Technology

Amazon hasn&t exactly kept Rekognition under wraps. In late 2016, the software giant talked up its facial detection software in a relatively benign AWS post announcing that the tech was already being implemented by The Washington County SheriffOffice in Oregon for suspect identification.

The ACLU of Northern California is shining more light on the tech this week, however, after announcing that it had obtained documents shedding more light on the service it believes &raises profound civil liberties and civil rights concerns.&

The documents in question highlight Washington Countydatabase of 300,000 mug shot photos and a mobile app designed specifically for deputies to cross-reference faces. They also note that Amazon has solicited the country to reach out to other potential customers for the service, including a company that makes body cameras.

&People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government,& ACLU attorney Matt Cagle writes in a post tied to the news. &By automating mass surveillance, facial recognition systems like Rekognition threaten this freedom, posing a particular threat to communities already unjustly targeted in the current political climate. Once powerful surveillance systems like these are built and deployed, the harm will be extremely difficult to undo.&

The Washington Post reached out to the countypublic information officer, Deputy Jeff Talbot, in the wake of the report. The deputy told the paper that technology doesn&t stray too far from existing systems. &Our goal is to inform the public about the work we&re doing to solve crimes,& said Talbot. &It is not mass surveillance or untargeted surveillance.&

Amazon similarly deflected suggestions that the technology is inherently intrusive. &As a technology, Amazon Rekognition has many useful applications in the real world,& the company wrote in a statement to TechCrunch. &And, the utility of AI services like this will only increase as more companies start using advanced technologies like Amazon Rekognition.Our quality of life would be much worse today if we outlawed new technology because some people could choose to abuse the technology. Imagine if customers couldn&t buy a computer because it was possible to use that computer for illegal purposes Like any of our AWS services, we require our customers to comply with the law and be responsible when using Amazon Rekognition.&

Speaking in front of EU lawmakers today Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg namechecked the GDPRcore principles of &control, transparency and accountability& — claiming his company will deliver on all that, come Friday, when a new European Union data protection framework, GDPR, starts being applied, finally with penalties worth the enforcement.

However there was little transparency or accountability on show during the session, given the upfront questions format which saw Zuckerberg cherry-picking a few comfy themes to riff on after silently absorbing an hour of MEPs& highly specific questions with barely a facial twitch in response.

The questions MEPs asked of Zuckerberg were wide ranging and often drilled deep into key pressure points around the ethics of Facebookbusiness — ranging from how deep the app data misuse privacy scandal rabbithole goes; to whether the company is a monopoly that needs breaking up; to how users should be compensated for misuse of their data.

Is Facebook genuinely complying with GDPR, he was asked several times (unsurprisingly, given the scepticism of data protection experts on that front). Why did it choose to shift ~1.5BN users out of reach of the GDPR Will it offer a version of its platform that lets people completely opt out of targeted advertising, as it has studiously avoided doing so so far.

Why did it refuse a public meeting with the EU parliament Why has it spent &millions& lobbying against EU privacy rulesWill the company commit to paying taxes in the markets where it operates Whatit doing to prevent fake accounts Whatit doing to prevent bullying Does it regulate content or is it a neutral platform

Zuckerberg made like a sponge and absorbed all this fine-grained flak. But when the time came for responses the data flow was not reciprocal; Self-serving talking points on self-selected &themes& was all he had come prepared to serve up.

Yet — and here the irony is very rich indeed — peoplepersonal data flows liberally into Facebook, via all sorts of tracking technologies and techniques.

And as the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal has now made amply clear, peoplepersonal information has also very liberally leaked out of Facebook — oftentimes without their knowledge or consent.

But when it comes to Facebookown operations, the company maintains a highly filtered, extremely partial ‘newsfeed& on its business empire — keeping a tight grip on the details of what data it collects and why.

