to privacy, isn't that the way it should be?

Different people will come to different conclusions...there's no cut and dry answer, and infinite justifications for producing and selling any powerful technology/tool.

The spirit of my reply is essentially that you can't wait for the government to tell you what is or isn't ethical by enacting laws and regulations. A firm needs to be able to think for itself what kind of company it wants to be, not just blindly maximize shareholder value to the greatest extent the law will allow.

What is or isn't acceptable use of facial recognition tech is not an easy question to answer; I don't have an answer. Those making and using it have a duty to give it serious thought and adjust their actions accordingly.

First off, I disagree. Any scientist should be aware of what they are building.

Second, they actively market to law enforcement.

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?

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.

> So marketing to law enforcement is unethical?

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

> People and companies have a responsibility to behave ethically, whether the law specifies that or not.

You are paying the salaries of the people you claim are acting unethically. That seems like more direct involvement than what amazon is doing.

Well now that's the real problem, they don't. They will face no real consequences for this. In fact they will probably fight hard to ensure they can keep making money, no matter the problems, right up until the day their own math says they need to flip the script.

Topf and Sons made ovens, it was the government that decided what to do with them.

Amazon deserves no cover on this: when the buyer uses your products for evil and you know this it is evil to continue to sell them. If they want to stand up at an all hands and make the argument that what ICE is doing isn't evil fine, that's their privilege, but they can't just wave their hands and say its not their problem. And if they did try to make that argument I'll bet a good portion of those 500,000 employees would be disgusted.

What about when one of your employees does something unethical and you continue to pay his salary, or have you gone on a tax strike?

> It's not up to the company to protect civil rights through limiting the use of their product -- that's the job of the government.

...and the employees, and the members of the board, and shareholders.

Regulatory capture of facial recognition technology might be a successful tactic - it certainly worked in Oracle's favor with government certified databases.

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