Shareholder Efforts To Curb Amazon Facial Recognition Tech Fall Short (cnet.com) 45
Two Amazon shareholder proposals about the company's controversial facial recognition technology failed to pass Wednesday, following a concerted push by civil rights groups and activist investors. From a report: One proposal would have banned Amazon from selling its Rekognition technology to government agencies unless it first determines the software doesn't infringe on civil liberties. The other proposal called for an independent study of the potential privacy and human rights violations caused by Rekognition. Both proposals were presented at Amazon's annual shareholder meeting in Seattle on Wednesday. The company said it isn't disclosing the vote tallies until this Friday.
"The fact that there needed to be a vote on this is an embarrassment for Amazon's leadership team. It demonstrates shareholders do not have confidence that company executives are properly understanding or addressing the civil and human rights impacts of its role in facilitating pervasive government surveillance," Shankar Narayan, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington's Technology and Liberty Project director, said in a statement. "While we have yet to see the exact breakdown of the vote, this shareholder intervention should serve as a wake-up call for the company to reckon with the real harms of face surveillance and to change course." Both proposals, which were non-binding, were long shots to pass, since Amazon's board said it was against the proposals. Major shareholders typically follow such positions to show support for the board. Also, CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon's board chairman, is the company's biggest shareholder, controlling about 16% of its stock, and wasn't expected to vote for either proposal.
"The fact that there needed to be a vote on this is an embarrassment for Amazon's leadership team. It demonstrates shareholders do not have confidence that company executives are properly understanding or addressing the civil and human rights impacts of its role in facilitating pervasive government surveillance," Shankar Narayan, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington's Technology and Liberty Project director, said in a statement. "While we have yet to see the exact breakdown of the vote, this shareholder intervention should serve as a wake-up call for the company to reckon with the real harms of face surveillance and to change course." Both proposals, which were non-binding, were long shots to pass, since Amazon's board said it was against the proposals. Major shareholders typically follow such positions to show support for the board. Also, CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon's board chairman, is the company's biggest shareholder, controlling about 16% of its stock, and wasn't expected to vote for either proposal.
Morality of the Rich (Score:1)
Profit is morality. As long as you are making money, nothing else matters.
Re: (Score:1)
I give you the Coal Billionaires busy undercutting all long term planning.
Retort of the downtrodden (Score:1)
Profit is morality. As long as you are making money, nothing else matters.
Eat the rich.
Seriously though, I don't advocate for any kind of violence for anyone. However, there's finite tolerance in every society for rapacious excess if history is any kind of indicator. While it is often fun to say that diversion is a panacea for the public's discontent, that only goes so far. The rich are definitely enjoying a relative calm in the animosity from the public, but I think it foolhardy if anyone thinks that your "Morality of the Rich" is indefinite. Absolutely true though on smalle
Re: Retort of the downtrodden (Score:2)
Re: Retort of the downtrodden (Score:2)
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Thing is...what are the poor actually seeing as a pain or injustice from the rich?
I mean, if you were to ask a LOT of the 'poor', to name exactly what "Moraitly of the Rich" effects or actions is doing to directly harm them or ke
Rejoinder of the rich. (Score:1)
Eat the poor.
Seriously though, I don't advocate for any kind of violence for anyone. However, the poor commonly do get violent, thus requiring a well-equipped police force and militia to keep them under control. Fortunately, America has the best-in-the-world of both, thanks to all the tax money we spend on both.
In addition, the in-progress blanket legalization of marijuana will help, since it is trivially easy to grow and is supremely effective in keeping the poor pacified. Honestly, I don't know why we
The horse is out of the barn (Score:5, Insightful)
Get used to it or start developing real facial recognition countermeasures.
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you can't stop some nerd from making his own in the basement
Absolutely true there. However, the stopping I think isn't the goal. The slowing is. A company like Amazon has an incredible amount of wealth to toss at the R&D, whereas the person in the basement only has their personal time to give to R&D. The slow march of progress forward is, as you indicated, unstoppable. However, it's current speed is subject to change. That doesn't change the getting used to it part, but it definitely gives folks enough time adjust society/government to either find some
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Facial recognition techniques have been out for years and steadily improving. You can't "stop" technology since you can't stop some nerd from making his own in the basement.
Get used to it or start developing real facial recognition countermeasures.
There's a very old saying: "It's gonna steam engine, come steam engine time". But people fail to learn from history.
Trying to stop technology is quite silly. Focus instead on ensuring the government respects your rights. We seem to have to fight this fight constantly these days, with law enforcement always taking the stance of "well, there's no law specifically stopping us from using this technology invented last year, so it's fair game".
Not sure what we can do about that abuse, but there must be somethi
CYBERPUNK 2019! (Score:2)
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Imagine a future world where anybody and everybody can be labeled a criminal. Already today it's said that you can't go through a whole day without breaking some law. Laws are selectively enforced depending on who is in power at the moment. You can live in your future hell. Most of us want no part of it. I really hope you were trying to be funny or sarcastic.
The "IMHO" guy really is putting up some winners today.
Wear a Bezos mask (Score:2)
Solved.
And walk with a limp after you change clothes in a room without cameras, while switching to your burner phone.
I like to use ones I pick up in Mexico.
Re: (Score:2)
Solved.
And walk with a limp after you change clothes in a room without cameras, while switching to your burner phone.
I like to use ones I pick up in Mexico.
It's all fun and games when the DEA arrests you and then has to let you go, but the fun stops when you fool the cartel; and it doesn't really matter if they think you're the competition, or they think you missed your pickup/dropoff.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Facial recognition will be a key tool for law enforcement within a generation.
I doubt they'll actually get the votes to ban facials. All talk.
Virtue signaling of the highest order (Score:1)
Since when do Amazon's shareholders care about human rights?
China has a terrible record of human rights violations - yet Amazon has no trouble whatsoever profiting from their relationship with China.
Amazon's shareholders are virtue signalling phonies - the lot of them.
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Amazon's shareholders are virtue signalling phonies - the lot of them.
Loudly proclaiming on the internet that someone is guilty of of virtue signalling because they make effort in one area but aren't perfect is itself an even more stupid form of virtue signalling.
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Top, side, up, down collecting on more advanced maths on every part of the head.
The using computer power to create a unique real time data set for that "person".
The next idea is to pass a no mask law. Should all that fail then the person in a mask is tracked until they do something -
like go to their house, vehicle, use ID.
Language games (Score:2)
So some activists bought a few amazon shares, thus became shareholders and brought forward their proposal. So far so good, legal (probably, IANAL) and a legitimate way to make their concerns heard (with which i sympathize btw. but i think the horse is out of the barn) and raise awareness.
But with such phraseology my bullsh*t detector hits over 9000:
"The fact that there needed to be a vote on this is an embarrassment for Amazon's leadership team. It demonstrates shareholders do not have confidence that [...]