14 ms·

Clearview AI helps law enforcement match photos of people to their online images

369 points by johanam 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Gatsky 7y ago
If Clearview profits from having your photo in their database, don’t you deserve compensation?
- Proven 7y ago
  If you "profit" (by saving time that you'd otherwise need to go to a brick-and-mortar store) by viewing a new product on Amazon.com, does Amazon deserve compensation? If somebody took your photo in a public place, why should you deserve compensation?
  - Gatsky 7y ago
    I think this analogy isn’t very illuminating. In the case of Clearview the photo is the product. For public place photos, the photographer has rights to the photo. Anyway, most of the photos on social media are not these public place photos.
- o-__-o 7y ago
  What is the value of your photo? That is the compensation you deserve. So what’s that worth, $2? It’s the aggregate that provides value to the business
  - nocturnial 7y ago
    If two parties can't decide on the value, I would think it's only natural there would be no transaction. If I set the value of my photo at $2 million and company X sets it at $0.20, am I forced to sell it at $0.20? If two people can't decide on a valuation it's only fair there's no transaction.
    - o-__-o 7y ago
      Depends. If it is your photo, then you own the copyright and you entirely have the right to set a price or not share it at all (don't click 'I agree' on those TOS) If it is not your photo, then unless you are a celebrity or otherwise a famous figure the law is quite clear that you do not have any recourse for your photo being used. You must use the courts to determine the valuation of your likeness.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      If you own a share of stock whose market price is $10, and someone buys the company for $20, you can't personally refuse to sell for under $50. You will, typically, be cashed out on a certain date without any action on your part. In the past, I've run into people who just won't believe this.
  - Gatsky 7y ago
    The only question is whether the value is > 0. If so, then Clearview are vulnerable to legal challenge. The final step of identifying people involves actual individual photos, and these photos are displayed to the police officer. It is not just the aggregate.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Where did they get your photo? Did they get it from Facebook? You probably agreed to let Facebook share it with whoever they want when you uploaded it there. Is it a photo of you in a public place? People are not usually entitled to compensation for that.
  - 1996 7y ago
    You took the picture with your phone? You own the copyrights. You can issue a DMCA takedown if someone illegally copy your copyrighted creation and profits from it.
    - incompatible 7y ago
      I don't think they'd meet the requirements to be covered by the DMCA safe harbor, i.e., being unaware of the infringing material and not receiving financial benefit. However, they may be able to try a "fair use" defence, since they aren't republishing the photos.
- darkerside 7y ago
  This is a great question. For all the trouble (and it's not much) that CCPA has caused me at work, it would totally be with it if it ends up destroying unethical, unregulated sham companies like this one.
rahuldottech 7y ago
I'm not okay with this - and you shouldn't be either. It's only a matter of time before it gets and misused/abused - to identify protestors, for law enforcement officers' personal uses, to identify those doing legal things deemed "immoral" (see: China), etc. We really need regulation here. Urgently. The US appears to have been the leader in such regulation in the past. The problem is, they don't do that anymore. They haven't passed any laws related to user rights or privacy in a long time, and are actively trying to make encryption illegal. The same is true for the Australian government, and those of several developing nations. We can hope that the EU does something, but... the impact will be limited. It's especially bad for people living in non-first-world countries like India where the citizens aren't educated on the consequences of law enforcement agencies using tech like this. Laws taking away the right to privacy are being pushed through regularly. Recently they've started using facial recognition to identify protestors: https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are-using-facial-recognition-to-identify-protestors-in-delhi https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are-using... I really wish that some leading tech companies would try and push regulation through, but that will never happen since apparently privacy erosion and constant user tracking is critical for revenue for seemingly all of them (except Apple, I suppose). Also, even if somehow regulations were put in place that made it necessary for websites to try and protect user data and made it illegal to scrape PII, there's nothing stopping government agencies from developing tools like these for themselves. Aaaand we go back to the first paragraph of this comment. This is a sad state of affairs.
- johanam 7y ago
  It seems that the EU is considering temporarily banning facial recognition in public for 5 years: https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition-european-union-temporary-ban-privacy-ethics-regulation/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition... But surprisingly a Pew Research [1] study recently found that more than half of Americans trust law enforcement with facial recognition tech. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition-police-law-enforcement-surveillance-privacy-pew-research-survey/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition...
  - 7y ago
acqq 7y ago
> While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for. Like in the movies.
kbos87 7y ago
I’ve been waiting to see this story and this company show up. It has felt inevitable and it’s sad that it’s being allowed to happen. How long will it be before the Ring cameras on every block feed into a real-time database where anyone can figure out where anyone else is, track their movements, and monitor their every moment? Facial recognition is a bigger threat to our current way of life than just about anything else I can fathom other than climate change or nuclear war. The scariest part is that few people seem to recognize or care about the risk.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  People freak out when it's based on cameras and faces because it triggers some ancient "being watched" reactions in us. But when it's based on phone GPS, wifi networks etc., then people are fine with it. And that type of tracking is very possible for many years now through smartphones. But it feels less viscerally spooky.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    I can go somewhere without my phone. My face essentially has to be visible. I'll agree that people should be more spooked out by phone tracking, but facial scanning is spookier.
  - JohnStrangeII 7y ago
    It's because you can leave your phone at home but not your face.
    - analbumcover 7y ago
      Maybe this will lead to a Face/Off type scenario.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    In addition to the fact that your phone is separable in ways your face, Nick Cage and John Travolta excepted, is not, there's the notion of manifest versus latent (or tangible vs. intangible) perceptions. Humans are visual creatures. To "see" is synymous with "to understand". Vision is a high-fidelity sense, in ways that even other senses (hearing, smell, taste, touch) are not. And all our senses are more immediate than perceptions mediated by devices (as with radiation or magnetism) or delivered via symbols, data, or maths. This is a tremendously significant factor in individual and group psychology. It's also one that's poorly explored and expressed -- Robert K. Merton's work on latent vs. manifest functions, described as the consequences or implications of systems, tools, ideas, or institutions, is about the closest I've been able to find, and whilst this captures much of the sense I'm trying to convey, it doesn't quite catch all of it. But his work does provide one extraordinarily useful notion, that of the significance of latent functions (or perceptions): <quote> The discovery of latent functions represents significant increments in sociological knowledge. There is another respect in which inquiry into latent functions represents a distinctive contribution of the social scientist. It is precisely the latent functions of a practice or belief which are not common knowlege, for these are unintended and generally unrecognized social and psychological consequences. As a result, findings concerning latent functions represent a greater increment in knowledge than findings concerning manifest functions. They represent, also, greater departures from "common-sense" knowledge about social life. Inasmuch as the latent functions depart, more or less, from the avowed manifestations, the research which uncovers latent functions very often produces "paradoxical" results. The seeming paradox arises from the sharp modification of a familiar popular perception which regards a standardized practice or believe only in terms of its manifest functions by indicating some of its subsidiary or collateral latent functions. The introduction of the concept of latent function in social research leads to conclusions which show that "social life is not as simple as it first seems." For as long as people confine themselves to certain consequences (e.g., manifest consequences), it is comparatively simple for them to pass moral judgements upon the practice or belief in question. </quote> -- Robert K. Merton, "Manifest and Latent Functions", in Social Theory Re-Wired (https://www.worldcat.org/title/social-theory-re-wired-new-connections-to-classical-and-contemporary-perspectives/oclc/946007703 https://www.worldcat.org/title/social-theory-re-wired-new-co...) Emphasis in original.
