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Yesterday the FBI signed its first public contract with Clearview AI

241 points by danso 5y ago

donkarma 5y ago
This is a great way to get a paranoid schizophrenic to send mail bombs to your company. Anyone who works at this company is utterly morally bankrupt and anyone with their morals intact should blacklist them.
quocanh 5y ago
Facial recognition software.
hirundo 5y ago
So Clearview has a database of billions of faces scraped from the internet, and sells subscriptions to match photos on that data. I don't think we can put this capability back in the box. There is no moat around it. Keyhole once had a similar business model for satellite data. Then Google bought them and offered it to everyone for free, making a fortune. I hope that Clearview's path goes the same way. If this is available to law enforcement and anyone else who can afford it, better for it to be available to everyone. If big brother can have it, little brother should too. There is no serious prospect of withholding it from big brother. I think I'd rather have privacy from both, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
- c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  Billions of faces sure. How many of those are duplicates? How many of each person do they have and in what quality? A low res snap from a traffic camera is useless. To distinguish individuals you need a lot of data.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  The "moat" in this case would be overwhelming legislative action, criminalizing Clearview and its ilk out of existence. The law (supposedly) exists to ensure and protect the commonweal, and we should apply it instead of sitting on our hands and lamenting the market's unwillingness to self-legislate. That probably won't happen, of course.
  - nyolfen 5y ago
    this only works in one country at a time, you can rest assured that other governments have your face tucked away in a datacenter
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Sure. I'll work on fixing the place I live, sleep, and eat for the time being. Liechtenstein can wait!
      - rebuilder 5y ago
        But can the other Five Eyes states wait? Offshoring outlawed domestic surveillance to allies seems to be the name of the game now.
        woodruffw 5y ago
        I'm not confident that anything will stop US military and defense intelligence (which is completely distinct from the FBI, as a domestic LEO) from doing shady things. Instead of worrying about how they're going to get around the law (they can do parallel construction on the Moon, for all I care), I'd prefer to have a sufficiently big punishment waiting for them when the public finally learns about it.
        OtomotO 5y ago
        Time will punish them. As it did with any imperium in the past, as it will until the last ape on this space rock has ushered their last breadth. Time is lord of all of us. Peasants and emperors alike
        lern_too_spel 5y ago
        There is no evidence that this happens, and it is illegal for the US government to ask another country to spy on its citizens. If it happened, the resulting lawsuits would make headlines for weeks, and there would be forced resignations.
- aboringusername 5y ago
  At the end of the day, our computers and smartphones are just data input/output machines. Humans generate petabytes of data yearly, and that data is going to be stored, processed and used, forever. The invent of HDDs, fibre internet and increased processing power means more can be done with that data. It's entirely plausible entire streams of stored encrypted data (TLS, openvpn etc) may one day be decoded and provide fascinating insight's into human behavior. (I wouldn't be surprised if there was a giant archive of every single byte of FB/Twitter/Reddit/HN data in a DC somewhere...even this post!) I think we need to accept and embrace this, and that privacy is now a fight that is, for better or worse, a lost cause. Covid generated even more streams of data through sequencing, and you can be sure all of this is being stored, forever. You can, and probably should, fight against it, but if you're a human alive today you should know many bits of data (about you) will almost certainly be contained on many disks for future generations to look at, and that isn't likely to change any time soon (short of a major regression in human capability and understanding)
- cameldrv 5y ago
  Has anyone tried suing Clearview for copyright infringement? It seems like wouldn't have a legal right to be using these images.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    I would guess they would cite transformative use.
  - pdkl95 5y ago
    If they are making false claims about you that cause serious damage to your reputation (like telling the FBI you look like a terrorist), then sue them for libel.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      Wouldn't you have to prove you don't look like a terrorist? Clearview is probably saying that if you convert an image, or set of images, of a person to vector(s) then there are some similar vectors that are associated with a terrorist. If they are saying it, it's because it's probably true in their implementation.
    - creato 5y ago
      I probably do look like a terrorist somewhere. The problem isn't identifying that person and associating them with me, the problem is treating that information as significant, and that's on the FBI (in your hypothetical scenario).
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  I think that one potential solution would be for the SCOTUS (who has made very wrong decisions in the past) to rule that third-party information is protected and requires a warrant just like entering your home. The decision to allow warrantless requests from businesses was a major error (or, maybe, malicious decision) in my view. Step 2 is to ban such activity or rule that it is copyright infringement. And to maybe admit that scraping needs more guardrails and regulation.
  - hermitdev 5y ago
    Maybe we should just leverage the existing copyright penalties our beloved MPAA and RIAA lobbied so hard for? What is it... 15 years in jail and $250,000 fine per violation? Isn't that what the scare screens on DVDs always warned me about? If they're claiming 1B photos they've scraped and violated copyright on...
