10 ms·

Swiss journalist re-implements ClearViewAI in two weeks with OS software

147 points by dukoid 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lapink 7y ago
It seems hard if not impossible to prevent illegal use of profile pictures. If a web browser can access them, collecting them can be automated. Even if they are only accessible through an app on iOS or Android, you could still, on a device with root access, capture the API calls and reverse engineer how to get those pictures. So we might just assume any intelligence service already has that. The only protection against a more widespread development of those products would be legal I think.
- dukoid 7y ago
  Related reading recommendation: "The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov.
- Youden 7y ago
  There's a simple, practical way to do this: don't make the images public. Limit them to some degree of separation by friend connections. I think this should satisfy most friend-finding use-cases while eliminating comprehensive large-scale scraping. You can still reconnect with that guy you saw at a party a few years ago or that teacher from high-school. Chances are they're within 2 or 3 degrees of separation from you.
  - NegativeLatency 7y ago
    By the same argument you might also be a similar distance from an intelligence agent.
  - ggggtez 7y ago
    >Limit them to some degree of separation by friend connections. Haha, oh sweet summer child. How do you think Cambridge Analytica got all that data? All you need is 1 friend with lousy security practices.
lazyjones 7y ago
While this demonstrates the capabilities of easily accessible ML software, it also shows the power held by large corporations and governments who have bulk access to this kind of data (images from social media, crawling) and how ML makes them able to abuse it. It's really scary to think they know where and when I was photographed or filmed in public (doing whatever) by random people while I don't...
- chmod775 7y ago
  This specifically shows that you don't need to be a large corp to do this. Everyone can do this at home today and on a budget, with publicly accessible data.
  - lazyjones 7y ago
    As an individual, you have to try your luck with collections of images that happen to be publicly accessible, whereas large entities have access to many, many more images (all private collections in the cloud for example, or security camera material) and can search them systematically. That's a big difference IMHO.
    - dontreact 7y ago
      At the moment (as someone who works at a large company), it honestly seems easier to scrape->do something sketchy with the data than it would be to overcome the internal privacy protections that are in place at a large company.
      - tbyehl 7y ago
        Not all large companies are alike. https://threatpost.com/facebook-to-pay-550m-to-settle-class-action-case-over-facial-recognition/152374/ https://threatpost.com/facebook-to-pay-550m-to-settle-class-...
      - lazyjones 7y ago
        Do the internal restrictions apply to everybody at Google (my guess from your past comments) equally, or are there departments with easier access, government contracts etc.?
sschueller 7y ago
The head of swiss data protection (Eidgenössischer Datenschutzbeauftragter) was on the news program [1] and scolded them since according to him it is illegal in Switzerland to scrape data of the internet and then do facial recognition on it to identify people. He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company should not get any ideas of doing the same thing. He also said it is facebook/instagram's responsibility to keep the users data safe and prevent it from being scraped. I'm not sure how anyone can prevent data scraping and I also don't see how it can be illegal if the data is on the public internet. Can anyone elaborate why it would be considered illegal to scrape data in Switzerland? I can see there being a conflict between the privacy laws and doing identifying recognition on public images but downloading the images themselves I don't see being illegal? We deal with scrapers taking our data all the time and this is the first time I heard that it may be illegal. [1] https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/10vor10/video/fokus-heikle-gesichtserkennung---das-experiment?id=579ffb3b-dadf-490b-be62-e9c692f2e3bb https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/10vor10/video/fokus-heikle-gesich...
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company should not get any ideas of doing the same thing. That's not the first time I've seen someone claim that a journalist claim is allowed to perform some kind of information processing that's off limits to regular people. These claims are specious and ridiculous. Journalists do not form a distinct class with special privileges, even if they claim to be one.
  - vvG94KbDUtRa 7y ago
    They're nonsensical. There's no legal definition of journalist. You don't get a license from the government
    - anticensor 7y ago
      No licence needed, true, but governments issue press cards for certain privileges peculiar to professional journalists.
patrec 7y ago
> But I ask myself: How difficult can it be for a billion dollar revenue company? Am I the only one who has trouble believing that someone who was at a technical level involved in scraping and running facial recognition on 200k photos would genuinely answer "Not very?".
- hedora 7y ago
  I’ve implemented a few scrapers for various purposes, and run bulk data analysis over the results. It was years ago, and it was not very difficult. I’d guess this would be an easy summer intern project for a bright undergrad.
  - patrec 7y ago
    Would the same bright undergrad be likely to believe that stopping scraping on a service with a billion users is an easy problem?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
secondo 7y ago
Not claiming this is the result of, but this article is the wet dream of Facebook lobby groups. Facial recognition won’t go anywhere, that ship has sailed, but regulation might restrict which data you’re allowed to use for it and oh boy would Facebook love monopolizing their throve of data and use regulation to fend off any threat to their leading ability to profile individuals. In the topic of restricting access to others the author says: But I ask myself: How difficult can it be for a billion dollar revenue company? Pretty difficult when the law prohibits you[1]. Hopefully that forces regulation to cover the weaponization of technology not access to data. Right now this comes off as; you’re not allowed to enrich uranium, unless you own the land. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-linkedin-protects-scraping-public-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-l...
- arthurcolle 7y ago
  "Mark Zuckerberg: Then I guess that would be the first time somebody's lied under oath." - The Social Network
coding123 7y ago
I got a privacy notice update from my bank today. In the past I was generally OK with my bank to generally share data and all that because it goes toward credit scores and a variety of other things. I'm not so sure any more. I feel like we've reached a point where a massive, trustable, profile of me is for sale. I don't think I want a bank that is allowed to do it any more. Does anyone have any recommendations for a bank focused on privacy? (and for that matter credit cards?) I know I know - probably impossible, but I am pretty sure I just created a market, who's with me?
- billiam 7y ago
  That banking wet dream used to be subject of this article, Switzerland! As long as you had enough money.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

