Amazon

[2Revolutions]

BoingBoing.net
http://BoingBoing.net/


Amazon patents doorbell camera that calls police when it recognizes a 'suspicious' person
http://boingboing.net/2018/12/14/amazon-patents-doorbell-camera.html





Amazon filed a patent application for a doorbell camera that scans the faces of passers by and compares them with a database of suspicious persons. If a match is made the camera calls the cops.

From ACLU:

The ACLU’s test is consistent with academic research demonstrating that face surveillance technology is less accurate for darker skinned faces and women. These systems threaten to further entangle people with law enforcement, ripping families apart and increasing the likelihood of racially biased police violence. In addition, this technology puts activists and protesters in danger when exercising their First Amendment rights.

Despite the risks to civil liberties and racial justice, Amazon has chosen to ignore questions from members of Congress and calls from consumers, civil rights groups, and its own employees and shareholders to take responsibility for the consequences of its technology on communities where it is deployed.

This patent application also suggests that Amazon has no plans to stop at identifying people based on their faces. The company anticipates targeting an arsenal of other biometrics, including fingerprints, skin-texture analysis, DNA, palm-vein analysis, hand geometry, iris recognition, odor/scent recognition, and even behavioral characteristics, like typing rhythm, gait, and voice recognition.



Source   - BoingBoing


Icke




Last Edit by Palmerston

How long before Amazon camera falsely identifies someone and they are killed or injured by police because they were identified as a criminal.



Last Edit by Gladstone

[EvadingGrid]

How long before Amazon camera falsely identifies someone and they are killed or injured by police because they were identified as a criminal.



Last Edit by Palmerston

I did not think of that angle.

What I did think about is that in future nobody will be able to enter or leave a building without Big Brother watching, even private homes.



Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

Always watching but never helping.

The thing I have noticed even when police have the private footage of crimes (theft) some of them still don't want to do investigative work.  People have literally done the work of identifying the suspects.



Last Edit by Gladstone

[poseidonlost]

There's no law against looking suspicious. Most ideally, since these kinds of things are bound to be available with the "advancement" of technology, the police will eventually ignore any of these calls. It's a crying wolf game. What information would this system use? What database of suspicious persons is it accessing? You're either on an federal or state most wanted list or have a warrant out for you. I never heard of a suspicious persons list. ?? Even the no fly list is mostly just names from what I know. Warrants might not even have a picture of you. I could see a lot of problems coming from this, not even the police would want to tangle themselves up into.

You better not show any emotion and wear the proper clothes and prove your low carbon footprint.



Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

There's no law against looking suspicious. Most ideally, since these kinds of things are bound to be available with the "advancement" of technology, the police will eventually ignore any of these calls. It's a crying wolf game. What information would this system use? What database of suspicious persons is it accessing? You're either on an federal or state most wanted list or have a warrant out for you. I never heard of a suspicious persons list. ?? Even the no fly list is mostly just names from what I know. Warrants might not even have a picture of you. I could see a lot of problems coming from this, not even the police would want to tangle themselves up into.

You better not show any emotion and wear the proper clothes and prove your low carbon footprint.



Last Edit by Palmerston

The list will be made of people who stand up and point out wrongs by the elite. I am sure every city and state police force has a list of protesters or people that government officials do not like.

For example,  the person who has been actively pointing out the dangerous health effects and privacy concerns of 5G technology at government meetings.     Oops, the database "accidentally" identified that person as a robbery suspect who was armed and dangerous.



Last Edit by Gladstone

[David Icke Bot]

theguardian.com
http://www.theguardian.com/



Alexa's advice to 'kill your foster parents' fuels concern over Amazon Echo
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/21/alexa-amazon-echo-kill-your-foster-parents


'An Amazon customer got a grim message last year from Alexa, the virtual assistant in the company’s smart speaker device: “Kill your foster parents.”

The user who heard the message from his Echo device wrote a harsh review on Amazon’s website, Reuters reported - calling Alexa’s utterance “a whole new level of creepy”.

An investigation found the bot had quoted from the social media site Reddit, known for harsh and sometimes abusive messages, people familiar with the investigation told Reuters. Spam_A Spam_B The odd command is one of many hiccups that have happened as Amazon tries to train its machine to act something like a human, engaging in casual conversations in response to its owner’s questions or comments.

The research is helping Alexa mimic human banter and talk about almost anything she finds on the internet. But making sure she keeps it clean and inoffensive has been a challenge.

Alexa gets its conversational skills through machine learning, the most popular form of artificial intelligence. It uses computer programs to transcribe human speech, and then guess the best response based on patterns of observation.

Amazon has given Alexa a script to respond to more popular questions – like “what is the meaning of life?” – usually written by human editors. But responding to more obscure queries can be tricky for the virtual assistant.'



Read More : Alexa's advice to 'kill your foster parents' fuels concern over Amazon Echo


Icke




Last Edit by Larry

[David Icke Bot]

The Daily Mail

Is Amazon SPYING on sellers? Online giant is taking five-second long videos and using facial recognition to verify the identity of vendors on the site
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6678141/Amazon-recording-using-facial-recognition-track-sellers.html





'Amazon is recording people's faces and saving the footage to identify them at a later date, in a move likely to concern privacy conscious users.

The site wants to use five-second snippets of video to record a person's face if they wish to become a seller on the online marketplace.

It may be able to use its facial recognition technology, called Rekognition, to identify users.

It is believed to be in a bid to crack down on fake sellers and counterfeit goods being peddled on the site. The method was first spotted by a Vietnamese seller who revealed the programme requires users to open their webcam and record themselves before they become verified.

It is believed this will be used in future and compared to any subsequent login attempts.