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      Rule #1 (as famously learned by SpaceX and Tesla) about doing new and risky things: Don't ask permission. Deal with the consequences later. They'll probably be smaller than if you had asked.
- RobSm 5y ago
  "and offered it to everyone for free, making a fortune" - this makes no sense
  - hirundo 5y ago
    This is Google Earth and Maps. They're free to users, but make Google billions on ads.
    - gundmc 5y ago
      > This is Google Earth and Maps. They're free to users, but make Google billions on ads Citation needed. Google only recently started showing ads in Maps and there is no way it's near billions at this point.
      - hirundo 5y ago
        I don't have that citation. But Google doesn't spend billions on growing and maintaining apps just for public benefit. Those services pull their weight (now or prospectively) or Google would pull the plug. Generally their strategy is to drive traffic to search, and ads.
      - blihp 5y ago
        It's more subtle than just showing a traditional ad. When you search on a business (i.e. restaurant, hotel etc) in a given area, businesses are often paying to show up prominently in the results and/or when you're zoomed out.
      - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
        They don't need to. They can show more relevant ads in search or email if they know where you are on the maps.
    - simplestats 5y ago
      They have pricing plans for business users: https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/ https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/ I suspect if anyone uses it too much per hour or something, they will block you awhile and ask you to sign up for a plan. This is what google translate does.
- cletus 5y ago
  Here’s the best description I’ve heard of why that’s a bad idea. It basically goes (paraphrased): > Q: What would happen if you could look at someone and know who they are and where they live or work? > A: A lot of women would die. Google maps has some safeguards like certain areas have no imagery but really the biggest thing is it’s not fine detailed enough to be a threat to anybody. In fact, US law prevents (IIRC) sub-meter pixels on commercial satellite imagery.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    In the US, most women who become violent crime victims are victimized by someone they know. More men are victimized by "stranger danger." At least according to the FBI’s uniform crime report. I’m skeptical this proposal would change existing crime patterns much.
- OtomotO 5y ago
  Of course we can. A few nukes in the stratosphere will do the trick. On a more serious note: I agree. Everyone should have that ability, then the worth decreases rapidly. Still some players could act on the info more aggressively than others, but it would level the playing field to some extent.
- OtomotO 5y ago
  So the concept of in dubio pro reo is dying faster and faster and all we do is shrug and tell ourselves we can't do anything about it.
- astrea 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is a horrible take. I don't want every Joe Schmoe to have this capability in their back pocket. I can't even trust vetted people who have been elected into power to use it responsibly. Why on earth would I trust the drunk creep at the local dive with it? This is like saying every household in America should have an M1 Abrams because their value would rapidly decrease and therefore they'll be less dangerous.
- hermitdev 5y ago
  > So Clearview has a database of billions of faces scraped from the internet, and sells subscriptions to match photos on that data. I fully expect a class action lawsuit for Illinois residents soon. They need explicit opt in for biometric collection, regardless of how they obtained their photos.
  - joliv 5y ago
    See In Re: Clearview AI, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation (1:21-cv-00135)
- doopy1 5y ago
  I mean... I think it can be re-built from the ground up if the funding were there, but the type of people who build surveillance tools using nebulous data collection methods tend not do make a public service out of it.
monkeybutton 5y ago
Clearview has recently been getting into trouble for their practices in Canada: https://globalnews.ca/news/8451440/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-order-stop/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8451440/clearview-ai-facial-recog... Edit: What they are doing here is illegal and they've since dropped operations in Canada. However they still track Canadian citizens and sell their services to anyone who wants to buy it outside of Canada. They've basically told Canadian citizens and the government here to go pound sand. I'm not sure how this gets resolved without new international agreements over privacy?
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Arrest their directors, employees and investors upon entry into Canada. Same with europe if this violates GDPR (likely). We’d (rightfully or wrongfully) treat a cocaine cartel “shareholder” the same way.
  - ls15 5y ago
    It already has been deemed illegal in the EU: https://noyb.eu/en/clearview-ai-deemed-illegal-eu https://noyb.eu/en/clearview-ai-deemed-illegal-eu
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    Your response reminds me of a case where a Russian citizen who operated an online gambling site went on vacation to some Caribbean Island. Except he never made it because the plane he was on made an unscheduled stop in Florida. The FBI also happened to be waiting for the plane to land and he got arrested. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It would've taken place around mid-2000s.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      This guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers Whenever you change planes in USA, you are formally entering USA and subject to regular USA law. The bigger case more recently was Belarus forcing down a Ryanair plane carrying an activist while overflying Belarusian airspace to arrest him: https://www.voanews.com/a/europe_lukashenko-defends-diverting-flight-belarus-arrest-activist/6206213.html https://www.voanews.com/a/europe_lukashenko-defends-divertin... There’s also a Case out there of a birth on a flight between USA and Qatar being granted Canadian citizenship because the flight was over Canadian soil at the time of delivery: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_aboard_aircraft_and_ships https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_aboard_aircraft_and_sh... https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/air-born-will-baby-delivered-mid-flight-get-canadian-citizenship-1.2368565 https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/air-born-will-baby-deli...
tentacleuno 5y ago
The fact that Clearview have such a comprehensive database in the first case is rather unnerving. Shouldn't there have been some sort of legislation to stop them? One private company having access to this information is not a good idea.