boomboomsubban 7y ago
For an article seemingly about the dangers of such a product, it sound an awful lot like an advertisement. They mention several influential people involved, had law enforcement agencies rave about how well it worked, included the price point, and free trials are available!
- johanam 7y ago
  Agreed. Anyone who stands to benefit from this company's services are a few clicks away from a trial--and it does not seem they're particularly sensitive to how their system is used.
- pixl97 7y ago
  The fact it works makes it more dangerous.
ausbah 7y ago
"One of the odder pitches, in late 2017, was to Paul Nehlen — an anti-Semite and self-described “pro-white” Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin — to use “unconventional databases” for “extreme opposition research,” according to a document provided to Mr. Nehlen and later posted online." Giving hate groups a greater ability to stalk and harass their victims is also pretty scary.
stareatgoats 7y ago
We as a society are still experimenting with new new-found toys like this in a lawless territory. Similar to how car-traffic was largely unregulated until we realized that traffic rules are really necessary. It is not clear how this will play out though. Is it even possible to hope for a state that doesn't spy on its citizens? I'm not so sure anymore (thanks, all you f-g terrorists). Maybe our struggle has to be to regulate and enforce how the spying is done, and used, and live with the fact that it can be abused before it is corrected. If anyone has a clear view of how such pessimism might be wrong I'll be happy to hear it.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  The terrorists didn't script the reaction of politicians or the people that voted for them. Or if they did, then they've done a grand and thorough job of destroying the freedoms of the West that they find so offensive.
- bamboozled 7y ago
  Why are governments so interested in spying on citizens ? What’s the real motive ?
  - loraa 7y ago
    Because a leftist government knows what is better for you than you do. Sometimes you will need to be monitored so you can keep in line.
  - loraa 7y ago
    If you piece together everything happening in the world and NOT cheer on your political party, it seems like the crazy conspiracy people, gun nuts, and those outside of the box type thinkers have a point. We are being divided and then being asked to restrict other people's freedom because we don't understand it.
  - pixl97 7y ago
    Lots of reasons. Catching tax evasion. Stopping crime. Preventing themselves from getting overthrown by their own citizens. The problem is there are good and bad reasons, but even the good reasons will be corrupted by bad people.
gazoakley 7y ago
I can imagine the EU having a field day with this. Given the scraping of data from other sites, this is clearly processing of PII without explicit consent - it's effectively being used as a biometric identifier too so the rules around sensitive data also apply...
- pinkfoot 7y ago
  If they don't do business in the EU, the DGPR doesn't apply to them. Any more than Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws affect me.
  - 99ps 7y ago
    It’s my understanding that GDPR protects the personal data of EU citizens. Regardless of whether you do business in the EU, if you process this data GDPR applies to you. My guess is that this company has no way to verify that they don’t process EU citizen data. They almost certainly do if they’re scraping so pervasively. And I don’t think they can credibly claim users gave consent let alone all the other rules they need to follow. Looking forward to someone challenging them on this and hopefully the EU taking action. This feels like exactly what GDPR should protect against.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      If a US multinational is handling data ostensibly subject to EU regulations, and using employees in developing countries for the lowest possible cost, they may or may not abide by the letter of EU law, but I think they evade the spirit of the law as a matter of course. There are some senseless "fig leaf" procedures that they use.
    - pinkfoot 7y ago
      The EU might want that, but just today my company collected and passed the personal details of a number of EU citizens to colleagues without their consent. Since the company doesn't do business in the EU, the GDPR can go get knotted. PS. My gay mates have also not decided to go straight just because Uganda outlaws it.
tinman45 7y ago
This illustrates hypocrisy of Silicon Valley.. don’t be evil indeed Peter Thiel funding this, while he demolished Gawker Media, through litigation for his own invasion of privacy. Forget Silicon Valley, we urgently need federal regulation to limit this assault on our privacy (at the very least it can slow down our country’s inevitable decline into a black mirror episode)
- Hamuko 7y ago
  I don't think many people in the valley actually care about being evil.
  - CarelessExpert 7y ago
    I don't think many people in the valley think about it one way or the other. Welcome to our brave new world: techno-utopian utilitarianism, exemplified by the sophomoric philosophies of Zuck and Thiel.
    - samstave 7y ago
      More insidious than they are simply sophomoric
  - cmdshiftf4 7y ago
    >I don't think many people in the valley actually care about being evil. I disagree. I think many care about the evil they're complicit in in their every day working lives there, but they inherently choose the money over good and hence target their "goodness" on espousing their virtuousness on unrelated, seemingly utterly disconnected "issues" from what they're doing and supporting day-to-day.
- jimhi 7y ago
  According to a different article, one of Peter Thiel's 20 under 20 recipients eventually started/run Cleaview. I do not think he knowingly invested in this company.
- aeternum 7y ago
aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
The article summary pretty much highlights that anybody can aggregate public data for personal or commercial use, so Clearview AI is not the only player. Data aggregation and transparency were supposed to be the foundation of open government, but it looks like the citizens (by way of consumerism/capitalism/communism) are the victims of legislated privacy violations by law makers that want nothing to do with transparency. It seems like a conflict of interest if business is pulling the strings of politics. If the citizens pushed harder for a transparent government, other than encryption, what else can they legislate to turn the tables on that debate (ie. No privacy for government is a no go)?
notyourday 7y ago
Was not there a Russian app 4-5 years ago that did something similar? Its premise, if I recall correctly, was to trawl VK/dating app profiles based on photos of people taken on a street. If we are to believe the tests journalists did, it was pretty good considering the app authors just pulled some VK/russian dating app photos Edit: Thanks for downvotes. Here's the article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/russian-photographer-yegor-tsvetkov-identifies-strangers-facial-recognition-app https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/russian-photog... The app is called FindFace
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I am waiting for a government that puts together all the tech we are developing right now and creates the perfect surveillance state. Even in the worst governments like Russia under Stalin, the Nazis or North Korea citizens still have/had the possibility to move around and do things without anyone knowing. That soon may be over.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  Isn't this what the Chinese social credit system already is?
  - microdrum 7y ago
    China + Face++ + Sensetime are doing this. The tech is out there.
imgabe 7y ago
My personal rule: Ignore any news story that uses the word "might". Sure, something might happen. Anything might happen. The news is supposed to tell us things that did happen.
- rwbhn 7y ago
