Amazon Rolls Out Face Recognition to Police

Our panopticon is on track:

Powered by artificial intelligence, Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces, according to Amazon. Amazon is marketing Rekognition for government surveillance. According to its marketing materials, it views deployment by law enforcement agencies as a “common use case” for this technology. Among other features, the company’s materials describe “person tracking” as an “easy and accurate” way to investigate and monitor people. Amazon says Rekognition can be used to identify “people of interest,” raising the possibility that those labeled suspicious by governments — such as undocumented immigrants or Black activists — will be seen as fair game for Rekognition surveillance. It also says Rekognition can monitor “all faces in group photos, crowded events, and public places such as airports,” at a time when Americans are joining public protests at unprecedented levels.

This is only one piece of the full panopticon toolkit, of course: Various technologies which allow for seeing through walls will mean that eventually the authorities and most large corporations will know or be able to know everything you do, all day, no matter where you do it, but it is still part of an escalation.

China has particularly been a keen adopter of this sort of technology (though not from Amazon, obviously).

The core problem authorities are trying to solve here is part of the surveillance paradox: In the past, surveillance societies have just been too costly. When you need to have people watching other people, it takes too many people, and the watchers aren’t productive.

The second part of the paradox is harder to deal with, which is that surveillance societies tend to become uncreative: When you know everything you do or say is being judged, you tend to internalize the external rules for safety.

This surveillance doesn’t have to be governmental, of course, a measure of creativity in America shows a decline in children from the 80s onwards, almost certainly due to the widespread adoption of helicopter parenting and the tethering of children, so that they do not control their own time but are constantly under adult supervision.

This is only a real problem, however, societies exist which are more free than yours. If everyone is living under a surveillance society, then there is no competitive issue: Everyone has drones (er, human drones.)

But elites are also betting that mechanical drones, AI, robotics, and so on will reduce the need for humans to be creative: Machines will do that, and do it in ways of which their masters approve. Much safer than letting humans be creative.

Ironically, it may be that widespread social collapse due to various environmental issues may be our best bet at avoiding our masters desire for a steady state authoritarian dystopia.

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