SOURCE: Wikipedia, 2020-05-06 | Reception
Clearview AI is an American technology company that provides facial recognition software, which they claim is marketed primarily for law enforcement agencies. The company has developed technology that can match faces to a database of more than three billion images scraped from the Internet, including social media applications. Founded by Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz, the company maintained a low profile until late 2019, when its usage by law enforcement was reported on.
In January 2020, Twitter sent a cease and desist letter and requested the deletion of all collected data. This was followed by similar actions by YouTube (via Google) and Facebook in February. Clearview sells access to its database to more than 600 law enforcement agencies in North America to solve cases such as child sexual abuse. However, contrary to Clearview's claims that its service is sold only to law enforcement, a data breach in early 2020 revealed that numerous commercial organizations were on Clearview's customer list.
Clearview operated in near secrecy until the release of The New York Times exposé titled "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It" in January 2020. Citing the article, over 40 tech and civil rights organizations including Color of Change, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Fight for the Future, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Media Alliance, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Hispanic Media Coalition, National LGBTQ Task Force, Project On Government Oversight, Restore the Fourth, and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation sent a letter to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and four congressional committees, outlining their concerns with facial recognition and Clearview, asking the PCLOB to suspend the use of facial recognition.
Clearview has been described in the press as "sketchy", "creepy", "the world's scariest facial recognition company",, an "Olympic-caliber web scraper", and as the company "that might end privacy as we know it." Cory Doctorow called it "a creepy, grifty, privacy-invading toolsmith serving authoritarians", also pointing out the unreliability of its marketing.
It sparked a global debate on the regulation of facial recognition technology by governments and law enforcement. Numerous international media outlets called for a ban of the Clearview's software upon learning that 3 billion images had been collected from social media websites should the images have ever been public. Law enforcement officers have stated that Clearview's facial recognition is far superior in identifying perpetrators for any angle than previously used technology.
After discovering Clearview AI was scraping images from their site, Twitter sent a cease-and-desist letter, insisting that they remove all images as it is against Twitter's policies. Facebook has said they are reviewing the situation, and Venmo also stated it is against their policies. On February 5 and 6 2020, Google, Youtube, Facebook, and Venmo sent cease and desist letters as it is against their policies. Ton-That responded in an interview with Errol Barnett of CBS This Morning that there's a first amendment right to the information, results were 99.6% accurate, and they have 3 billion scraped images.
The company's claim of a First Amendment right to public information has been disputed by privacy lawyers such as Scott Skinner-Thompson and Margot Kaminski, writing in Slate that Clearview's position was a "simplistic argument", that the "First Amendment is often weaponized to undermine our privacy interests", highlighting the problems and precedents surrounding persistent surveillance and anonymity.
Senator Edward J. Markey wrote Clearview and Ton-That, stating "Widespread use of your technology could facilitate dangerous behavior and could effectively destroy individuals' ability to go about their daily lives anonymously." Markey asked Clearview to detail aspects of its business to understand these privacy, bias, and security concerns. Clearview responded through an attorney, declining to reveal information. In response to this, Markey wrote a second letter, calling their response unacceptable and containing "dubious claims", highlighting the concern of Clearview "selling its technology to authoritarian regimes" and possible violations of COPPA.
Senator Ron Wyden tweeted about Clearview, saying it "reads like one of the more disturbing episodes of Black Mirror." Wyden also voiced concerns about Clearview's efforts to "tamp down questions from journalists." Meetings between Wyden and Ton-That have been set up, with Ton-That cancelling on Wyden three times.
Josh Orton, a spokesperson for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, stated "This is disgusting. A Sanders administration will ban facial recognition software in law enforcement, period."
Former New York City Police Commissioner and executive chairman of Teneo Risk Chief Bill Bratton challenged privacy concerns and recommended strong procedures for law enforcement usage in an op-ed in New York Daily News.
In April 2020 an editorial by Rafael A. Calvo, Sebastian Deterding, and Richard M. Ryan was published in The BMJ discussing "Health surveillance during covid-19 pandemic." The authors noted Clearview and also discussed "surveillance creep."
Internet Law professor Jonathan Zittrain stated "The company's services don't represent a technological breakthrough as much as norm-shattering daring. Clearview simply added water to a recipe that no one else thought advisable to make, using existing ingredients."
The AI Now Institute linked Clearview with the Banjo surveillance platform, as both have far-right ties, though Banjo doesn't have the explicit far-right algorithmic goals of Clearview does. Other historic Silicon Valley links to far-right ideology mentioned include Jeffrey Epstein, William Shockley, and James Damore.
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