Speaking of racial and class injustice, the war in drugs has incentivized a lot of crime over the years while also brutally punishing poor people who turn to it out of desperation. To propose adding another layer of facial recognition that both attempts to strip privacy from people, but also falsely identifies many black people, is in extremely bad taste by Microsoft
On the other hand it may help the society to understand that the law is wrong and fix it. The fact that police is enforcing poor laws poorly does not help anyone, and instead of trying to ban police from using modern tools, in hope that police will not be able to fully enforce the stupid laws, we need to focus on fixing the laws.
Back in 2012 I was chatting with a co-worker whose side hustle was owning/running convenience store gas stations (he had two and was looking to expand). He was talking about the issues he was facing with shoplifters and I mentioned that Facebook had, in the previous 12 months, acquired the #2 company in facial recognition -- then did it again when the #3 company moved up to #2. I asked him if paying $200/month per store for a digital surveillance system that not only captured video but ran biometric matches against Facebook's database of images would be of interest to him. "Hell yes!" was the answer without any hesitation (I think he would have gladly paid more because insurance rates would possibly go down -- I forget the rest of the conversation).
The point being: whether it's Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, or Yahoo, these services aren't developed just because it's cool but in order to generate revenue at some point. Why is there so much shock and surprise that Microsoft tried to sell a digital security/surveillance/law enforcement tool to the DEA? To me the major story would be if someone internally suggested it and it was nixed on principle.
I think people underestimate the degree to which most companies cooperate with the law enforcement.
When I was a teenager working for my Dad's small insurance agency, investigators would come in about once per year and ask for files on customer xyz. When I was old enough, I asked my dad if they needed a warrant. His answer was "Yes, but why the hell would I want to fight that battle?".
In my 30s, I worked for a major financial bank running tech for their US compliance/legal/regulatory departments. The mountains of data that we give local, state, and federal authorities on a daily basis is enormous. I mean you wouldn't believe how much data we handed over - or made available during an inspection. There was a documented official process for both the ad-hoc requests or the regular dumps, but we absolutely never fought with them about what we provided.
Not to mention, there are literally billions of dollars of grants and other funds available just waiting to be full-filled in search of problems. The surveillance industrial complex that was kicked off after 9/11 has more money available then can possibly be spent.
Any major software and infrastructure provider would be foolish not to develop armies of teams to go after that funding. Don't think for a second that IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and ANY other enterprise hardware and software organization hasn't put huge resources in place to address these "needs."
These feel good press releases do just that - but I guarantee you the Fed divisions of these companies are still plugging away selling billions to the government for software, hardware, and services around all kinds of surveillance technology.
People are yelling about Microsoft hypocrisy after they made noise on their feel-good achieve-nothing move at Github.
In my opinion, people have been complaining about the change too much, and the hypocrisy too little. The PR was probably positive, when it shouldn't be.
They have come out to say some very good things, as you say. But is it still principled if it only comes right after failing to win a big contract to do the opposite? Not as clear
This is about as evil as it gets for a software company. Using your technology to put people behind bars for victimless crimes
Microsoft products are generally such low quality that I avoid them anyway, but I'm going to try to disable all my Microsoft cloud accounts after this revelation.
It's easy to lay the blame on corporations, but where do the voters come into this? They are the ones that get politicians into office. Politicians are the ones with the power to stop the war on drugs, yet they haven't. Should we say that people who vote for politicians that don't get rid of the war on drugs are using their vote to put innocent people in prison?
It just seems odd to me that the two groups of people that could put an end to the whole thing (voters and politicians) seem to be blame-free.
Have you been to any of the regions where these drugs are produced? They aren't victimless crimes. The drug trade creates very real social problems in both the regions they're produced and where they're consumed. Now, maybe certain policies and the war on drugs create more problems than they solve, but the problems they aim to address are very real, and do have victims associated with them.
I'm genuinely curious why some of you think they wouldn't try? They're a company with a product to sell to few industries, even fewer where it can be leveraged as completely as in law enforcement.. so why wouldn't they?
Are there any useful applications for face recognition that don't have massive potential for abuse? I have thought about this for a while and it seems all cloud based face recognition can (and probably will) be abused. I think we are building a scary future. Just wait until microphone technology is good enough to listen to every public conversation.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but "does this technology have potential for abuse" is not a great metric IMO. E.g. computers have potential for abuse, phones have potential for abuse, pretty much any tech we've ever developed that helped someone also coincidentally helped people we wish it wouldn't, whether it be criminals, or just made the government more powerful (if that's something that worries you).
