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Clearview AI is struggling to address complaints as its legal issues mount
- sschueller 7y agoHow many clearview AIs exist that we don't know about? This is something I could create as a hobby project in my free time so what would someone with real resources be able to do?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoFOIA requests are your friend. Muckrock.com has done some work in this space. Also, don’t give up on legislating and regulating this sort of tech away.
- lalos 7y agoYou could start with companies that Peter Thiel invests in and then start building a network of known associates. He seems to be keen on investing on this sort of companies, maybe to have an eye on them since Palantir/Facebook can't pull this off without the media attention.
- Timothycquinn 7y agoProbably several dark versions of this out there have access to this type of technology already. Its just too tempting for maleficent organizations around the world to ignore. Just think about the investigators around the world (FBI, DEA etc...) who are combating evil organizations but are not careful with the the information the post online; those people are screwed. Time for a new job. I'm glad that this one was done in the USA so we have a way to bring more light to these issues. I suspect (and hope) that clearview AI will not last long here in its present form.
- dylan604 7y agoOkay, say they take the code and set it up on servers outside the US. Maybe incorporate as a new name in a non-US country as well. What implications would that have on US law enforcement agencies in particular, but any US based company in general from using this new foreign company?
- texorcist 7y agoThis is the thinking man's question right here
- microdrum 7y agoNot to insult you but... could you? If what the company claims is true, and the NYT says that it is, you can build a fast search over 3 billion distractors? Yourself? Without relying on some random outside service, which a national security or police actor would not allow you to use in order to maintain SEC/SCIF compliance?
- lykr0n 7y agoCompanies like this are Evil. Plain and simple. If your business model involves distributing/processing personal information you had no consent to take and sharing it with 3rd parties, then that's evil.
- civilian 7y agoCynical take: I'm pretty sure we've all agreed to ToSes that has allowed our faces to end up online. Clearview AI is just doing what a detective with an eye for faces and unlimited time is doing. I agree that I'm really concerned about the way the surveillance state is creeping in. But it kind of feels like the cat is out of the bag, and moralizing like this is useless.
- mplewis 7y agoAn eye for faces, unlimited time, ungodly computing power, and the ability to scrape and remember every face posted publicly online. Sounds pretty different from a low-cost Magnum PI sitting in his strip mall office.
- ska 7y agoClearview AI is just doing what a detective with an eye for faces and unlimited time is doing. This has always been a bullshit argument for this type automation, whether it be facial recognition, license plate readers, recording phone conversations, whatever. It pretends that scale doesn't matter, when the reality is that scale and network effects are the most important feature of many of these 'advances'.
- lucasmullens 7y agoCould you critique it without calling it a "bullshit argument"?
- ska 7y agoBy "bullshit argument" I mean specifically that this argument is not presented in good faith. Rather it is used to obfuscate or avoid engaging with the issues at hand. At least, that is how it comes from corporate entities etc. From individuals I expect it is more a category error. Would you have preferred “disingenuous " ?
- joering2 7y ago> Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that claims to have amassed a database of more than 3 billion photos scraped from Facebook, YouTube, and millions of other websites [...] Let me guess - neither FB nor YouTube will go after them legally, because its probably waste of money anyways, since their clients did not experience immediate/direct harm?
- comex 7y agoIf you keep reading, Twitter, another of Clearview’s scrape targets, did send them a cease-and-desist letter, asking them to “cease scraping and delete all data collected from Twitter”. Not that that guarantees Twitter will actually follows through and file a lawsuit if Clearview doesn’t comply.
- chii 7y agoa cease and desist is worth about as much as the paper it's printed on.
- kerkeslager 7y agoGood. I hope they struggle their way into bankruptcy. Companies like this shouldn't exist.
- chii 7y agobut unfortunately that data is already out there. If clearview could collect/scrape, so can anyone else. If Clearview could hire people to create AI's to identify people/match people, so could anyone else. And this kind of database, i imagine, would already exists for the NSA or whatever intelligence agency for China/russia.
- _bxg1 7y ago> One of Clearview AI's investors defended the company, “We do not have to be hidden to be free.” Yikes.
- donclark 7y agoWould it be a good idea to capture all the investors names, address, photos, etc. and put them online for all to see?
- uoaei 7y agoThat seems illegal, which illustrates the point well enough already.
- catalogia 7y agoLegally? Maybe not. But ethically and morally? Hell yes! We need a Robin Hood of privacy. Extralegal justice for the common people, for whom official channels are contemptuous.
