Amazon Pauses Police Use of Its Facial Recognition Software

Following in the footsteps of IBM, Amazon has banned police use of its facial recognition for the next 12 months. In a blog post published Wednesday, the company said that while groups that help reunite families with missing children and rescue human trafficking victims can still use its Rekognition software, there is a one-year moratorium on police usage.

We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.

How to File Great Bug Reports According to Apple

Apple shared post to its developer page to give advice on how to file great bug reports. It’s also good advice for people who like to beta test Apple software, so bookmark the page once iOS 14 and macOS 10.16 Redwood have been announced (I’m taking this opportunity to make my macOS name prediction).

You should always file feedback for any bugs you find while developing on Apple’s platforms; after all, we can’t fix problems that we don’t know about. But how can you be sure that the information you provide is helpful for triaging the issue, rather than a bug-solving dead end? Here are some of our top tips for making sure your bug report is clear, actionable, and — most importantly — fixable.

Facebook Helped Hack ‘Tails’ OS to Catch a Child Predator

A report today from Motherboard details how Facebook and the FBI used a zero-day exploit for privacy OS Tails to catch a child predator. The reason I’m specifically linking to it is because of this paragraph:

Facebook told Motherboard that it does not specialize in developing hacking exploits and did not want to set the expectation with law enforcement that this is something it would do regularly. Facebook says that it identified the approach that would be used but did not develop the specific exploit, and only pursued the hacking option after exhausting all other options.

That is a slippery slope argument that will be used by politicians, like how Apple does what it can to help the FBI get into terrorists’ iPhones. “But you helped them before, why not again?” More fuel on the EARN IT fire.