  So, we must always be reactive rather proactive in our responses? I'm personally quite interested in what might be coming, particular ly if the article does a good job of describing driving forces and potential obstacles.
  - imgabe 7y ago
    It's not news, it's speculation and should be noted as such. The opinion section would be an appropriate place for it. If some journalist wants the world to know what their crystal ball says the world is going to be like, they should publish a book, write a blog, whatever. Don't pretend it's journalism. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future.
    - spacegod 7y ago
      Or something like this is a legitimate concern due to its ease of reproductive
- darkerside 7y ago
  The headline is speculative, but the content is factual. By your own standards, you can ignore the headline and read the article.
  - imgabe 7y ago
    News organizations should not be rewarded for outlandish clickbait headlines like this
brobdingnagians 7y ago
> That’s because Facebook and other social media sites prohibit people from scraping users’ images — Clearview is violating the sites’ terms of service. “A lot of people are doing it,” Mr. Ton-That shrugged. “Facebook knows.” The last kind of person on Earth I want making an app like this is someone that doesn't care about terms of service, morality, contracts, or upholding the law. It seems like he just got into it for the money, and has no compunction about unethical behaviour. "Everybody's doing it" is a cliche, and idiotic, response. Don't take any wooden nickels when you sell your soul...
- nyolfen 7y ago
  i’m hoping this story prompts his company getting sued into oblivion. if i were running twitter or fb and suddenly there’s a strong incentive not to post personal photos i’d be rightly alarmed.
  - strathmeyer 7y ago
    Maybe their thinking if the things Facebook or Twitter does with your photos doesn't bother you nothing will
- mnicky 7y ago
  Another one: > Police officers and Clearview’s investors predict that its app will eventually be available to the public. Mr. Ton-That said he was reluctant. “There’s always going to be a community of bad people who will misuse it,” he said. (...) > Asked about the implications of bringing such a power into the world, Mr. Ton-That seemed taken aback. “I have to think about that,” he said. “Our belief is that this is the best use of the technology.” And then read this: > Because the police upload photos of people they’re trying to identify, Clearview possesses a growing database of individuals who have attracted attention from law enforcement. The company also has the ability to manipulate the results that the police see. After the company realized I was asking officers to run my photo through the app, my face was flagged by Clearview’s systems and for a while showed no matches. When asked about this, Mr. Ton-That laughed and called it a “software bug.” Wow. Just wow.
- 7y ago
air7 7y ago
This is/was inevitable. We all know that once technology allows a beneficial behavior you can easily get away with, nothing can stop it. See torrents, ad blocking, reverse-engineering, cracking, etc. But even from a legal/moral perspective, it's not clear where the line is. The data is publicly available, uploaded voluntarily by the people themselves. The algorithms are freely available. People are allowed to take photos... Sure, the end product is creepy, but where along the way did we go too far?
- CarelessExpert 7y ago
  Gathering up personal data without user permission, and then putting it to use in ways not originally intended by those users who provided it. That's when we went too far. This isn't hard. Edit: And as a random aside, I'd be surprised if Clearview wasn't violating copyright law, here. When a person uploads a photo to Facebook, the user grants a license to Facebook. So unless I'm missing something, Clearview is illegally copying and using these works without permission...
  - air7 7y ago
    What precisely is "personal data"? Can a nosey neighbor look out their window and note passersby that they recognize? Can one recognize people whose face they saw somewhere (on TV, on a dating app etc) without "permission". (e.g. "I'm pretty sure I just saw my tinder match going into a bar with someone")? What if someone has a very good memory for faces and a curiosity to match? What if someone employ scouts to report when they spot certain people? What if someone automate these processes? Where is the line between private informatio and publicly available raw data such as photons bouncing off people's faces?
    - CarelessExpert 7y ago
      At risk of violating HN's policy: it's this kind of sophistry that allows tech employees and entrepreneurs to justify their predatory behaviour... bend over backwards hard enough and you can find the logic to justify nearly anything. Let's try it! How do you define a biological weapon? If I know I'm sick and I deliberately sneeze on people, am I a weapon? If I pay people with an illness to sneeze on people, is that a weapon? What if I cultivate smallpox in a lab and spread it with an aerosol sprayer instead of using human carriers? Where is the line on what is a biological weapon? Where along the way did we go too far?
newscracker 7y ago
This company has too much power to fake and manipulate things in different ways. It’s just a matter of time for false positives that crush the already vulnerable people. The level of abuse people can (and will) be subjected to is going to be horrendous. Without regulations, laws and audits, everyone is screwed. Oh yeah, even law enforcement is screwed if/when it blindly believes in these systems and considers them fool proof and beyond suspicion. Creepview — now, that’s my name for this company. It also makes sense that Peter Thiel put money into it.
samoa42 7y ago
can we prettyplease stop posting paywalled stuff?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
oefrha 7y ago
> His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants. This doesn’t sound groundbreaking all and I’d be very surprised if FBI/NSA/DHS/Palantir didn’t already have a system like that. Maybe they were just reserved for higher-value targets. Of course, NSA isn’t gonna tell you what it has constructed until decades later, so claiming that this goes far beyond NSA capabilities is reckless at best and clueless at worst.
- muro 7y ago
  This was in "Better off Ted" - search by a photo of someone to find all online photos of the same. There was a great comment by another scientist on the team: "we finally killed privacy!"
- jslabovitz 7y ago
  What’s groundbreaking here is not really the technology but rather the marketing: Clearview is selling a relatively cheap product to law enforcement agencies who are desperate to solve cases at the lowest cost. I think we (both here at HN and in the larger society) have this perception that police departments, etc., are part of a well-organized hierarchy of well-considered processes and technology that start at the FBI/NSA/etc and works its way down, all carefully vetted for technical and ethical standards, and disclosed to the public who is ostensibly their employer. The reality that I’ve seen is quite different. As the article points out, individual police departments (and their officers!) often independently research and procure services, based on hearsay and questionable morals. Does the service help ‘get the bad guys’? Then it’s good. Does the service obviously violate copyright and ToS agreements? Not our problem. I learned this when I built a scrappy little website for a one-man company who builds training kits for first responders. As low-tech as this site was (e.g., ordering the product entailed sending a purchase order by postal mail) I was struck by the apparent success of my client’s product: he had dozens of endorsements by apparently top-level influencers in the field, and didn’t have much competition. There were some certifications that he matched, but it didn’t seem all that hard to sell a few thousand dollars of technology to small/mid-level LEOs. (This isn’t a criticism of his product, which seemed fine and certainly didn’t involve privacy or surveillance technology.) The numbers in the article about Clearview’s services are in the same range — easy to justify if it’s only a few thousand a year and apparently produces good results.
oxymoran 7y ago
We have already reached the point of no return unfortunately. The only option at this point is to open source and normalize this tech somehow so that everybody has access to it.
- microdrum 7y ago
  Right. I mean, cameras are everywhere. Probably, computers will look at and parse their feeds, not just slow humans with eyeballs. Better this than Sensetime.
ENOTTY 7y ago
The social media companies might be able to buy some good press by suing this company, its founders, its investors, and its employees into oblivion for terms of service violations. On the other hand, it would push copycats into developing alternative business models to capture the demand while still hiding from civil legal action. And there’s wider societal costs from potentially chilling innovation like this through the social media companies acting like a trust.
