Dubious facial recognition app accesses photos from social networks.
Authorities scan Facebook photos: Imagine walking down the street and meeting people wearing augmented reality glasses who immediately greet you by name and respond to your last Facebook post. Sounds like a frightening Hollywood production, but it's almost real.
“Clearview AI – technology that helps solve the toughest crimes”
The company advertises the app on its website. What's behind it? A software that can identify strangers. An inventor who appears online under a false name. Connections to high-ranking US politicians and business tycoons. A combination that makes you shudder.
Access to database with billions of publicly available photos
“Clearview AI” is already used by hundreds of US investigative agencies, according to the “New York Times”. The app accesses a database of around three billion publicly available photos from social networks and is therefore able to identify people in photos. You will then receive all images that belong to a person, including all links. It doesn't take much to find out the person's residence or other sensitive data.
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Clearview AI's promotional materials make a shocking comparison: the LAPD's database only contains about 3 million images, while the FBI's database contains about 411 million images. According to its own information, “Clearview AI” finds matching photos in 75 percent of all cases.
Cooperation with authorities
The program has been sold to US security agencies since 2017, writes the New York Times, and a total of around 600 agencies now use it. This was largely unknown until now, probably because the inventor and founder of the company Hoan Ton-That was keen to be “well camouflaged” himself. The “New York Times” began investigating the “Clearview AI” program in 2019 and found, among other things, that the associated website lists a contact address in New York that does not exist. Australian native Hoan Ton-That also lists the name “John Good” in his LinkedIn profile and describes himself as sales manager for “Clearview AI”.
Personally relevant connections
Ton-That developed the app together with his business partner Richard Schwartz. Schwartz was an employee of Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani when he was still mayor of New York. The two later had the idea of selling the program to US security authorities. Investments from celebrities also followed. One of them: Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and board member of Facebook.
Violation of terms of use?
By using images from social networks such as Facebook, the program violates the terms of use. Ton-That downplays this in a conversation with the New York Times: "Many people do that. Facebook knows about it." According to a Facebook spokesman, this case is currently being reviewed and "appropriate measures will be taken" if it occurs there is a violation of the usage guidelines. Not to be forgotten: One of the investors – Peter Thiel – sits on the Facebook supervisory board.
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Misuse risks of “Clearview AI”
In an interview with the New York Times, Ton-That states that there are already prototypes for augmented reality glasses and the program. This could be used to identify people in public in real time. The glasses are not intended for sale. However, police officers who already use the app and investors suspect that the program could be made available to the public. The use carries extreme risks of abuse - from stalking to blackmail. If citizens use this app, this would have worrying consequences in terms of privacy in public spaces.
The app appears to be legal to use in the USA.
“What they are doing is scary, but many more companies like this will emerge,” said Al Gidari, professor of privacy at Stanford University School of Law, in an interview with the New York Times. “Without strong privacy laws, we are all lost.”
In Germany, for example, people are generally critical of topics such as facial recognition and surveillance. In China, however, the government uses detection software that is already technically very sophisticated. Facial recognition has been used in the USA for decades. But none of the previous programs accessed social media databases.
In keeping with the topic: Bar uses facial recognition software against harassers!
Source: n-tv.de
Article image: Shutterstock / By Andrey_Popov
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