PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: " Amazon
recommends that law enforcement agents
should only use the facility if there is a 99% or higher confidence
rating of a match and says they should be transparent about its usage.
But one force that has used the tech - Washington County Sheriff's
Office in Hillsboro, Oregon, -
told the Washington Post
that it had done so without enforcing a minimum confidence threshold,
and had run black-and-white police sketches through the system in
addition to photos. A
second force in Orlando, Florida has also tested the system. But Amazon has not disclosed how many other public authorities have done so.
Biased algorithms? Part of Rekognition's appeal is that it is cheaper to use than several rival facial recognition technologies. But
a study published in January by researchers at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and the University of Toronto suggested Amazon's
algorithms suffered greater gender and racial bias than four competing
products.
It said that Rekognition
had a 0% error rate at classifying lighter-skinned males as such within
a test, but a 31.4% error rate at categorising darker-skinned females. Amazon
has disputed the findings
saying that the researchers had used "an outdated version" of its tool
and that its own checks had found "no difference" in
gender-classification across ethnicities.Even so, opposition to Rekognition has also been
voiced by civil liberties groups and
hundreds of Amazon's own workers."
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY:
STORY: "Amazon heads off facial recognition rebellion," by BBC Technology Desk Editor Lou Kelion, published on May 22, 2019.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Rekognition can match photos to databases holding millions of people's faces."
PHOTO CAPTION: " Rekognition gives a confidence score as to whether a person's face is a match."
PHOTO CAPTION: "Amazon has promoted its tech as a tool to fight crime."
PHOTO CAPTION: "Image caption
Rekognition can give a confidence score for several different features."
PHOTO CAPTION: "Rekognition can be used to flag "suggestive content."
PHOTO CAPTION: "Amazon said that it ran tests against images of men
and women from six ethnicities to check for signs of bias."
GIST: "Shareholders
seeking to halt Amazon's sale of its facial recognition technology to US
police forces have been defeated in two votes that sought to pressure
the company into a rethink.
Civil rights campaigners had said it was "perhaps the most dangerous surveillance technology ever developed". But investors rejected the proposals at the company's annual general meeting. That meant less than 50% voted for either of the measures. A breakdown of the results has yet to be disclosed. The first vote had proposed that the company should stop offering its Rekognition system to government agencies. The second had called on it to commission an independent study into whether the tech threatened people's civil rights. The
ballot in Seattle would have been non-binding, meaning executives would
not have had to take specific action had either been passed. Amazon
had tried to block the votes but was told by the Securities and
Exchange Commission that it did not have the right to do so.
"We will see what the tally is, but one of
our primary objectives was to bring this before shareholders and the
board, and we succeeded in doing that," Mary Beth Gallagher from the
Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment told the BBC. "This
is just the beginning of this movement for us and this campaign will
continue. We have built links to civil rights groups, employees and
other stakeholders. "And the most important thing is that
regardless of the result, we still want the board to halt sales of
Rekognition to governments, and it has the capacity to do that." The
American Civil Liberties Union added that the very fact there had been a
vote was "an embarrassment to Amazon" and should serve as a "wake-up
call for the company to reckon with the real harms of face
surveillance". Amazon has yet to comment. But ahead of the votes it said it had not received a single report of the system being used in a harmful manner."[Rekognition
is] a powerful tool... for law enforcement and government agencies to
catch criminals, prevent crime, and find missing people,"
its AGM notes state. "New technology should not be banned or condemned because of its potential misuse." Rekognition
is an online tool that works with both video and still images and
allows users to match faces to pre-scanned subjects in a database
containing up to 20 million people provided by the client. In doing so, it gives a confidence score as to whether the ID is accurate. In addition, it can be used to:
- detect "unsafe content" such as whether there is nudity or "revealing clothes" on display
- suggest whether a subject is male or female
- deduce a person's mood
- spot text in images and transcribe it for analysis
Amazon
recommends that law enforcement agents
should only use the facility if there is a 99% or higher confidence
rating of a match and says they should be transparent about its usage. But one force that has used the tech - Washington County Sheriff's Office in Hillsboro, Oregon, -
told the Washington Post
that it had done so without enforcing a minimum confidence threshold,
and had run black-and-white police sketches through the system in
addition to photos.A
second force in Orlando, Florida has also tested the system. But Amazon has not disclosed how many other public authorities have done so.
Biased algorithms?: Part of Rekognition's appeal is that it is cheaper to use than several rival facial recognition technologies. But
a study published in January by researchers at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and the University of Toronto suggested Amazon's
algorithms suffered greater gender and racial bias than four competing
products.
It said that Rekognition
had a 0% error rate at classifying lighter-skinned males as such within
a test, but a 31.4% error rate at categorising darker-skinned females. Amazon
has disputed the findings
saying that the researchers had used "an outdated version" of its tool
and that its own checks had found "no difference" in
gender-classification across ethnicities. Even so, opposition to Rekognition has also been
voiced by civil liberties groups and
hundreds of Amazon's own workers. Ms
Gallagher said that shareholders were concerned that continued sales of
Rekognition to the police risked damaging Amazon's status as "one of
the most trusted institutions in the United States". "We don't
want it used by law enforcement because of the impact that will have on
society - it might limit people's willingness to go in public spaces
where they think they might be tracked," she said. But one of the
directors from Amazon Web Services - the division responsible - had told
the BBC that it should be up to politicians to decide if restrictions
should be put in place. "The right organisations to handle the issue are
policymakers in government," Ian Massingham explained. "The
one thing I would say about deep learning technology generally is that
much of the technology is based on publicly available academic research,
so you can't really put the genie back in the bottle. "Once the
research is published, it's kind of hard to 'uninvent' something. "So,
our focus is on making sure the right governance and legislative
controls are in place.""
The entire story can be found at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48339142
PUBLISHER'S
NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the
Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my
previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put
considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles
Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's
forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"
section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles
Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog."