paulcnichols 7y ago
The counterpart to this dystopian future is other people taking photos/video without your consent. Just as a social norm I wish that was illegal first, and if it already is, enforced more. Apple and android should blur faces by default until other people explicitly give consent to be photographed. That's the future I want to see.
usaar333 7y ago
Lots of discussion on ethics (important!), but little in actual metrics. What actually are the precision and recall of systems that search over faces of the entire national population? I would have thought enough people look similar that precision would be inherently low (even as a human it is occasionally hard to tell people apart in photos), but the claims here (and in similar articles NYT has had on Chinese companies doing similar things) is implying near perfect numbers.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I remember reading how some Chinese company was using face recognition on livestock (chickens maybe?), which (although this might be human centric) seem far less diverse in appearance than humans.
qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
In their TOS 3,2 They specifically prohibit on their site the very Thing they’re doing to others.
throwaway13337 7y ago
As this has been and will be inevitable given the tech, it's not a question of regulation as so many call for. Regulation will just put this tech in a small group of hands to imbalance the power of probably government versus citizen. The only way to deal with this is to recognize that privacy in public spaces was a temporary concept in society available for a limited period. Allow everyone this information and let the cards fall in a more balanced way. Anything else would be oppression.
- bem94 7y ago
  > privacy was a temporary concept in society available for a limited period Maybe, maybe not. But it's an easy and incongruous thing to say from a throwaway account. Even easier if your life and/or livelihood doesn't depend on a degree of personal privacy.
raldi 7y ago
Even if we ban it here in the US, there's nothing stopping adversarial foreign governments from building the same databases, and probably with a lot more computing power and technical expertise.
- ardy42 7y ago
  > Even if we ban it here in the US, there's nothing stopping adversarial foreign governments from building the same databases, and probably with a lot more computing power and technical expertise. You make a good point, a simple ban of this technology isn't good enough. The ban needs to go further, to ban the kinds of things that enable the technology, like massive databases that aggregate people's personal photos or surveillance video.
  - aeternum 7y ago
    The bans would have to be quite extensive. You could not allow networked security camera systems like nest/ring. No social networks could exist, no personal video sharing. Even governmental databases of photo IDs and company photo IDs pose a risk given this technology. Always a chance of a data leak or bad actor. There does not seem to be a feasible way to stop this. We may simply need to accept that a face will be enough to positively ID anyone.
dbroockman 7y ago
Holy shit, this quote is crazy: > While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  Sadly, it reminds me of all the stories of authorities using databases for stalking women they're interested in, or people they have a personal grudge against, or whatever. https://nypost.com/2019/03/11/sergeant-used-police-databases-as-personal-dating-service-to-target-150-women-chief/ https://nypost.com/2019/03/11/sergeant-used-police-databases... https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police-officers-abused-databases-stalk-lovers-journalists-enemies-ap-finds https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police-office... https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-across-us-police-officers-abuse-confidential-databases https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-acros...
  - tartoran 7y ago
    This is a valid concern, it aleady happens and nothing stops if from happening in the future
- sethx 7y ago
  I came here to post this. You beat me to it. What's appalling here is that Clearview is playing in God mode, monitoring and acting on what Law Enforcement is doing, IN THEIR OWN INTEREST, without any oversight. The potential for this to backfire is astronomical
morisy 7y ago
More background, including access to the public records requests that led to this investigation: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2020/jan/18/clearview-ai-facial-recogniton-records/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2020/jan/18/clearview...
RiOuseR 7y ago
News headline seems a little sensationalist to me
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rolph 7y ago
the look that clearview has cultivated is at best clandestine and might even be criminal it is telling about the attitudes of law enforcement that they skirt prohibitions of firstparty use of facial recognition by consorting with an entity such as clearview
caconym_ 7y ago
Is this unique? I feel like there are many companies providing this sort of surveillance/data-scraping aggregation and indexing functionality to law enforcement and TLAs. We just don’t hear about them too often because we are not their customers. Our government has abandoned us, and total surveillance is the future unless something radical changes. Fun tip: get an old analog radio, like in an old non-connected car or a boombox or walkman or clock radio or something, go somewhere quiet and private, and listen to whatever you want. And realize that nobody knows what you’re listening to—it’s your secret. I find this to be a strangely powerful experience.
- tim333 7y ago
  The Russians have had a service to find people on their Facebook equivalent since 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace
analbumcover 7y ago
I would hazard a guess that this will lead to more anti-mask laws since politicians, who love appearing tough on crime, will view anyone wearing a mask as a likely criminal. Which will probably decrease crime but also effectively eliminate any checks on state power. How has this guy not been targeted by organized crime groups already?
tus88 7y ago
I guarantee you this has already been invented many times over by intelligence agencies around the world.
xupybd 7y ago
Can we protect our selves by spacing fake accounts with our image? Could that confuse these systems?
lucas_membrane 7y ago
This loss of privacy is just another consequence of our perpetual focus on and devotion to competition against each other -- everything gets weaponized. Privacy hinders the real game-changer, the weaponization of you.
thomzi12 7y ago
How did Clearview scrape so much of Facebook? Is this fundamentally hard for Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. to stop if someone determined wants to suck in photos for a tool like this?
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.md/jQIrw http://archive.md/jQIrw
raldi 7y ago
How is this not a massive copyright violation? When I upload a photo to, say, Instagram, I know I’m granting them a perpetual license to do basically anything with my photo, but scrapers don’t inherit those rights.
- bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
  The article does say what Ton-That did violates most sites' TOS. It's now up to the sites to take legal action against him.
  - microdrum 7y ago
    I mean, it's a search engine right? Google scrapes Facebook at global scale.
    - raldi 7y ago
      No it doesn’t. Google honors Facebook’s robots.txt, which excludes basically all the valuable data. It’s why they blew billions trying to get us all to switch to Google+.
      - microdrum 7y ago
        That's so weird because I see text and images from fb domains in google search results all the time. Likewise LinkedIn.
        raldi 7y ago
        https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/28337/can-google-crawl-facebook-pages https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/28337/can-goo...
        microdrum 7y ago
        Your link supports my statement.
macinjosh 7y ago
The only thing scarier to me than a government or a corporation performing surveillance is when they do it together.
- geggam 7y ago
  Internet marketing companies already sell data to the govt. That horse left the barn years ago
geggam 7y ago
I have often wondered if you form an LLC and sign over the rights to your DNA / looks / et al to said LLC contractually are you more protected in todays society ?
haskellandchill 7y ago
Oh I know Hoan. At least he isn't alt-right any more. I think he has matured and is a decent guy. It's just commodity technology, but it is going to make him rich. shrug Cool.
blorgons 7y ago
Ton-That was a scammer, reported on by Thiel's nemesis Gawker, and an HN poster (hi!) https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hoan https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hoan https://gawker.com/tag/hoan-ton-that https://gawker.com/tag/hoan-ton-that