- aboringusername 5y ago
  There's nothing really stopping anyone making such a database considering as I understand they just scraped faces from the public internet. There's no proof they were colluding with anyone. For example, you could scrape and download every single public tiktok video and use that data as you see fit, if you can access it via a web browser it's fair game these days.
  - larvaetron 5y ago
    So copyright isn't a thing anymore?
    - tehwebguy 5y ago
      Probably can’t sue for damages if you can’t prove damages, and probably can’t sue for statutory damages if you can’t prove they’ve got your IP (since it’s their database is an opaque box to you and me).
    - analog31 5y ago
      I think the process of recovering damages should be standardized, like it is for music recordings: A fixed, but fairly stiff, penalty per offense. This would encourage bounty hunters to go after offenders, and split the proceeds with the owners. The act of offering to sell or share personal information would be interpreted as "intent," and automatically triple the damages.
  - rebuilder 5y ago
    I’m not sure that’s true in the EU, for instance. It seems like it would fall foul of the GDPR, doesn’t it?
sneak 5y ago
What's it say about the rule of law in the USA when the leading domestic federal organization for investigation of criminal activity is fine using databases obtained illegally? What's it say about the police being subordinate to the law?
- aboringusername 5y ago
  Can you source the claims of databases being obtained illegally? An interesting conversation of "consent" comes to mind - I think the issue is if somebody's face appears in a news article is it allowed to then download that same image and store it for unrelated purposes? Wouldn't that make google image search illegal? How about FB's now defunt face matching system they just removed? As far as I have seen some regulators have demanded the data be deleted as it might be considered to breach GDPR, but there are absolutely countries (like the USA) where this is considered absolutely acceptable behavior. So far, no public court cases with decisions can be found anywhere from what I can see.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Clearview is selling use of the imagery without a license. If you or I scraped everything off of Instagram and started offering derived data as a SaaS, we'd go to jail. These people don't because they're using it to help the cops.
    - pixl97 5y ago
      They are selling the images themselves... if you scraped all the images off Instagram to make a list of the most popular memes and songs of the week the lawsuit would be much more difficult against you.
    - creato 5y ago
      I don't think that is true. Scraping Facebook and the like has already been litigated several times. I can't find the outcome of those cases, but jail is definitely not a possibility.
Ephil012 5y ago
The worst part about Clearview is there is no way to easily opt-out if you do not live in California or Illinois. I wrote Clearview an email a long time ago saying I would like my data removed. They asked for my ID to verify who I was. Clearview responds saying thanks for sending your ID, but you aren’t a California resident so we don’t have to remove your data. I wrote follow up emails still asking if they could consider removing it. After my follow up email, they just stopped responding. It’s been months now and no word back. I get that they have no legal obligation to, but they should provide people a way to opt-out in other states. It felt like a bait and switch to ask for my personal information then just ghost me. However, I guess nobody can expect Clearview to be a moral company.
- hermitdev 5y ago
  In Illinois, one has to opt in for biometric collection, not opt out. If they have anything on me, they're already breaking the law.
- staplers 5y ago
  Not to mention you gave them even more (highly sensitive) personal data about yourself.
  - Ephil012 5y ago
    Typically with these types of requests it isn’t abnormal to have to give over an ID. I don’t like the idea of doing it, but usually it’s the only way to do it. Even if you’re a California resident, you’re forced to upload your ID to remove data. It is kind of a no-win scenario. Either they keep your facial data or you give over highly sensitive data to get the facial data removed. I only did it because it seemed initially they were willing to remove the facial data (despite their very delayed response).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sneak 5y ago
  Rent a cheap place in California or in the EU. Establishing second residence isn't that expensive.
user764743 5y ago
Of course the FBI would be collaborating on surveillance with the far-right, including weev & friends. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-alt-right_n_5e7d028bc5b6cb08a92a5c48?ri18n=true https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/clearview-ai-facial-reco... https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-ai-far-right-white-nationalists-connections-report-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-ai-far-right-white...
hourislate 5y ago
The FBI, CIA, NSA and every other alphabet agency down to the state, municiple level already have access to your face, address, d.o.b, phone info, income, bills, investments, physical and online activity. Having the clearview info will help them build a better picture of who you hang with (all those photo's on FB, Snapchat, Insta, tiktok, etc) and the circles you keep. When they crunch all that data they'll be able to build a complete picture and remove any minutia of privacy you still might have had. Here's an idea for you folks who are chasing the next big thing, develop something that will erase a person from the matrix.