Only last month Zuckerberg sat in Congressavoiding giving straight answers to basic operational questions. So if any EU parliamentarians had been hoping for actual transparency and genuine accountability from todaysession they would have been sorely disappointed.

Yes, you can download the data you&ve willingly uploaded to Facebook. Just don&t expect Facebook to give you a download of all the informationitgathered and inferred about you.

The EU parliamentpolitical group leaders seemed well tuned to the myriad concerns now flocking around Facebookbusiness. And were quick to seize on Zuckerbergdumbshow as further evidence that Facebook needs to be ruled.

Thing is, in Europe regulation is not a dirty word. And GDPRextraterritorial reach and weighty public profile looks to be further whetting political appetites.

So if Facebook was hoping the mere appearance of its CEO sitting in a chair in Brussels, going through the motions of listening before reading from his usual talking points, that looks to be a major miscalculation.

&It was a disappointing appearance by Zuckerberg. By not answering the very detailed questions by the MEPs he didn&t use the chance to restore trust of European consumers but in contrary showed to the political leaders in the European Parliament that stronger regulation and oversight is needed,& Green MEP and GDPR rapporteur Jan Philipp Albrecht told us after the meeting.

Albrecht had pressed Zuckerberg about how Facebook shares data between Facebook and WhatsApp — an issue that has raised the ire of regional data protection agencies. And while DPAs forced the company to turn off some of these data flows, Facebookcontinues to share other data.

The MEP had also asked Zuckerberg to commit to no exchange of data between the two apps. Zuckerberg determinedly made no such commitment.

Claude Moraes, chair of the EU parliamentcivil liberties, justice and home affairs (Libe) committee, issued a slightly more diplomatic reaction statement after the meeting — yet also with a steely undertone.

&Trust in Facebook has suffered as a result of the data breach and it is clear that Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook will have to make serious efforts to reverse the situation and to convince individuals that Facebook fully complies with European Data Protection law. General statements like ‘We take privacy of our customers very seriously& are not sufficient, Facebook has to comply and demonstrate it, and for the time being this is far from being the case,& he said.

&The Cambridge Analytica scandal was already in breach of the current Data Protection Directive, and would also be contrary to the GDPR, which is soon to be implemented. I expect the EU Data Protection Authorities to take appropriate action to enforce the law.&

Damian Collins, chair of the UK parliamentDCMS committee, which has thrice tried and failed to get Zuckerberg to appear before it, did not mince his words at all. Albeit he has little reason to, having been so thoroughly rejected by the Facebook founder — and having accused the company of a pattern of evasive behavior to its CTOface — thereclearly not much to hold out for now.

&What a missed opportunity for proper scrutiny on many crucial questions raised by the MEPs. Questions were blatantly dodged on shadow profiles, sharing data between WhatsApp and Facebook, the ability to opt out of political advertising and the true scale of data abuse on the platform,& said Collins in another reaction statement after the meeting.&Unfortunately the format of questioning allowed Mr Zuckerberg to cherry-pick his responses and not respond to each individual point.

&I echo the clear frustration of colleagues in the room who felt the discussion was shut down,& he added, ending with a fourth (doubtless equally forlorn) request for Zuckerberg to appear in front of the DCMS Committee to &provide Facebook users the answers they deserve&.

In the latter stages of todayEU parliament session several MEPs — clearly very exasperated by the straightjacked format — resorted to heckling Zuckerberg to press for answers he had not given them.

&Shadow profiles,& interjected one, seizing on a momenthesitation as Zuckerberg sifted his notes for the next talking point. &Compensation,& shouted another, earning a snort of laughter from the CEO and some more theatrical note flipping to buy himself time.

Then, appearingslightly flustered, Zuckerberg looked up at one of the hecklers and said he would engage with his question — about shadow profiles (though Zuckerberg dare not speak that name, of course, given he claims not to recognize it) — arguing Facebook needs to hold onto such data for security purposes.