369 points by johanam 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Gatsky 7y ago

If Clearview profits from having your photo in their database, don’t you deserve compensation?

Proven 7y ago
If you "profit" (by saving time that you'd otherwise need to go to a brick-and-mortar store) by viewing a new product on Amazon.com, does Amazon deserve compensation? If somebody took your photo in a public place, why should you deserve compensation?
- Gatsky 7y ago
  I think this analogy isn’t very illuminating. In the case of Clearview the photo is the product. For public place photos, the photographer has rights to the photo. Anyway, most of the photos on social media are not these public place photos.
o-__-o 7y ago
What is the value of your photo? That is the compensation you deserve. So what’s that worth, $2? It’s the aggregate that provides value to the business
- nocturnial 7y ago
  If two parties can't decide on the value, I would think it's only natural there would be no transaction. If I set the value of my photo at $2 million and company X sets it at $0.20, am I forced to sell it at $0.20? If two people can't decide on a valuation it's only fair there's no transaction.
  - o-__-o 7y ago
    Depends. If it is your photo, then you own the copyright and you entirely have the right to set a price or not share it at all (don't click 'I agree' on those TOS) If it is not your photo, then unless you are a celebrity or otherwise a famous figure the law is quite clear that you do not have any recourse for your photo being used. You must use the courts to determine the valuation of your likeness.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    If you own a share of stock whose market price is $10, and someone buys the company for $20, you can't personally refuse to sell for under $50. You will, typically, be cashed out on a certain date without any action on your part. In the past, I've run into people who just won't believe this.
- Gatsky 7y ago
  The only question is whether the value is > 0. If so, then Clearview are vulnerable to legal challenge. The final step of identifying people involves actual individual photos, and these photos are displayed to the police officer. It is not just the aggregate.
imgabe 7y ago
Where did they get your photo? Did they get it from Facebook? You probably agreed to let Facebook share it with whoever they want when you uploaded it there. Is it a photo of you in a public place? People are not usually entitled to compensation for that.
- 1996 7y ago
  You took the picture with your phone? You own the copyrights. You can issue a DMCA takedown if someone illegally copy your copyrighted creation and profits from it.
  - incompatible 7y ago
    I don't think they'd meet the requirements to be covered by the DMCA safe harbor, i.e., being unaware of the infringing material and not receiving financial benefit. However, they may be able to try a "fair use" defence, since they aren't republishing the photos.
darkerside 7y ago
This is a great question. For all the trouble (and it's not much) that CCPA has caused me at work, it would totally be with it if it ends up destroying unethical, unregulated sham companies like this one.

rahuldottech 7y ago

I'm not okay with this - and you shouldn't be either. It's only a matter of time before it gets and misused/abused - to identify protestors, for law enforcement officers' personal uses, to identify those doing legal things deemed "immoral" (see: China), etc. We really need regulation here. Urgently. The US appears to have been the leader in such regulation in the past. The problem is, they don't do that anymore. They haven't passed any laws related to user rights or privacy in a long time, and are actively trying to make encryption illegal. The same is true for the Australian government, and those of several developing nations. We can hope that the EU does something, but... the impact will be limited. It's especially bad for people living in non-first-world countries like India where the citizens aren't educated on the consequences of law enforcement agencies using tech like this. Laws taking away the right to privacy are being pushed through regularly. Recently they've started using facial recognition to identify protestors: https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are-using-facial-recognition-to-identify-protestors-in-delhi https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are-using... I really wish that some leading tech companies would try and push regulation through, but that will never happen since apparently privacy erosion and constant user tracking is critical for revenue for seemingly all of them (except Apple, I suppose). Also, even if somehow regulations were put in place that made it necessary for websites to try and protect user data and made it illegal to scrape PII, there's nothing stopping government agencies from developing tools like these for themselves. Aaaand we go back to the first paragraph of this comment. This is a sad state of affairs.

johanam 7y ago
It seems that the EU is considering temporarily banning facial recognition in public for 5 years: https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition-european-union-temporary-ban-privacy-ethics-regulation/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition... But surprisingly a Pew Research [1] study recently found that more than half of Americans trust law enforcement with facial recognition tech. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition-police-law-enforcement-surveillance-privacy-pew-research-survey/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition...
- 7y ago

acqq 7y ago

> While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for. Like in the movies.

kbos87 7y ago

I’ve been waiting to see this story and this company show up. It has felt inevitable and it’s sad that it’s being allowed to happen. How long will it be before the Ring cameras on every block feed into a real-time database where anyone can figure out where anyone else is, track their movements, and monitor their every moment? Facial recognition is a bigger threat to our current way of life than just about anything else I can fathom other than climate change or nuclear war. The scariest part is that few people seem to recognize or care about the risk.

bonoboTP 7y ago
People freak out when it's based on cameras and faces because it triggers some ancient "being watched" reactions in us. But when it's based on phone GPS, wifi networks etc., then people are fine with it. And that type of tracking is very possible for many years now through smartphones. But it feels less viscerally spooky.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  I can go somewhere without my phone. My face essentially has to be visible. I'll agree that people should be more spooked out by phone tracking, but facial scanning is spookier.
- JohnStrangeII 7y ago
  It's because you can leave your phone at home but not your face.
  - analbumcover 7y ago
    Maybe this will lead to a Face/Off type scenario.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  In addition to the fact that your phone is separable in ways your face, Nick Cage and John Travolta excepted, is not, there's the notion of manifest versus latent (or tangible vs. intangible) perceptions. Humans are visual creatures. To "see" is synymous with "to understand". Vision is a high-fidelity sense, in ways that even other senses (hearing, smell, taste, touch) are not. And all our senses are more immediate than perceptions mediated by devices (as with radiation or magnetism) or delivered via symbols, data, or maths. This is a tremendously significant factor in individual and group psychology. It's also one that's poorly explored and expressed -- Robert K. Merton's work on latent vs. manifest functions, described as the consequences or implications of systems, tools, ideas, or institutions, is about the closest I've been able to find, and whilst this captures much of the sense I'm trying to convey, it doesn't quite catch all of it. But his work does provide one extraordinarily useful notion, that of the significance of latent functions (or perceptions): <quote> The discovery of latent functions represents significant increments in sociological knowledge. There is another respect in which inquiry into latent functions represents a distinctive contribution of the social scientist. It is precisely the latent functions of a practice or belief which are not common knowlege, for these are unintended and generally unrecognized social and psychological consequences. As a result, findings concerning latent functions represent a greater increment in knowledge than findings concerning manifest functions. They represent, also, greater departures from "common-sense" knowledge about social life. Inasmuch as the latent functions depart, more or less, from the avowed manifestations, the research which uncovers latent functions very often produces "paradoxical" results. The seeming paradox arises from the sharp modification of a familiar popular perception which regards a standardized practice or believe only in terms of its manifest functions by indicating some of its subsidiary or collateral latent functions. The introduction of the concept of latent function in social research leads to conclusions which show that "social life is not as simple as it first seems." For as long as people confine themselves to certain consequences (e.g., manifest consequences), it is comparatively simple for them to pass moral judgements upon the practice or belief in question. </quote> -- Robert K. Merton, "Manifest and Latent Functions", in Social Theory Re-Wired (https://www.worldcat.org/title/social-theory-re-wired-new-connections-to-classical-and-contemporary-perspectives/oclc/946007703 https://www.worldcat.org/title/social-theory-re-wired-new-co...) Emphasis in original.

