MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Amazon’

Amazon, Stop Powering Government Surveillance | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2018

It also offers to flag things it considers “unsafe” or “inappropriate.”

I wonder if Jeff Bezos considers reading blog as  “unsafe” or “inappropriate.” Not sure? Just ask the government.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/amazon-stop-powering-government-surveillance

EFF has joined the ACLU and a coalition of civil liberties organizations demanding that Amazon stop powering a government surveillance infrastructure. Last week, we signed onto a letter to Amazon condemning the company for developing a new face recognition product that enables real-time government surveillance through police body cameras and the smart cameras blanketing many cities. Amazon has been heavily marketing this tool—called “Rekognition”—to law enforcement, and it’s already being used by agencies in Florida and Oregon. This system affords the government vast and dangerous surveillance powers, and it poses a threat to the privacy and freedom of communities across the country. That includes many of Amazon’s own customers, who represent more than 75 percent of U.S. online consumers… Read the rest of this entry »

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ACLU: Amazon shouldn’t sell face-recognition tech to police

Posted by M. C. on May 22, 2018

Amazon sells everything, including your privacy.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/aclu-amazon-sell-face-recognition-tech-police-55351083

By GENE JOHNSON

The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy activists are asking Amazon to stop marketing a powerful facial recognition tool to police, saying law enforcement agencies could use the technology to “easily build a system to automate the identification and tracking of anyone.”

The tool, called Rekognition, is already being used by at least one agency — the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon — to check photographs of unidentified suspects against a database of mug shots from the county jail, which is a common use of such technology around the country.

But privacy advocates have been concerned about expanding the use of facial recognition to body cameras worn by officers or safety and traffic cameras that monitor public areas, allowing police to identify and track people in real time….

Be seeing you

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10 Social Media Networks to Use Instead of Facebook

Posted by M. C. on March 28, 2018

Worth looking into if you like “that sort of thing”.

http://theantimedia.com/10-social-media-networks-instead-facebook/

Written by 

(ANTIMEDIA) — The salient facts of the new Cambridge Analytica scandal are bad, and the optics are even worse for Facebook, which is already facing multiple battles both in legal courts and the court of public opinion. But this really is just the spilled pot of a long-boiling problem: growing discomfort within our citizen-consumer class over predatory data mining and the unaccountable shadow agencies and corporations being given access to our private lives via social networks. Big Brother has been privatized, and it may turn out to be far more dangerous than anything George Orwell predicted.

Typically, Facebook has been able to duck, dodge, juke, and jive its way out of such entanglements because of the sheer ubiquity of social media in our daily lives, the market value of the company, and its ability to manipulate public opinion. But this time is different. The company hit the politicized buzzsaw of the 2016 election, which is still grinding and sparking from accusations concerning the use of Facebook to spread propaganda (which in reality, of course, is nothing new). In other words, “Facebook’ is appearing in more and more paragraphs containing “Russia,” and in today’s climate, that is worse than a decade of privacy violations. Read the rest of this entry »

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As the beast of Obamacare is put out of its misery, health care innovations spring up, starting with Amazon, et al

Posted by M. C. on February 1, 2018

Government out, free market in. It can’t be any worse. Still, not happy JP Morgan is involved. It is a shame most big banks are crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/01/as_the_beast_of_obamacare_is_put_out_of_its_misery_new_innovations_spring_up_starting_with_amazon_et_al.html

The stock market was rattled by news of a bigfoot new entrant in healthcare, slowly coming up the horizon … thud … thud … like Godzilla, stomping everything in its path.

Investor’s Business Daily, in its editorial, noted the that that reaction to the news that Amazon was teaming up with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase was the sign of a disruptive force in the market, writing: Read the rest of this entry »

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Watch As Amazon Deletes Hundreds Of One-Star Reviews Of Hillary Clinton’s New Book | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on October 27, 2017

A new twist on Fake News.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-13/watch-amazon-deletes-hundreds-one-star-reviews-hillary-clintons-new-book

In what many have dubbed a flagrant intervention by Amazon itself to seemingly boost the rating of Hillary Clinton’s new book “What Happened“, the Telegraph first reported, and subsequently many others observed first hand, that Amazon has been monitoring and deleting 1-star reviews of Hillary Clinton’s new book “which was greeted with a torrent of criticism on the day it was released.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Why the Post Office Gives Amazon Special Delivery

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-post-office-gives-amazon-special-delivery-1499987531

But when a mail truck pulls up filled to the top with Amazon boxes for my neighbors and me, I do feel some guilt. Like many close observers of the shipping business, I know a secret about the federal government’s relationship with Amazon: The U.S. Postal Service delivers the company’s boxes well below its own costs. Like an accelerant added to a fire, this subsidy is speeding up the collapse of traditional retailers in the U.S. and providing an unfair advantage for Amazon.

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Amazon planning to open robotic supermarket staffed by just TWO humans, sources claim

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2017

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2795408/amazon-planning-to-open-robotic-supermarket-staffed-by-just-two-humans-sources-claim/

Two whole humans.  Hardly seems worth it. A big dose of minimum wage hike will take care of them.

Maggy Thatcher is credited with saying the problem socialism is after a while you run out of other people’s money. 

At Amazon no one is making any let alone running out. Thanks in part to the robotics enhancement act (minimum/prevailing wage).

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Going Cashierless On The Left Coast

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2016

Amazon is opening a brick and mortar store in their home town Seattle.

If you have the Amazon Go app all you need to do is walk in and walk out with your stuff.  All your activities are tracked and your account is billed automatically.  Your privacy is toast but you would only know that if you were a deplorable.

Are there deplorables in Seattle?  Probably a few but not enough to annoy the rest of the Amazon customer base.  Yes, I digress.

Yah but no cashier jobs…isn’t Seattle the land of the $15~20 minimum wage?  How is that workin’ for ya?

Maybe when the lattes at Starbucks are served by robots someone might wake up but unfortunately the alarm went off a while ago.

I won’t hold my breath for a left coast Amazon boycott.

Be seeing you

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