Zuckerberg did not specify, as MEPs had asked him to, whether Facebook uses data about non-users for any purposes other than the security scenario he chose to flesh out (aka &keeping bad content out&, as he put it).

He also ignored a second follow-up pressing him on how non-users can &stop that data being transferred&.

&On the security side we think itimportant to keep it to protect people in our community,& Zuckerberg said curtly, before turning to his lawyer for a talking point prompt (couched as an ask if there are &any other themes we wanted to get through&).

His lawyer hissed to steer the conversation back to Cambridge Analytica — to Facebookwell-trodden PR about how they&re &locking down the platform& to stop any future data heists — and the Zuckbot was immediately back in action regurgitating his now well-practiced crisis PR around the scandal.

What was very clearly demonstrated during todaysession was the Facebook founderpreference for control — thatto say control which he is exercising.

Hence the fixed format of the meeting, which had been negotiated prior to Facebook agreeing to meet with EU politicians, and which clearly favored the company by allowing no formal opportunity for follow ups from MEPs.

Zuckerberg also tried several times to wrap up the meeting — by insinuating and then announcing time was up. MEPs ignored these attempts, and Zuckerberg seemed most uncomfortable at not having his orders instantly carried out.

Instead he had to sit and watch a micro negotiation between the EU parliamentpresident and the political groups over whether they would accept written answers to all their specific questions from Facebook — before he was publicly put on the spot by president Antonio Tajani to agree to provide the answers in writing.

Although, as Collins has already warned MEPs, Facebook has had plenty of practice at generating wordy but empty responses to politicians& questions about its business processes — responses which evade the spirit and specifics of whatbeing asked.

The self-control on show from Zuckerberg today is certainly not the kind of guardrails that European politicians increasingly believe social media needs. Self-regulation, observed several MEPs to Zuckerbergface, hasn&t worked out so well has it

The first MEP to lay out his questions warned Zuckerberg that apologizing is not enough. Another pointed out hebeen on a contrition tour for about 15 years now.

Facebook needs to make a &legal and moral commitment& to the EUfundamental values, he was told by Moraes. &Remember that you&re here in the European Union where we created GDPR so we ask you to make a legal and moral commitment, if you can, to uphold EU data protection law, to think about ePrivacy, to protect the privacy of European users and the many millions of European citizens and non-Facebook users as well,& said the Libe committee chair.

But self-regulation — or, the next best thing in Zuckerbergeyes: ‘Facebook-shaped regulation& — was what he had come to advocate for, picking up on the MEPs& regulation &theme& to respond with the same line he fed to Congress: &I don&t think the question here is whether or not there should be regulation. I think the question is what is the right regulation.&

&The Internet is becoming increasingly important in peoplelives. Some sort of regulation is important and inevitable. And the important thing is to get this right,& he continued. &To make sure that we have regulatory frameworks that help protect people, that are flexible so that they allow for innovation, that don&t inadvertently prevent new technologies like AI from being able to develop.&

He even brought up startups — claiming ‘bad regulation& (I paraphrase) could present a barrier to the rise of future dormroom Zuckerbergs.

Of course he failed to mention how his own dominant platform is the attention-sapping, app gobbling elephant in the room crowding out the next generation of would-be entrepreneurs. But MEPs& concerns about competition were clear.

Instead of making friends and influencing people in Brussels, Zuckerberg looks to have delivered less than if he&d stayed away — angering and alienating the very people whose job it will be to amend the EU legislation thatcoming down the pipe for his platform.

Ironically one of the few specific questions Zuckerberg chose to answer was a false claim by MEP Nigel Farage — who had wondered whether Facebook is still a &neutral political platform&, griping about drops in engagement for rightwing entities ever since Facebookalgorithmic changes in January, before claiming, erroneously, that Facebook does not disclose the names of the third party fact checkers it uses to help it police fake news.

So — significantly, and as was also evident in the US Senate and Congress — Facebook was taking flak from both left and right of political spectrum, implying broad, cross-party support for regulating these algorithmic platforms.