boomboomsubban 7y ago

For an article seemingly about the dangers of such a product, it sound an awful lot like an advertisement. They mention several influential people involved, had law enforcement agencies rave about how well it worked, included the price point, and free trials are available!

johanam 7y ago
Agreed. Anyone who stands to benefit from this company's services are a few clicks away from a trial--and it does not seem they're particularly sensitive to how their system is used.
pixl97 7y ago
The fact it works makes it more dangerous.

ausbah 7y ago

"One of the odder pitches, in late 2017, was to Paul Nehlen — an anti-Semite and self-described “pro-white” Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin — to use “unconventional databases” for “extreme opposition research,” according to a document provided to Mr. Nehlen and later posted online." Giving hate groups a greater ability to stalk and harass their victims is also pretty scary.

stareatgoats 7y ago

We as a society are still experimenting with new new-found toys like this in a lawless territory. Similar to how car-traffic was largely unregulated until we realized that traffic rules are really necessary. It is not clear how this will play out though. Is it even possible to hope for a state that doesn't spy on its citizens? I'm not so sure anymore (thanks, all you f-g terrorists). Maybe our struggle has to be to regulate and enforce how the spying is done, and used, and live with the fact that it can be abused before it is corrected. If anyone has a clear view of how such pessimism might be wrong I'll be happy to hear it.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago
The terrorists didn't script the reaction of politicians or the people that voted for them. Or if they did, then they've done a grand and thorough job of destroying the freedoms of the West that they find so offensive.
bamboozled 7y ago
Why are governments so interested in spying on citizens ? What’s the real motive ?
- loraa 7y ago
  Because a leftist government knows what is better for you than you do. Sometimes you will need to be monitored so you can keep in line.
- loraa 7y ago
  If you piece together everything happening in the world and NOT cheer on your political party, it seems like the crazy conspiracy people, gun nuts, and those outside of the box type thinkers have a point. We are being divided and then being asked to restrict other people's freedom because we don't understand it.
- pixl97 7y ago
  Lots of reasons. Catching tax evasion. Stopping crime. Preventing themselves from getting overthrown by their own citizens. The problem is there are good and bad reasons, but even the good reasons will be corrupted by bad people.

gazoakley 7y ago

I can imagine the EU having a field day with this. Given the scraping of data from other sites, this is clearly processing of PII without explicit consent - it's effectively being used as a biometric identifier too so the rules around sensitive data also apply...

pinkfoot 7y ago
If they don't do business in the EU, the DGPR doesn't apply to them. Any more than Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws affect me.
- 99ps 7y ago
  It’s my understanding that GDPR protects the personal data of EU citizens. Regardless of whether you do business in the EU, if you process this data GDPR applies to you. My guess is that this company has no way to verify that they don’t process EU citizen data. They almost certainly do if they’re scraping so pervasively. And I don’t think they can credibly claim users gave consent let alone all the other rules they need to follow. Looking forward to someone challenging them on this and hopefully the EU taking action. This feels like exactly what GDPR should protect against.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    If a US multinational is handling data ostensibly subject to EU regulations, and using employees in developing countries for the lowest possible cost, they may or may not abide by the letter of EU law, but I think they evade the spirit of the law as a matter of course. There are some senseless "fig leaf" procedures that they use.
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    The EU might want that, but just today my company collected and passed the personal details of a number of EU citizens to colleagues without their consent. Since the company doesn't do business in the EU, the GDPR can go get knotted. PS. My gay mates have also not decided to go straight just because Uganda outlaws it.

tinman45 7y ago

This illustrates hypocrisy of Silicon Valley.. don’t be evil indeed Peter Thiel funding this, while he demolished Gawker Media, through litigation for his own invasion of privacy. Forget Silicon Valley, we urgently need federal regulation to limit this assault on our privacy (at the very least it can slow down our country’s inevitable decline into a black mirror episode)

Hamuko 7y ago
I don't think many people in the valley actually care about being evil.
- CarelessExpert 7y ago
  I don't think many people in the valley think about it one way or the other. Welcome to our brave new world: techno-utopian utilitarianism, exemplified by the sophomoric philosophies of Zuck and Thiel.
  - samstave 7y ago
    More insidious than they are simply sophomoric
- cmdshiftf4 7y ago
  >I don't think many people in the valley actually care about being evil. I disagree. I think many care about the evil they're complicit in in their every day working lives there, but they inherently choose the money over good and hence target their "goodness" on espousing their virtuousness on unrelated, seemingly utterly disconnected "issues" from what they're doing and supporting day-to-day.
jimhi 7y ago
According to a different article, one of Peter Thiel's 20 under 20 recipients eventually started/run Cleaview. I do not think he knowingly invested in this company.
aeternum 7y ago

aSplash0fDerp 7y ago

The article summary pretty much highlights that anybody can aggregate public data for personal or commercial use, so Clearview AI is not the only player. Data aggregation and transparency were supposed to be the foundation of open government, but it looks like the citizens (by way of consumerism/capitalism/communism) are the victims of legislated privacy violations by law makers that want nothing to do with transparency. It seems like a conflict of interest if business is pulling the strings of politics. If the citizens pushed harder for a transparent government, other than encryption, what else can they legislate to turn the tables on that debate (ie. No privacy for government is a no go)?

notyourday 7y ago

Was not there a Russian app 4-5 years ago that did something similar? Its premise, if I recall correctly, was to trawl VK/dating app profiles based on photos of people taken on a street. If we are to believe the tests journalists did, it was pretty good considering the app authors just pulled some VK/russian dating app photos Edit: Thanks for downvotes. Here's the article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/russian-photographer-yegor-tsvetkov-identifies-strangers-facial-recognition-app https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/russian-photog... The app is called FindFace

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I am waiting for a government that puts together all the tech we are developing right now and creates the perfect surveillance state. Even in the worst governments like Russia under Stalin, the Nazis or North Korea citizens still have/had the possibility to move around and do things without anyone knowing. That soon may be over.

