Clearview AI
Institution Sector: Security
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| Address | 214 W 29th St, 2nd Floor New York City, NY, 10001 |
| City | New York City (NY) |
| Institution Type | Company |
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Description[edit | ]
Details on the company[edit | ]
Clients[edit | ]
International Organizations[edit | ]
- Interpol1‘Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Has Been Used By The Justice Department, ICE, Macy’s, Walmart, And The NBA’, BuzzFeed News, accessed 28 February 2020, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-fbi-ice-global-law-enforcement.</ref>
US Government[edit | ]
- Department of Homeland Security
- Department of Justice
- Local police departments
Private companies[edit | ]
- Macy’s1
Clearview has also been used inside the Department of Justice where the list of government organizations trialing the company’s facial recognition software include multiples offices at the US Secret Service (some 5,600 searches); the Drug Enforcement Administration (about 2,000 searches); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (more than 2,100 searches); and the FBI (5,700 searches across at least 20 different field offices). Spokespeople for all these agencies either declined comment or did not respond to a request for comment. Two DOJ organizations — the criminal intelligence branch of the US Marshals and the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York — are paying to use Clearview. A spokesperson for the US Marshals said the organization “cannot confirm the use of any specific, sensitive equipment and techniques that may be deployed by law enforcement,” while the US Attorney’s Office in SDNY did not respond to multiple requests for comment1.
Plans for expansion[edit | ]
Whatever clients Clearview loses in the U.S., they'll probably make up internationally. A recent report from Buzzfeed News found that the company was planning a rapid international expansion, including to countries with authoritarian leadership like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Brazil.
Reached via email for comment, Clearview gave Mashable the same statement from attorney Tor Ekeland that they gave The Daily Beast: “Security is Clearview’s top priority. Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw, and continue to work to strengthen our security”
Clearview didn't offer any other specifics as to the data that the hackers accessed.2Marcus Gilmer, ‘Clearview AI, the Facial-Recognition Company Stealing Facebook Photos, Gets Hacked’, Mashable, accessed 27 February 2020, https://mashable.com/article/clearview-ai-client-list-hacked/.</ref>
Controversies[edit | ]
Hacking controversy[edit | ]
On 27/02, according to a report by The Daily Beast, hackers accessed data including "its entire list of customers, the number of searches those customers have made and how many accounts each customer had set up."2In a notice sent to clients, which was reviewed by The Daily Beast, the company claimed there was “no compromise of Clearview’s systems or network," the breach was fixed, and that none of the clients' search histories were accessed. That's hugely important because the company's clients are predominantly law enforcement agencies and much of its database contains scraped online photos. It would be incredibly troubling if hackers accessed information related to either of those aspects of the company's practices2.
In reply to an extensive list of questions, Clearview attorney Tor Ekeland said, "There are numerous inaccuracies in this illegally obtained information. As there is an ongoing Federal investigation, we have no further comment."1
Scraping controversy[edit | ]
Clearview has attracted a whirlwind of attention for claiming that it had built unprecedented facial recognition trained on an ever-increasing database of more than 3 billion photos ripped from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other websites1
In a bombshell January story by the New York Times, it was revealed that Clearview had scraped billions of photos from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms. That report prompted an outcry from, well, everyone because the practice is, at best, morally questionable and creepy as hell. That Times story resulted in a wave of backlash. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Venmo all issued cease-and-desist requests to Clearview over the practice and state of New Jersey is now looking to end its relationship with the company. Meanwhile, the company's CEO, Hoan Ton-That, said he had a First Amendment right to all those publicly available photos. Uh huh1.
The internal documents, which were uncovered by a source who declined to be named for fear of retribution from the company or the government agencies named in them, detail just how far Clearview has been able to distribute its technology, providing it to people everywhere from college security departments to attorneys general offices, and in countries from Australia to Saudi Arabia. BuzzFeed News authenticated the logs, which list about 2,900 institutions and include details such as the number of log-ins, the number of searches, and the date of the last search. Some organizations did not have log-ins or did not run searches, according to the documents, and BuzzFeed News is only disclosing the entities that have established at least one account and performed at least one search. Even with that criteria, the numbers are staggering and illustrate how Clearview AI, a small startup founded three years ago, has been able to get its software to employees at some of the world’s most powerful organizations. According to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News, people associated with 2,228 law enforcement agencies, companies, and institutions created accounts and collectively performed nearly 500,000 searches — all of them tracked and logged by the company.1
Canada Surveillance Controversy[edit | ]
Recently, a joint investigation by four privacy commissioners in Canada determined that controversial software company Clearview AI had engaged in illegal mass surveillance. The company was found to have scraped three billion images from the web and social media, including photos of children, without consent. Their clients — which have included several police departments in Canada (several Ottawa police officers also tested it) — can use this massive database to match images of people’s faces at incredible speed and scale through the company’s automated facial recognition software.3
Criticism[edit | ]
“Government agents should not be running our faces against a shadily assembled database of billions of our photos in secret and with no safeguards against abuse,” Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the ACLU, said to BuzzFeed News. “More fundamentally, that so many law and immigration enforcement agencies were hoodwinked into using this error-prone and privacy-invading technology peddled by a company that can't even keep its client list secure further demonstrates why lawmakers must halt use of face recognition technology, as communities nationwide are demanding."1
References[edit | ]
References
- a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p | "Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Has Been Used By The Justice Department, ICE, Macy’s, Walmart, And The NBA". (2020) <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-fbi-ice-global-law-enforcement> Accessed: 2020-02-28
- a b c | "Clearview AI, the facial-recognition company stealing Facebook photos, gets hacked". (2020) <https://mashable.com/article/clearview-ai-client-list-hacked/> Accessed: 2020-02-27
- ^ | "Stevens and Solomun: Facial recognition technology speeds ahead as Canada's privacy law lags behind". (2021) <https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/stevens-and-solomun-facial-recognition-technology-speeds-ahead-as-canadas-privacy-law-lags-behind> Accessed: 2021-03-02