An Amazon spokesperson revealed to MailOnline that new ways of confirming the true identity of sellers is a priority for the firm.

They said: 'We always experiment with new ways to verify the information sellers provide us in order to protect our store from bad actors.

'Seller identification information is securely stored and used only for identify verification.'

The seller said they were asked to record a five second long video of their face, according to BuzzFeed news.

A prompt read: 'The video will be encrypted and stored for identification purpose. To proceed, enable access to your webcam.'



Read More : Is Amazon SPYING on sellers? Online giant is taking five-second long videos and using facial recognition to verify the identity of vendors on the site


Icke




Last Edit by Gladstone

[David Icke Bot]

mintpressnews.com
http://www.mintpressnews.com/



Amazon Facial Rekognition App Sets Off Alarm Bells
http://www.mintpressnews.com/cheap-inaccurate-easily-abused-amazon-facial-rekognition-app-sets-off-alarm-bells/254895/


'SEATTLE — Amazon is lobbying the public with proposed guidelines for lawmakers to adopt when crafting legislation around the use of facial-recognition technology. Amazon’s own software, Rekognition, has been put to the test by rights groups such as the ACLU, who have come to troubling conclusions about racial bias and threats to civil liberties.

The online retail giant’s CEO and wealthiest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, enjoys deep ties to the CIA via a $600 million cloud-computing contract with Amazon Web Services (AWS) he struck in 2014, prior to taking over the Washington Post. AWS is also a top contender for a Defense Department cloud-computing contract to the tune of $10 billion, the winner of which is expected to be announced in March. In the meantime, the Pentagon is currently investigating whether Amazon created a conflict of interest in the process by rehiring Deap Ubhi, an AWS employee who went on to work for the Defense Department where he “helped guide the U.S. military’s cloud computing efforts,” according to the Post. Today, Ubhi is General Manager at AWS.

Bezos’ ties to the national security state through AWS are immense, but the triple digit billionaire’s furnishing of surveillance tools to the police state are no less disturbing.

On Thursday, the company released proposed guidelines for Congress to consider when regulating facial-recognition technology. As Mashable’s Rachel Kraus notes, “it is a pre-emptive strike, that allows the company to say ‘we are in favor of regulation,’ while also making sure that the regulation is not too cumbersome.”'



Read More : Amazon Facial Rekognition App Sets Off Alarm Bells


Icke




Last Edit by Larry

[EvadingGrid]

RT - Russia Today

Trillion-dollar-valued Amazon pays $0 in income taxes for 2018, gets multi-million refund
http://www.rt.com/business/451417-amazon-pays-negative-tax-loopholes/





'Trillion-dollar-company Amazon skated through 2018's tax filings without paying a cent for the second year in a row. The e-commerce behemoth, which made $11 billion last year, will pay no taxes at all, thanks to 2017's tax reform.

Rather than pay the standard 21 percent corporate income tax rate, Amazon is actually claiming a tax rebate of $129 million, which works out to a logic-defying rate of -1 percent. Aside from the nebulous “tax credits,” which the company does not have to spell out in its public filings, Amazon is also claiming a tax break for executive stock options, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy – a longstanding loophole that permits profitable corporations to dodge federal and state income taxes on almost half their profits. While President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax reform legislation lowered corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent, it was sold as an incentive for companies to keep their money in the US, instead of stashing it overseas where the IRS couldn’t touch it. Now that Amazon and Netflix have both made headlines for using the new regulations to avoid paying anything at all, it remains to be seen whether the legislation’s failure to close corporate loopholes will leave the US holding the bag for fiscal year 2018 as the country’s national debt inches past $22 trillion – a record high.

Amazon’s tax windfall doesn’t even take into account the billions in tax breaks the state governments of Virginia and New York offered the company to open a second (and third) headquarters in their states, though there are rumors that New York is getting cold feet about the unprecedented corporate giveaway. Amazon didn’t pay any taxes in 2017 either, though it raked in a comparatively paltry $5.6 billion in profits and extracted a slightly larger $137 million refund.'



Read More : Trillion-dollar-valued Amazon pays $0 in income taxes for 2018, gets multi-million refund


Icke




Last Edit by Larry

[David Icke Bot]

RT - Russia Today

Amaz-off: Online retail giant Amazon cancels New York HQ plans after massive backlash
http://www.rt.com/usa/451491-amazon-cancels-new-york-headquarters/





Megacorporation Amazon has shelved plans to build its second headquarters in New York City. The project had been met with generous tax breaks from the city authorities, and intense backlash from local residents.

"After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens,” Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth said in a statement on Thursday.

AMAZON CANCELS PLAN TO COME TO NEW YORK[br][br]"After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens" - Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth

— J. David Goodman (@jdavidgoodman) February 14, 2019

The company, which already pays a grand total of zero dollars in federal income taxes, would have been able to avail of $1.5 billion in tax breaks, as well as additional grants of $3,000 per employee for locating in the city’s outer boroughs.

Not everyone was as thrilled as ‘Amazon Cuomo’ and co. Residents and activists worried that the company would gentrify the working-class neighborhood, while the influx of 25,000 well-paid workers would drive up rents in the area. The proposed site is a former industrial zone adjacent to the country’s largest public housing project and was reportedly earmarked for additional housing units before Amazon was given the land.

“While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us,” the company’s statement continued.

Chief among these politicians were Bronx Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist. Ocasio-Cortez said that she had been contacted by residents who thought Cuomo and DeBlasio’s priorities were out of line.'



Read More : Amaz-off: Online retail giant Amazon cancels New York HQ plans after massive backlash


Icke




Last Edit by Larry