IggleSniggle 7y ago
Isn't this what the Chinese social credit system already is?
- microdrum 7y ago
  China + Face++ + Sensetime are doing this. The tech is out there.

imgabe 7y ago

My personal rule: Ignore any news story that uses the word "might". Sure, something might happen. Anything might happen. The news is supposed to tell us things that did happen.

rwbhn 7y ago
So, we must always be reactive rather proactive in our responses? I'm personally quite interested in what might be coming, particular ly if the article does a good job of describing driving forces and potential obstacles.
- imgabe 7y ago
  It's not news, it's speculation and should be noted as such. The opinion section would be an appropriate place for it. If some journalist wants the world to know what their crystal ball says the world is going to be like, they should publish a book, write a blog, whatever. Don't pretend it's journalism. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future.
  - spacegod 7y ago
    Or something like this is a legitimate concern due to its ease of reproductive
darkerside 7y ago
The headline is speculative, but the content is factual. By your own standards, you can ignore the headline and read the article.
- imgabe 7y ago
  News organizations should not be rewarded for outlandish clickbait headlines like this

brobdingnagians 7y ago

> That’s because Facebook and other social media sites prohibit people from scraping users’ images — Clearview is violating the sites’ terms of service. “A lot of people are doing it,” Mr. Ton-That shrugged. “Facebook knows.” The last kind of person on Earth I want making an app like this is someone that doesn't care about terms of service, morality, contracts, or upholding the law. It seems like he just got into it for the money, and has no compunction about unethical behaviour. "Everybody's doing it" is a cliche, and idiotic, response. Don't take any wooden nickels when you sell your soul...

nyolfen 7y ago
i’m hoping this story prompts his company getting sued into oblivion. if i were running twitter or fb and suddenly there’s a strong incentive not to post personal photos i’d be rightly alarmed.
- strathmeyer 7y ago
  Maybe their thinking if the things Facebook or Twitter does with your photos doesn't bother you nothing will
mnicky 7y ago
Another one: > Police officers and Clearview’s investors predict that its app will eventually be available to the public. Mr. Ton-That said he was reluctant. “There’s always going to be a community of bad people who will misuse it,” he said. (...) > Asked about the implications of bringing such a power into the world, Mr. Ton-That seemed taken aback. “I have to think about that,” he said. “Our belief is that this is the best use of the technology.” And then read this: > Because the police upload photos of people they’re trying to identify, Clearview possesses a growing database of individuals who have attracted attention from law enforcement. The company also has the ability to manipulate the results that the police see. After the company realized I was asking officers to run my photo through the app, my face was flagged by Clearview’s systems and for a while showed no matches. When asked about this, Mr. Ton-That laughed and called it a “software bug.” Wow. Just wow.
7y ago

air7 7y ago

This is/was inevitable. We all know that once technology allows a beneficial behavior you can easily get away with, nothing can stop it. See torrents, ad blocking, reverse-engineering, cracking, etc. But even from a legal/moral perspective, it's not clear where the line is. The data is publicly available, uploaded voluntarily by the people themselves. The algorithms are freely available. People are allowed to take photos... Sure, the end product is creepy, but where along the way did we go too far?

CarelessExpert 7y ago
Gathering up personal data without user permission, and then putting it to use in ways not originally intended by those users who provided it. That's when we went too far. This isn't hard. Edit: And as a random aside, I'd be surprised if Clearview wasn't violating copyright law, here. When a person uploads a photo to Facebook, the user grants a license to Facebook. So unless I'm missing something, Clearview is illegally copying and using these works without permission...
- air7 7y ago
  What precisely is "personal data"? Can a nosey neighbor look out their window and note passersby that they recognize? Can one recognize people whose face they saw somewhere (on TV, on a dating app etc) without "permission". (e.g. "I'm pretty sure I just saw my tinder match going into a bar with someone")? What if someone has a very good memory for faces and a curiosity to match? What if someone employ scouts to report when they spot certain people? What if someone automate these processes? Where is the line between private informatio and publicly available raw data such as photons bouncing off people's faces?
  - CarelessExpert 7y ago
    At risk of violating HN's policy: it's this kind of sophistry that allows tech employees and entrepreneurs to justify their predatory behaviour... bend over backwards hard enough and you can find the logic to justify nearly anything. Let's try it! How do you define a biological weapon? If I know I'm sick and I deliberately sneeze on people, am I a weapon? If I pay people with an illness to sneeze on people, is that a weapon? What if I cultivate smallpox in a lab and spread it with an aerosol sprayer instead of using human carriers? Where is the line on what is a biological weapon? Where along the way did we go too far?

newscracker 7y ago

This company has too much power to fake and manipulate things in different ways. It’s just a matter of time for false positives that crush the already vulnerable people. The level of abuse people can (and will) be subjected to is going to be horrendous. Without regulations, laws and audits, everyone is screwed. Oh yeah, even law enforcement is screwed if/when it blindly believes in these systems and considers them fool proof and beyond suspicion. Creepview — now, that’s my name for this company. It also makes sense that Peter Thiel put money into it.

samoa42 7y ago

can we prettyplease stop posting paywalled stuff?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

oefrha 7y ago

> His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants. This doesn’t sound groundbreaking all and I’d be very surprised if FBI/NSA/DHS/Palantir didn’t already have a system like that. Maybe they were just reserved for higher-value targets. Of course, NSA isn’t gonna tell you what it has constructed until decades later, so claiming that this goes far beyond NSA capabilities is reckless at best and clueless at worst.

muro 7y ago
This was in "Better off Ted" - search by a photo of someone to find all online photos of the same. There was a great comment by another scientist on the team: "we finally killed privacy!"
jslabovitz 7y ago
What’s groundbreaking here is not really the technology but rather the marketing: Clearview is selling a relatively cheap product to law enforcement agencies who are desperate to solve cases at the lowest cost. I think we (both here at HN and in the larger society) have this perception that police departments, etc., are part of a well-organized hierarchy of well-considered processes and technology that start at the FBI/NSA/etc and works its way down, all carefully vetted for technical and ethical standards, and disclosed to the public who is ostensibly their employer. The reality that I’ve seen is quite different. As the article points out, individual police departments (and their officers!) often independently research and procure services, based on hearsay and questionable morals. Does the service help ‘get the bad guys’? Then it’s good. Does the service obviously violate copyright and ToS agreements? Not our problem. I learned this when I built a scrappy little website for a one-man company who builds training kits for first responders. As low-tech as this site was (e.g., ordering the product entailed sending a purchase order by postal mail) I was struck by the apparent success of my client’s product: he had dozens of endorsements by apparently top-level influencers in the field, and didn’t have much competition. There were some certifications that he matched, but it didn’t seem all that hard to sell a few thousand dollars of technology to small/mid-level LEOs. (This isn’t a criticism of his product, which seemed fine and certainly didn’t involve privacy or surveillance technology.) The numbers in the article about Clearview’s services are in the same range — easy to justify if it’s only a few thousand a year and apparently produces good results.

oxymoran 7y ago

We have already reached the point of no return unfortunately. The only option at this point is to open source and normalize this tech somehow so that everybody has access to it.

microdrum 7y ago
Right. I mean, cameras are everywhere. Probably, computers will look at and parse their feeds, not just slow humans with eyeballs. Better this than Sensetime.

