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Comment by ehsankia | Hacker News Reader

At least the Verge has the less clickbait headline, mentioning that it was contractors. The original source mentions Google in the headline but the rest of articles only refers to Randstad.

One part that is a bit confusing to me is, the original source makes no references whatsoever to any consent form. Usually you can't collect this sort of data without signed consent, and previous reports [0] do mention such a form. I know most people don't read the form, but I'm curious how you can get away with telling someone you're just playing a game and lie so much when the form should clearly state what you're collecting.

Still, there should definitely be better vetting of contractors and stories like this definitely look very bad, even if the intentions were actually to help reduce ML bias.

[0] https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/29/google-paid-for-face-sca...

EDIT: The original article does indeed mention an show a picture of the "agreement".

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I'm on the fence regarding whether it's unfair for the a news source to attribute this sin directly to Google via its headline. "Actually, it was our contractors who did it" seems like too common and easy an excuse for companies and governments who want to outsource the blame and the fallout for their questionable projects.

I don't really understand what would Google's motive be. They're already paying 5$, and I highly doubt they'd have a hard time finding people rushing to give away 5m of their time and their face for 5$ (people outside of HN are far less techno paranoid).

To me, it just sounds like the contractor tried to get done with it asap and just half-assed the work.

I agree. I don't care if a company does something directly or outsources the work to someone else, ultimately the company is still responsible for making sure the work is done correctly and ethically.

"I know most people don't read the form, but I'm curious how you can get away with telling someone you're just playing a game and lie so much when the form should clearly state what you're collecting."

Mental illness, addiction, the constant 24/7 stress of being homeless, potentially systemtic issues starting from childhood that gets in the way of developing necessary reading skills to accurately analyze and knowledge base understanding of the concepts being read, etc. are all factors that would make reading and understanding any consent form of enough technological-legal terminology a very difficult task.

IMHO an entity is ethically responsible for anything its contractor does, unless there is reasonable clarity that the contractor acted in opposition to the client's wishes. Having someone else do your dirty work doesn't make it less dirty.

Especially when more and more it seems like the main reason companies are using contractors is to launder responsibility for the shady things they do.

If I order a pizza and the stoned teenager from the local joint runs over a pedestrian, am I ethically responsible? I didn't tell them to not hit people when getting my meat lovers to me and did say I wanted it ASAP.

You are not liable. The pizza joint may be, and should either carry insurance or require their contractor to do so.

Why would you order pizza from a joint where stoned teenagers make the deliveries in the first place? If you knew that then yes, you're morally responsible.

Because in some places the only pizza employees you can find are stoned. Your local Papa John's or Domino's is probably a great place to find info for a local weed hookup.

The pizza joint hired the stoned teen, he's not contracted by you.

It's a pretty rotten analogy.

The pizza joint hired the teen, I contracted the pizza joint to get me a pizza. The teen did it a shitty way that is hard to be expected.

Randstad hired the people, Google contracted Randstad to do a job. Randstad's people did it in a shitty way that is hard to expected.

It's a pretty fresh analogy.

I think the analogy is a poor one, but let's run with it anyway.

No, you are not responsible because the teen was not operating within the terms of the contract. You did not authorize or ask him to get stoned or run someone over.

Did google authorize (or even think) that their staff would contract with a company that would hire folks who would scan homeless people's faces in a way that was improper?

I don't know. I do know that in these kinds of situations, the contract typically spells out clearly what, exactly, the contractor is going to do and how, though.

Even though it is usually reviewed, the methods of data gathering are usually not spelled out in the contracts themselves. Instead you have a distribution of liability where the data broker agency assumes the risk of having gathered and/or sold the data incorrectly to the purchaser.

Yes, if you order a pizza from a local pizza place that you know to go out of their way to hit pedestrians and break laws, you are ethically responsible.

That's entirely fair, I'm not absolving Google here, they should vet their contractors and make sure the job is done right. We probably won't know but I would like to know where these decisions came from as you mention. I just don't see the incentive for Google to push for such a messy work, I highly doubt there's a lack of people who would be happy to give their face data for 5$.

> ...I’m curious how you can get away with telling someone you’re just playing a game and lie so much...

Since you’re curious: homeless people aren’t important to Google or society in general because they have so little and everyone has all but stopped caring about them. They’re poor, they’re unfortunate, and so they’re exploited. This has been happening since... leafs through book forever. Serfs used to toil away in fields until they perished, and nobody gave a damn about them either.

They did this because they could get away with it, because they (and probably Google) knew there wouldn’t be any consequences. It’s the same old song and dance: the poor get explored for the benefit of the rich, and most people don’t seem to care.

I think they may have even been executed under older English common law.

> The original source mentions Google in the headline but the rest of articles only refers to Randstad.

If you hire a contractor, you are responsible for what the contractor is doing unless the contractor is operating outside of the terms of the contract.

If the contractor is within the terms of the contract, saying that "Google is doing this" is not deceptively inaccurate.

Why do you think a form would stop this from happening? Its just words on paper until there is enforcement behind it.

Who is going to enforce the law against Google in the name of homeless people? Its not like the government in the US has been a champion of the downtrodden in recent years

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