147 points by dukoid 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

It seems hard if not impossible to prevent illegal use of profile pictures. If a web browser can access them, collecting them can be automated. Even if they are only accessible through an app on iOS or Android, you could still, on a device with root access, capture the API calls and reverse engineer how to get those pictures. So we might just assume any intelligence service already has that. The only protection against a more widespread development of those products would be legal I think.

dukoid 7y ago
Related reading recommendation: "The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov.
Youden 7y ago
There's a simple, practical way to do this: don't make the images public. Limit them to some degree of separation by friend connections. I think this should satisfy most friend-finding use-cases while eliminating comprehensive large-scale scraping. You can still reconnect with that guy you saw at a party a few years ago or that teacher from high-school. Chances are they're within 2 or 3 degrees of separation from you.
- NegativeLatency 7y ago
  By the same argument you might also be a similar distance from an intelligence agent.
- ggggtez 7y ago
  >Limit them to some degree of separation by friend connections. Haha, oh sweet summer child. How do you think Cambridge Analytica got all that data? All you need is 1 friend with lousy security practices.

lazyjones 7y ago

While this demonstrates the capabilities of easily accessible ML software, it also shows the power held by large corporations and governments who have bulk access to this kind of data (images from social media, crawling) and how ML makes them able to abuse it. It's really scary to think they know where and when I was photographed or filmed in public (doing whatever) by random people while I don't...

chmod775 7y ago
This specifically shows that you don't need to be a large corp to do this. Everyone can do this at home today and on a budget, with publicly accessible data.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  As an individual, you have to try your luck with collections of images that happen to be publicly accessible, whereas large entities have access to many, many more images (all private collections in the cloud for example, or security camera material) and can search them systematically. That's a big difference IMHO.
  - dontreact 7y ago
    At the moment (as someone who works at a large company), it honestly seems easier to scrape->do something sketchy with the data than it would be to overcome the internal privacy protections that are in place at a large company.
    - tbyehl 7y ago
      Not all large companies are alike. https://threatpost.com/facebook-to-pay-550m-to-settle-class-action-case-over-facial-recognition/152374/ https://threatpost.com/facebook-to-pay-550m-to-settle-class-...
    - lazyjones 7y ago
      Do the internal restrictions apply to everybody at Google (my guess from your past comments) equally, or are there departments with easier access, government contracts etc.?

