Clearview AI used by Seattle Police Department
Information Certainty: Rumoured
Deployment Purpose: Criminal investigations
| Summary |
|---|
| 0 |
Products and Institutions:
| Product Deployed | Clearview AI (Software) |
|---|---|
| Institutions ⠉ | Clearview AI |
| Datasets | Clearview AI (Dataset) |
| Search software |
Status and Events:
| Status | Concluded |
|---|---|
| Events | |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
| Involved Entities | |
|---|---|
| Managed by | Seattle Police Department |
| Used by | Seattle Police Department |
Location:
| City | Seattle (WA) |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | USA |
Description[ ]
One Seattle police officer is found to have opened a Clearview AI account. While unclear whether it was used, it is also unclear whether one officer opening an account is strictly speaking against policy or not, which is notable from a legal standpoint.
Over the past year, more than a dozen Seattle Police Department officers have received promotional emails advertising a controversial artificial intelligence software called Clearview AI, which bills itself as a kind of Google search for faces. Clearview enables law enforcement agencies to identify unknown people—protest participants, for example—by matching their photos to online images and arrest or interrogate them after the fact. In March, one of the promotional emails made its way into then-Chief Carmen Best’s inbox, along with the inboxes of numerous other SPD officers of varying ranks. But only one officer—Detective Nicholas Kartes of the South Precinct’s burglary unit—appears to have taken the company’s offer, opening an account with his official Seattle email address more than a year ago 1
Whether Kartes has been using the biometric service for surveillance purposes or not is unclear from the emails, but the officer did sign up for the service with his work email 2
From a legal standpoint, SPD officers are not allowed to use Clearview AI for law enforcement purposes, since the software is not on the council’s list of approved technologies 2
Clearview AI—which first attracted widespread attention late last year—is not on the council’s list of approved technologies. But according to Mary Dory, a public safety auditor currently working on the Kartes case with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), that ordinance doesn’t address the use of surveillance technology by individual officers 1
It’s also unclear whether Kartes violated department policy. To Office of Police Accountability Director Andrew Myerberg, the revelation that an SPD detective is using Clearview AI was alarming enough to prompt his office to launch an investigation, but he told PubliCola that the act of creating an account itself might not constitute a policy violation. “If they used the account for an investigation,” he added, “that would be a clear violation of policy.” 1
References
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- a b c "SPD Detective's Use of Prohibited Facial Recognition Software Raises Questions About Surveillance Oversight". (2020) <http://publicola.com/2020/11/10/spd-detectives-use-of-prohibited-facial-recognition-software-raises-questions-about-surveillance-oversight/> Accessed: 2022-06-12
- a b "{Seattle police officer’s use of Clearview AI face biometrics may have violated city policy".