- bathtub365 7y agoWhat if you were mistakenly or maliciously targeted?
- catalogia 7y agoIf you wish to avoid vigilante justice, you need to provide something better. The government is meant to handle matters like this to protect anybody who might be wrongly accused, but the government is abdicating their duty to do so. When the government abdicates their duty to the common people, the common people have a moral and ethical right to take matters into their own hands.
- mattrp 7y agoScott Adams has a Clearview investor on his podcast (ep. 798). Tone deaf really doesn’t adequately describe this investors level of concern about critics. When I was a teenager I once asked a musician what he thought of a certain store for musical instruments, his response is that he supposed someone has to sell peavy gear but he certainly wouldn’t want to see the special room in hell reserved for such a person. That’s kind of how I feel about involuntary biometrics.
- sillysaurusx 7y agoHot take: fighting this is a losing battle, because you’re fighting against technology. Can you think of a single technology that society has successfully rejected? It’s pretty hard. In general, once the tech to do X exists, then X will find a way to exist. Instead of crucifying Clearview, it might be better to open a dialogue about regulation in this space. But even that has problems; bitcoin was eventually accepted. Yet ICO regulation shows that it’s worth trying. The point is, this kind of tech can be helpful. Feynman once cited a quote along the lines of “Science is a key that unlocks the door to heaven, but the same key unlocks the door to hell.” It seems relevant here.
- reaperducer 7y agoCan you think of a single technology that society has successfully rejected? Eugenics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
- sillysaurusx 7y agoHeh. That was the first thing that popped to mind too. But it might be best to avoid the topic. Still, genetic engineering is marching ever-closer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY
- civilian 7y agoI mean, I'm pretty interesting in doing embryo selection on my future children. Eugenics on my own family, if you will. I agree that it's wrong to apply eugenics to others without their consent!
- craftinator 7y ago> I agree that it's wrong to apply eugenics to others without their consent! Others, like people who are not you? I think your future children fall into that category. How will you get their consent?
- pfdietz 7y ago
- jrs95 7y agoEven if Clearview somehow shuts down...this sort of thing is basically inevitable without laws to protect our privacy. And honestly, all of these companies that might at least complain when Clearview does it would gladly share this data with the federal government. So I'd be surprised if at least some federal law enforcement agencies have had access to equivalent (and probably better) technology for quite awhile.
- mortenjorck 7y agoThere’s going to be legislation. That’s more or less a given at this point. The question is: can we actually get good legislation? My fear is that we’ll get something more along the lines of the EU cookie directive than a full-on GDPR. So instead of worrying that your biometric data could be captured anywhere and used for anything without your knowledge, you now have to click “I accept” before engaging in any activity with a business or government entity, which then establishes your consent to your biometric data being captured anywhere and used for anything without your knowledge.
- chadmeister 7y agoA few days ago there was a front page post about Clearview AI where the original post title was, as rules on this forum require, the same as the article's title: "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It" A few hours in the post title was changed to: "Clearview AI helps law enforcement match photos of people to their online images" The difference to me was night and day and super sketch. Why was this change made? Is ycombinator invested in Clearview?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoWell, if the headline is clickbait, the policy here is to change it to something that reflects the actual content of the article, rather than just parroting the clickbait. Whether that is what was done in the case of this particular article, I can't say.
- muppet_frog 7y agoNot sure I would call a New York Times article 'clickbait'...
- choppaface 7y agoSome ads now have links to sites where you can do mass opt-outs, like this one: https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1 https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1 I have no clue if they're legit, but they certainly look useful. Some companies like Sift Science got caught not having proper opt-out facilities that are now required by law https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-consumer-score-access.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-consumer-... Now that the CCPA is in full effect, can't somebody just build a mass opt-out service to get out of Sift, Clearview, etc? Sift etc already have to hire a 3rd party to handle ID verification (yeah it's weird you have to send them your ID to get your own data, which is supposed to define your identity...).. No idea if it would be profitable, but if you've got the ID verification bit solved, then launching an opt-out service might be the way to make your product go viral?
- sdan 7y agoKind of surprised how they did this. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc. has hard rate limiting and crazy scraping prevention. Wonder how hard they worked on their scrapers.
- chii 7y ago> To process a request, however, Clearview is requesting more personal information: “Please submit name, a headshot and a photo of a government-issued ID to facilitate the processing of your request.“ ROFL - they will use your request to add and extract value out of your information. It also clearly, and uniquely identifies individuals who can be considered "trouble makers".