sschueller 7y ago

The head of swiss data protection (Eidgenössischer Datenschutzbeauftragter) was on the news program [1] and scolded them since according to him it is illegal in Switzerland to scrape data of the internet and then do facial recognition on it to identify people. He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company should not get any ideas of doing the same thing. He also said it is facebook/instagram's responsibility to keep the users data safe and prevent it from being scraped. I'm not sure how anyone can prevent data scraping and I also don't see how it can be illegal if the data is on the public internet. Can anyone elaborate why it would be considered illegal to scrape data in Switzerland? I can see there being a conflict between the privacy laws and doing identifying recognition on public images but downloading the images themselves I don't see being illegal? We deal with scrapers taking our data all the time and this is the first time I heard that it may be illegal. [1] https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/10vor10/video/fokus-heikle-gesichtserkennung---das-experiment?id=579ffb3b-dadf-490b-be62-e9c692f2e3bb https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/10vor10/video/fokus-heikle-gesich...

quotemstr 7y ago
> He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company should not get any ideas of doing the same thing. That's not the first time I've seen someone claim that a journalist claim is allowed to perform some kind of information processing that's off limits to regular people. These claims are specious and ridiculous. Journalists do not form a distinct class with special privileges, even if they claim to be one.
- vvG94KbDUtRa 7y ago
  They're nonsensical. There's no legal definition of journalist. You don't get a license from the government
  - anticensor 7y ago
    No licence needed, true, but governments issue press cards for certain privileges peculiar to professional journalists.

patrec 7y ago

> But I ask myself: How difficult can it be for a billion dollar revenue company? Am I the only one who has trouble believing that someone who was at a technical level involved in scraping and running facial recognition on 200k photos would genuinely answer "Not very?".

hedora 7y ago
I’ve implemented a few scrapers for various purposes, and run bulk data analysis over the results. It was years ago, and it was not very difficult. I’d guess this would be an easy summer intern project for a bright undergrad.
- patrec 7y ago
  Would the same bright undergrad be likely to believe that stopping scraping on a service with a billion users is an easy problem?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

secondo 7y ago

Not claiming this is the result of, but this article is the wet dream of Facebook lobby groups. Facial recognition won’t go anywhere, that ship has sailed, but regulation might restrict which data you’re allowed to use for it and oh boy would Facebook love monopolizing their throve of data and use regulation to fend off any threat to their leading ability to profile individuals. In the topic of restricting access to others the author says: But I ask myself: How difficult can it be for a billion dollar revenue company? Pretty difficult when the law prohibits you[1]. Hopefully that forces regulation to cover the weaponization of technology not access to data. Right now this comes off as; you’re not allowed to enrich uranium, unless you own the land. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-linkedin-protects-scraping-public-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-l...

arthurcolle 7y ago
"Mark Zuckerberg: Then I guess that would be the first time somebody's lied under oath." - The Social Network

coding123 7y ago

I got a privacy notice update from my bank today. In the past I was generally OK with my bank to generally share data and all that because it goes toward credit scores and a variety of other things. I'm not so sure any more. I feel like we've reached a point where a massive, trustable, profile of me is for sale. I don't think I want a bank that is allowed to do it any more. Does anyone have any recommendations for a bank focused on privacy? (and for that matter credit cards?) I know I know - probably impossible, but I am pretty sure I just created a market, who's with me?

billiam 7y ago
That banking wet dream used to be subject of this article, Switzerland! As long as you had enough money.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]