I’m not face-blind, but I do suck at remembering who people are. I want it for my Google Glass so it tells me who I’m talking to so I stop embarrassing myself when someone greets me - now if only wearing GG in public was socially acceptable...
What about something like: extremely dangerous, wanted criminal is on the loose. He's known to be a in a large city, and you use facial recognition to find/track him before he can commit a bombing or something like that.
Visual recognition of individuals seems useful as authentication in a lot of scenarios, in conjunction with secrets. I’d feel better about my bank or title company authenticating me visually for certain operations in addition to current methods. Though maybe a simple trusted video recording without recognition would do just as well for resolving disputes.
End the War on Drugs. Invest in harm reduction and rehabilitation centers. Decriminalize individual possession of small quantities of (most) drugs. Unrestrict researchers from performing research on psychedelic compounds.
The cynic in me says that Microsoft/Amazon/Google will not be selling to police agencies, but instead to wholesalers who then sell the services to them.
I think that’s obvious. That value/point of this article for a concerned citizen might be not ‘why are sales people doing this?’ But instead ask ‘should this be happening, will it damage civilian life, us economy/future, bleed into the rest of the world in a damaging way.?’
I feel like everyone should read up on the War on Drugs, and how people of colour (Blacks and Latinos in particular) are over policed and receive far stiffer sentences (we’re talking on the order of decades here) than their white counterparts. Call it social grandstanding, but it’s unconscionable that I’d willingly assist in the development of such technologies if I knew it would be used by the DEA and law enforcement. I’d rather be unemployed
The theoretical use case is that somehow it helps tracks suspects. Obviously that's only reality in a case where you either have broad facial recognition profiles across the population, or you have additional facial recognition cameras in an area of interest, both of which raise additional concerns.
In reality I suspect this is a solution in search of a problem. I was witness to a serious hit and run, caught video of the person who fled - clear pictures of the person, car, license plate. Should have been the easiest case in the world to handle but leos didn't even ask for the footage. Only group that has ever accepted dashcam footage from me is insurance.
Most law enforcement agencies have a lot more data than they can reasonably handle, but it's easier to complain about a lack of data than explain you can't actually analyze it.
- Black box that will confirm authority's bias about who is guilty, and who isn't.
- Black box to absolve authority of accusations of bias by offloading the bias to another biased party.
- Black box to absolve authority of responsibility, because they were just following the black box's orders.
- Dragnet identification of people in order to investigate, charge, serve warrants or make arrests.
The latter is their most likely stated reason, there are several reports of law enforcement going through footage and pictures to identify people with outstanding warrants and to issue others with new charges. There is also a strong desire to identify everyone a suspect interacts with, because they must be guilty by association.
Law enforcement is very paranoid, in general, and like most of the general public, think what they see computers do on CSI is real.
This stands in stark contrast to IBM who announced halting facial recognition offerings, Google who has prohibited use of facial recognition against non-public figures from the start, and Amazon who just announced a moratorium on facial recognition use by law enforcement. Not a good look for MSFT.
"Newly released emails show the company has tried to sell the controversial technology to the government for years, including to the Drug Enforcement Administration in late 2017."
I dont think Microsoft is selling it now, even though they might have been in 2017
I am not fan of the DEA, but this trend of generating bad PR for tech providers of governmental agencies ridiculous. Attack the agency or vote in politicians to change or dismantle them. As of 2020 Millennials are the largest adult generation. They have more voting power than the Boomers, if they actually get out and vote.
I mean this is good, right? There are a LOT of illegal aliens involved in the drug trade. These people aren't known for their propensity to have correct ID. The only practical way to ID them is with facial recognition, DNA, and fingerprints.
[+] [-] gentleman11|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bredren|5 years ago|reply
So assisting LE with this tech indirectly helps fund the continued war on drugs.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/710456736/defining-whats-exce...
[+] [-] the-dude|5 years ago|reply
From the other side of the pond, the US fixation on wars is ... remarkable. Marking these policies as wars wouldn't fly in the EU.
Circling back, the use of 'war' for civil matters normalizes the word, making real war easier to swallow.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] chr1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mikece|5 years ago|reply
The point being: whether it's Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, or Yahoo, these services aren't developed just because it's cool but in order to generate revenue at some point. Why is there so much shock and surprise that Microsoft tried to sell a digital security/surveillance/law enforcement tool to the DEA? To me the major story would be if someone internally suggested it and it was nixed on principle.
