[ta_egdhs]

constitutional rights (and a culture that enshrines them as sacred) is just one layer of protection for civil liberties. The other, Often overlooked layer is the fact that running a dystopian state is uneconomical. For better or worse this is the logic used by gun advocates, but it should also apply to other areas.

technology can make it feasible to scale repression like never before. facial recognition, big data, centralized Electronic banking are all enormously powerful tools in the wrong hands. the guns of the 21st century are those made by the subversive cypherpunk. cryptocurrency and encrypted chat come to mind. In China the number one tool to oppose state censorship is not protest, its a vpn.

at the end of the day if amazon doesn't do this someone else will. so long as the tech is possible the gov will get their hands on it, and so far as the tech errodes civil liberties it eventually will be used to do so.

Amazon can only hold back the tide for so long.

[zaptheimpaler]

"at the end of the day if amazon doesn't do this someone else will"

"If Amazon doesn't fuck over people someone else will, so who cares" is a shit argument.

[ta_egdhs]

"if amazon doesn't fuck people over someone else will"

yeah i said that.

"so who cares"

no i didn't say that.

I said the best defense isnt the benevolence of corporations willing to say no to gov contracts on principal. the best defense is a populace able to subvert these technological systems of oppression. For facial recognition this means adversarial patches. for Internet censorship this means VPNs. in other cases it means encryption and cryptocurrency.

[zaptheimpaler]

Thanks for responding kindly to a not so kind comment - sorry.

Your point does make a lot of sense. It sucks we live in this world where we have to operate as if our own government is an adversary. Technologically its very sound to operate in this way, but at best that means citizens in an arms race vs. an all-powerful government with infinite money and resources. In the long run, we will lose that race. For example:

Use masks/patches to circumvent facial recognition? Govt. outlaws those, builds better tech.

Use cryptocurrency? Govt heavily monitors crypto exchanges, ties them back to your identity (this is already happening! - coinbase requires SSN and identity verification), defeating the point.

The only way to really win then is to demand our government, which is supposed to have its citizens interest at heart, actually does. No amount of tech can beat the govt because the govt eventually gets access to that tech & talent too, plus a police force and authority to make laws. The only solution is to have them on OUR side.

[chrismeller]

Personally, I see it as the opposite side of the same argument people use about drugs - that simply banning things doesn't work, motivated people will find another way to obtain them. There is no one more motivated and persistent than the US Government... Even if all the US tech firms join together and refuse to sell to them, the US is not the only country on Earth with tech companies making innovations in this area.

So in that sense, yes, they'll keep looking and someone else absolutely will. As someone pointed out below, the real solution is to have them lobby the US Government to give up their pursuit, anything else is just a delaying tactic.

[nostrebored]

People who don't think that the NSA already has technology that even casinos use have their heads in the sand.

[chrismeller]

I also firmly believe that is true and we’re making a big deal out of absolutely nothing with these kinds of open letters.

[abc-xyz]

Even if all you gained was a delay, which I certainly don't believe is true[1], then it would still be a big win.

[1] their tech would most likely be much inferior, and when the likes of Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc. have to choose between getting kicked out of countries or providing their tech to authoritarian governments, then they usually pick the latter.. because profits is more important than the imprisonment and death of millions.

[boubiyeah]

Man, this argument is so dumb indeed...

Even dumber than the "Hey, why should we care about the environment since a few countries can decide not to"

[tolien]

The argument I think you’re alluding to is that rather than employees petitioning Amazon not to sell the government facial recognition technology, they should petition for Amazon (among others) to lobby government to restrict its use (data retention limits would be a start, I guess).

If nothing else, that would probably be more effective.

[ta_egdhs]

what I'm saying is we should assume that whatever mass surveillance mechanisms the government is trying to buy, it will eventually buy and whatever legal safeguards there are to protect us will eventually fail.

what I'm calling for is the individual to be "armed" with adversarial patches or whatever other tool it is that confounds facial recognition sytems. the only thing which is long term effective is a population which can and does resist. VPNs, encryption, cryptocurrency, and a bunch of other tech (existing and under research) will be the safeguard when all else fails.

[sysalphUS]

All well and good until you get visited by men with guns for breaking the law.