ENOTTY 7y ago

The social media companies might be able to buy some good press by suing this company, its founders, its investors, and its employees into oblivion for terms of service violations. On the other hand, it would push copycats into developing alternative business models to capture the demand while still hiding from civil legal action. And there’s wider societal costs from potentially chilling innovation like this through the social media companies acting like a trust.

paulcnichols 7y ago

The counterpart to this dystopian future is other people taking photos/video without your consent. Just as a social norm I wish that was illegal first, and if it already is, enforced more. Apple and android should blur faces by default until other people explicitly give consent to be photographed. That's the future I want to see.

usaar333 7y ago

Lots of discussion on ethics (important!), but little in actual metrics. What actually are the precision and recall of systems that search over faces of the entire national population? I would have thought enough people look similar that precision would be inherently low (even as a human it is occasionally hard to tell people apart in photos), but the claims here (and in similar articles NYT has had on Chinese companies doing similar things) is implying near perfect numbers.

perl4ever 7y ago
I remember reading how some Chinese company was using face recognition on livestock (chickens maybe?), which (although this might be human centric) seem far less diverse in appearance than humans.

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago

In their TOS 3,2 They specifically prohibit on their site the very Thing they’re doing to others.

throwaway13337 7y ago

As this has been and will be inevitable given the tech, it's not a question of regulation as so many call for. Regulation will just put this tech in a small group of hands to imbalance the power of probably government versus citizen. The only way to deal with this is to recognize that privacy in public spaces was a temporary concept in society available for a limited period. Allow everyone this information and let the cards fall in a more balanced way. Anything else would be oppression.

bem94 7y ago
> privacy was a temporary concept in society available for a limited period Maybe, maybe not. But it's an easy and incongruous thing to say from a throwaway account. Even easier if your life and/or livelihood doesn't depend on a degree of personal privacy.

raldi 7y ago

Even if we ban it here in the US, there's nothing stopping adversarial foreign governments from building the same databases, and probably with a lot more computing power and technical expertise.

ardy42 7y ago
> Even if we ban it here in the US, there's nothing stopping adversarial foreign governments from building the same databases, and probably with a lot more computing power and technical expertise. You make a good point, a simple ban of this technology isn't good enough. The ban needs to go further, to ban the kinds of things that enable the technology, like massive databases that aggregate people's personal photos or surveillance video.
- aeternum 7y ago
  The bans would have to be quite extensive. You could not allow networked security camera systems like nest/ring. No social networks could exist, no personal video sharing. Even governmental databases of photo IDs and company photo IDs pose a risk given this technology. Always a chance of a data leak or bad actor. There does not seem to be a feasible way to stop this. We may simply need to accept that a face will be enough to positively ID anyone.

dbroockman 7y ago

Holy shit, this quote is crazy: > While the company was dodging me, it was also monitoring me. At my request, a number of police officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability and, in this case, the appetite to monitor whom law enforcement is searching for.

wallace_f 7y ago
Sadly, it reminds me of all the stories of authorities using databases for stalking women they're interested in, or people they have a personal grudge against, or whatever. https://nypost.com/2019/03/11/sergeant-used-police-databases-as-personal-dating-service-to-target-150-women-chief/ https://nypost.com/2019/03/11/sergeant-used-police-databases... https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police-officers-abused-databases-stalk-lovers-journalists-enemies-ap-finds https://theweek.com/speedreads/651668/hundreds-police-office... https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-across-us-police-officers-abuse-confidential-databases https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-acros...
- tartoran 7y ago
  This is a valid concern, it aleady happens and nothing stops if from happening in the future
sethx 7y ago
I came here to post this. You beat me to it. What's appalling here is that Clearview is playing in God mode, monitoring and acting on what Law Enforcement is doing, IN THEIR OWN INTEREST, without any oversight. The potential for this to backfire is astronomical

morisy 7y ago

More background, including access to the public records requests that led to this investigation: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2020/jan/18/clearview-ai-facial-recogniton-records/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2020/jan/18/clearview...

RiOuseR 7y ago

News headline seems a little sensationalist to me

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rolph 7y ago

the look that clearview has cultivated is at best clandestine and might even be criminal it is telling about the attitudes of law enforcement that they skirt prohibitions of firstparty use of facial recognition by consorting with an entity such as clearview

caconym_ 7y ago

Is this unique? I feel like there are many companies providing this sort of surveillance/data-scraping aggregation and indexing functionality to law enforcement and TLAs. We just don’t hear about them too often because we are not their customers. Our government has abandoned us, and total surveillance is the future unless something radical changes. Fun tip: get an old analog radio, like in an old non-connected car or a boombox or walkman or clock radio or something, go somewhere quiet and private, and listen to whatever you want. And realize that nobody knows what you’re listening to—it’s your secret. I find this to be a strangely powerful experience.

tim333 7y ago
The Russians have had a service to find people on their Facebook equivalent since 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace

analbumcover 7y ago

I would hazard a guess that this will lead to more anti-mask laws since politicians, who love appearing tough on crime, will view anyone wearing a mask as a likely criminal. Which will probably decrease crime but also effectively eliminate any checks on state power. How has this guy not been targeted by organized crime groups already?

tus88 7y ago

I guarantee you this has already been invented many times over by intelligence agencies around the world.

xupybd 7y ago

Can we protect our selves by spacing fake accounts with our image? Could that confuse these systems?

lucas_membrane 7y ago

This loss of privacy is just another consequence of our perpetual focus on and devotion to competition against each other -- everything gets weaponized. Privacy hinders the real game-changer, the weaponization of you.

thomzi12 7y ago

How did Clearview scrape so much of Facebook? Is this fundamentally hard for Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. to stop if someone determined wants to suck in photos for a tool like this?

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.md/jQIrw http://archive.md/jQIrw

raldi 7y ago

How is this not a massive copyright violation? When I upload a photo to, say, Instagram, I know I’m granting them a perpetual license to do basically anything with my photo, but scrapers don’t inherit those rights.

bobbylarrybobby 7y ago
The article does say what Ton-That did violates most sites' TOS. It's now up to the sites to take legal action against him.
- microdrum 7y ago
  I mean, it's a search engine right? Google scrapes Facebook at global scale.
  - raldi 7y ago
    No it doesn’t. Google honors Facebook’s robots.txt, which excludes basically all the valuable data. It’s why they blew billions trying to get us all to switch to Google+.
    - microdrum 7y ago
      That's so weird because I see text and images from fb domains in google search results all the time. Likewise LinkedIn.
      - raldi 7y ago
        https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/28337/can-google-crawl-facebook-pages https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/28337/can-goo...
        microdrum 7y ago
        Your link supports my statement.

macinjosh 7y ago

The only thing scarier to me than a government or a corporation performing surveillance is when they do it together.

geggam 7y ago
Internet marketing companies already sell data to the govt. That horse left the barn years ago

geggam 7y ago

I have often wondered if you form an LLC and sign over the rights to your DNA / looks / et al to said LLC contractually are you more protected in todays society ?

haskellandchill 7y ago

Oh I know Hoan. At least he isn't alt-right any more. I think he has matured and is a decent guy. It's just commodity technology, but it is going to make him rich. shrug Cool.

blorgons 7y ago

Ton-That was a scammer, reported on by Thiel's nemesis Gawker, and an HN poster (hi!) https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hoan https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hoan https://gawker.com/tag/hoan-ton-that https://gawker.com/tag/hoan-ton-that