Actually Facebook does disclose those fact checking partnerships. But itpretty telling that Zuckerberg chose to expend some of his oh-so-slender speaking time to debunk something that really didn&t merit the breath.

Farage had also claimed, during his three minutes, that without &Facebook and other forms of social media there is no way that Brexit or Trump or the Italian elections could ever possibly have happened&.

Funnily enough Zuckerberg didn&t make time to comment on that.

A new coalition of activist groups led by Yelp and TripAdvisor are renewing the fight to get Google to give a fair opportunity to all sites instead of putting its Knowledge Cards atop the results for subjective search queries. The alliance that includes Fight For The Future and Consumer Watchdog.org has assembled tens of thousands of dollars to run targeted ads on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter &calling for Google employees to introspect and examine how GoogleOne Boxes or Answer Boxes are harming the open internet,& says the projectleader Luther Lowe, YelpVP of public policy.

The initiative is certainly self-serving, as Yelp and TripAdvisor have the most to lose from Googleown local results getting to sidestep the PageRank algorithm and be shown atop search results pages before their own sites. But ita fair question to ask why Googledominance in search should let it deviate from a fair process of choosing the best result to give its content a boost.

Herethe campaignpromotional video:

Yelp initially launched its &FocusOnTheUser.eu& campaign targeting Google+ in 2014 as the European Union was determining whether Google abused its power to preference its shopping results. That eventually led to a€2.4 billion anti-trust fine. Yelp has now filed a complaint with the EU that extends those concerns to how it treats local business results, which Lowe said is now the biggest category of search. The campaign was timed to come alongside this week60 Minutes report examining whether Google is a monopoly.

The new Focus On The Userthat launched today concentrates on swaying Googleemployees rather than regulators, and includes new partners like DemandProgress and American Family Voices.We&ve contacted Google requesting a statement in response to the campaign and will update if we hear back.

The coalitiontwo stated goals are to get Google to:

1. Match users with the best possible information at the top of results. For local search (the most common category of search), this means creating an interoperable box and ranking Googlecontent alongside other business listing pages across the web. An organic, merit-based process should pin the most relevant businesses from the web to the map. That box should provide a clear path to the source content, not a small link designed to generate a low CTR.

2. For other forms of answers (Wikipedia-powered information, recipes, etc.) rather than offering small links designed to generate low CTR, answer boxes should encourage users to leave Google.com and visit the source content for themselves. The box itself should be a clear path to the web-based information powering the box.

Essentially, the groups want Googleresults to compete with everyone elses, and for it to more prominently cite and prioritize driving more traffic to sources of info for its Knowledge Cards. The coalitionhope is that if Google has to deal with internal complaints or risks losing talent over the issue, it might redesign search results to be a more even playing field.

&Google does not include its own content it its own index. It robots.txts itself& Lowe explains. &Why Because it doesn&t have to be indexed because it doesn&t compete on a level playing field alongside other local search services and has rigged the most common form of search (local is 40%) in its favor.&

While it makes perfect sense for Google to simply spit back answers instead of results for immutable facts, like math equations or sports scores, itreasonable to expect subjective content to have to compete in the algorithm. If TripAdvisor has far more reviews for a restaurant and therefore a likely more accurate answer to whether you should eat there, it doesn&t make sense for a Google business profile based on far fewer reviews to appear first in the results.

Google has seen a sudden surge in backlash after downplaying the &don&t be evil& line in its mission statement and its Duplex demo worried people about how the company could use its new human-voiced artificial intelligence technology. This campaign could stoke that discontent. But because it comes from Googledirect competitors like Yelp and TripAdvisor, employees may be able to write off the initiative as purely opportunistic. Unless the U.S. government gets serious about anti-trust regulation or Googleemployees cry out en masse, it may just ride out the campaign doing business as usual.