[ta_egdhs]

if the gov has to physically send someone with guns to someones door to enforce a law, the economic feasibility of enforcing the law has already shifted massively away from the passive data scoop of a mass surveillance system. Why hasnt the gov won the war on drugs by just busting down every door?

[adrianN]

I'm reasonably sure that it's enough to imprison a small number of dissidents to drastically reduce the number of people using surveillance countermeasures. Making examples of dissidents worked reasonably well for all kinds of oppressive governments.

[AstralStorm]

Then you need media and potentially a sizable revolution on your side. Lawyers too.

[wowzap]

Seemed to work out alright for Cliven Bundy.

[John_KZ]

It's simply not inevitable. I'm so tired of this rhetoric. "it's going to happen anyway, so give up". No, it's not going to happen if you actively oppose it.

For example, cops in Europe cannot execute crawling, begging, unarmed people. And if they try, they won't be getting away with it. Guns exist, cops exist, and guess what, cops shooting people doesn't exist. Why? Because society is an active thing, and if a society opposes a behavior (including the usage of tools, like amazon's rekognition) they can stop it.

[circlefavshape]

I think there's more to it than actively opposing - in Ireland deaths at the hands of the cops are rare, and there's a huge fuss when one happens ... but that's more a manifestation of the norms of Irish society than anything to do with active opposition to police brutality. It's more - if police brutality is rare then there's not much point in becoming a cop if you're a brute

[John_KZ]

This mechanism reinforces the societal norms that created it, like many others. If the Irish didn't intensely oppose police brutality, more brutes would enter the police force, leading to higher incentives for brutes to join the force. It looks like a self-amplifying loop but it works towards society's demands.

[nemo846]

> The other, Often overlooked layer is the fact that running a dystopian state is uneconomical.

How so?

Only example I can think of is China’s Social Credit system denying loans and traveling permissions to people with a low score - where said score is dependent on your compliance with the whims of the CCP; instead of being dependent on the credit worthiness of the person.

Said person won’t be able to grow his/her business as effectively, reducing his/her company’s competitiveness.

[ta_egdhs]

iirc the stasi employed half the population to report on the other half of the population. Thats a lot of wasted money and labor. It simply isn't a sustainable system.

Chinas social credit is a perfect example of what I mean. technology is making it more and more practical to actually enforce restrictions on civil liberties down to the granular level.

[Ensorceled]

Has been uneconomical? Again, it takes a large, sophisticated computer network to track a person's Social Credit.

[14]

you are right and when the public has their own sting rays, their own license plate trackers, and their own facial recognition systems it will be a crazy world indeed. As these systems grow and learn more about people they will become increasingly powerful. Imaging a world where one mistake could follow you around for ever. You take a photo while in public and your facial recognition app detects someone in the background. Of course after you subscribed for 9.99$ you can access information about people detected. The person detected was in the news for assaulting his wife. He was arrested and did a year in jail and did his time and changed his ways and regrets ever doing it. But the facial recognition does not forget what you did 10 years ago. My girlfriend was acting weird, I am going to be insecure and see where she went. Good thing we all have internet connected dashcams taking real time license plates. I better subscribe to the license plate tracking service for 9.99$ and now I can see that when she said she was in class her car was actually spotted 50 miles away. The future will be different.

[User23]

The public is going to have their own armed flying drones too eventually. The future is going to be so incredibly cyberpunk.

[jessaustin]

Flying drones are really fragile. Drone countermeasures are what the public needs.

[nradov]

The FAA and ATF won't permit that.

[User23]

The feds don't permit marijuana smoking either. How's that going?

[simion314]

This employees from big companies protesting cause news like this to appear here, so it was not a waste

- part of the people read about this

- other developers will get inspired so we can see more developers speaking against this.

[xg15]

> technology can make it feasible to scale repression like never before. facial recognition, big data, centralized Electronic banking are all enormously powerful tools in the wrong hands

What would be the "right" hands?

[mprev]

Presumably those that wouldn't use it. If we accept that those technologies have upsides, then the "right hands" would be those that don't take advantage of the downsides.

[beerlord]

I think its mostly just a political statement - that these workers don't like such technology being used for immigration control whilst President Trump is in office.