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
When I was a teenager working for my Dad's small insurance agency, investigators would come in about once per year and ask for files on customer xyz. When I was old enough, I asked my dad if they needed a warrant. His answer was "Yes, but why the hell would I want to fight that battle?".
In my 30s, I worked for a major financial bank running tech for their US compliance/legal/regulatory departments. The mountains of data that we give local, state, and federal authorities on a daily basis is enormous. I mean you wouldn't believe how much data we handed over - or made available during an inspection. There was a documented official process for both the ad-hoc requests or the regular dumps, but we absolutely never fought with them about what we provided.
[+] [-] blantonl|5 years ago|reply
Any major software and infrastructure provider would be foolish not to develop armies of teams to go after that funding. Don't think for a second that IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and ANY other enterprise hardware and software organization hasn't put huge resources in place to address these "needs."
These feel good press releases do just that - but I guarantee you the Fed divisions of these companies are still plugging away selling billions to the government for software, hardware, and services around all kinds of surveillance technology.
[+] [-] 1v1id|5 years ago|reply
Not saying it wasn't wrong pitch to DEA, but it seems strange that it's Microsoft being called out when, concretely, they were probably the earliest adopters of not selling due to human rights concerns https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-ai-idUSKCN1RS2F... https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/12/06/facial-...
[+] [-] marcosdumay|5 years ago|reply
In my opinion, people have been complaining about the change too much, and the hypocrisy too little. The PR was probably positive, when it shouldn't be.
[+] [-] stepstop|5 years ago|reply
It’s not strange, this is exactly the story that’s being called out. The behavior is incongruous
[+] [-] gentleman11|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgorman|5 years ago|reply
Microsoft products are generally such low quality that I avoid them anyway, but I'm going to try to disable all my Microsoft cloud accounts after this revelation.
[+] [-] Mirioron|5 years ago|reply
It just seems odd to me that the two groups of people that could put an end to the whole thing (voters and politicians) seem to be blame-free.
[+] [-] kick|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sambull|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashtonkem|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|5 years ago|reply
Have you been to any of the regions where these drugs are produced? They aren't victimless crimes. The drug trade creates very real social problems in both the regions they're produced and where they're consumed. Now, maybe certain policies and the war on drugs create more problems than they solve, but the problems they aim to address are very real, and do have victims associated with them.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pluc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaetzleesser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edanm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DaiPlusPlus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedino|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WiseWeasel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flattone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oarabbus_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3131s|5 years ago|reply
But then you haven't ended the war on drugs. We need legalization, not decriminalization.
[+] [-] kolbe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielovichdk|5 years ago|reply
Of course someone is trying to sell this, they are hired to sell it
[+] [-] flattone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spideymans|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WrtCdEvrydy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c22|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbob45|5 years ago|reply
I skimmed the article thinking it would have some and I didn’t see one.
[+] [-] vorpalhex|5 years ago|reply
In reality I suspect this is a solution in search of a problem. I was witness to a serious hit and run, caught video of the person who fled - clear pictures of the person, car, license plate. Should have been the easiest case in the world to handle but leos didn't even ask for the footage. Only group that has ever accepted dashcam footage from me is insurance.
Most law enforcement agencies have a lot more data than they can reasonably handle, but it's easier to complain about a lack of data than explain you can't actually analyze it.
[+] [-] ahelwer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavyset_go|5 years ago|reply
- Black box that will confirm authority's bias about who is guilty, and who isn't.
- Black box to absolve authority of accusations of bias by offloading the bias to another biased party.
- Black box to absolve authority of responsibility, because they were just following the black box's orders.
- Dragnet identification of people in order to investigate, charge, serve warrants or make arrests.
The latter is their most likely stated reason, there are several reports of law enforcement going through footage and pictures to identify people with outstanding warrants and to issue others with new charges. There is also a strong desire to identify everyone a suspect interacts with, because they must be guilty by association.
Law enforcement is very paranoid, in general, and like most of the general public, think what they see computers do on CSI is real.
[+] [-] hackerbrother|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flattone|5 years ago|reply
#avoidatallcosts nothing outweighs the risk here. Ever.
[+] [-] gundmc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloha|5 years ago|reply
I dont think Microsoft is selling it now, even though they might have been in 2017
[+] [-] sailingparrot|5 years ago|reply
Microsoft also announced halting sells of facial recognition tech to law enforcement. This is about a pitch that happened 2 years ago.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] megaman821|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romualdr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MintelIE|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caseyohara|5 years ago|reply