- aboringusername 5y ago
  Isn't this the acceptable nature of participating in a society? Covid was an opportunity to force people online - creating new accounts, accepting new privacy policies, getting used to Zoom calls and having more of your data legally recorded and used in ways you may not have considered (but you pressed "I agree" on that privacy policy!). You can live off grid, but even that is very difficult with satellites overhead and trying to avoid every CCTV camera or digital device that may vacuum you up is bordering on impossible. Unless you erase yourself from life, but even then someone will likely make a note of that somewhere ;).
- donkarma 5y ago
  Can't be too hard to make mismatching profiles with your face and different names and vice versa.
riazrizvi 5y ago
This technology is so widespread, Apple could do it, Microsoft could do it, Google could do it, Facebook could do it, but for some reason we are focusing on Clearview. I think it's because only Clearview is selling it to law enforcement, thereby turning a previously expensive human task of identification and tracking, into a cheaper automated one. I'm reminded of the line 'With great power comes great responsibility'. The more people who have the power, the greater the odds that the responsibility will be abused in the pursuit of profit or even darker motives. History is littered with shithole autocracies that ran their corners of the world into the ground by eliminating economic participation and mobility using new advancements that delivered new concentrations of power. Here this technology gives smaller and smaller jurisdictions the power to turn themselves into absolute authorities, and it needs to be balanced with better oversight, better protections for people to move around without harassment. I hope this country is able to create and uphold new Federal legislation to that effect. Otherwise it's going to back an awful lot of people into a corner. I guess this is the big political question being fought out between the two main parties right now...
- JudasGoat 5y ago
  On Clearview's website they state they have 3 billion facial images scraped from the web. That seems to be a low cost of entry to accomplish the same level of service. I am a bit surprised that the FBI wouldn't have a similar database.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  We are concerned about the other companies doing it. At least I am.
areoform 5y ago
Clearview AI is disturbing. I have had a public conversation with one of the founders (who had left the company), where he said, "you civil libertarian types are all going to lose. We are going to steamroll you." And dismissed any and all concerns related to the technology. They've taken the data without consent and sold it to police departments across the world with provable records of human rights violation, whilst claiming a 100% facial match accuracy. I am not exaggerating. They claim — to the police departments they sell to — that their technology is 100% accurate and doesn't have false positives. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-accurate-aclu-absurd https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/clearv... They are a combustible mix of greed and ambition with lies sprinkled into the mix. It astounded me that he had the gall to say and imply in a public setting that they are "civil libertarian types" (like me) were going to go the way of the dodo and that the totalitarian surveillance state was the way of the future. I hope he is proven wrong. And I hope that they get sued and sanctioned out of existence like the NSO Group.
- boppo1 5y ago
  > public conversation Is there a verifiable record somewhere? I think there's no outrage because this is unknown to laypeople. However, I've very confident this would be a unifying issue for far left and right internet-outrage machines.
- stareblinkstare 5y ago
  > "you civil libertarian types are all going to lose. We are going to steamroll you." And dismissed any and all concerns related to the technology. That's pretty spot on, matches with my experience as well as every historical record ever written. We have a country right now that has installed labor/concentration camps and the rest of the world is dancing to their fiddle. Steamroll is an understatement. I don't want to know what is going on at those camps, but it wouldn't surprise me if many wish they could be steamrolled to end it all. "Civil Libertarian Types" are abound on HN. They forget human nature and think that change is right around the corner. Sometimes I wonder if they're playing the devil's advocate or if they're really that stupid. It's bread and circuses of a very amusing and gullible sort. These sort of people have no incentive whatsoever to change what they're doing. So yes, they're laughing at you as they fuck you over and profit from it. They know you're powerless, and they know you know it too. What are you going to do about it? I'd genuinely like to see more than keyboard warring from you CLTs, but you're pretty useless about the whole thing.
photochemsyn 5y ago
I'm sure the FBI would go into hysterics if there was a publicly accessible facial recognition database of all FBI employees and all FBI informants - but is there really a problem with that? Why should secretive police organiziations - which have a notorious history related to the establishment of totalitarian states - be subject to different rules about data privacy then the general public is? Why shouldn't citizens have access to an app that allows them to easily identify undercover police seeking to infiltrate peaceful protest movements via facial recognition, for example? The counterargument (authoritarian) is that police spies are necessary to combat various forms of crime in which all parties to the criminal activity have no interest in reporting said criminal activity - for example, illegal drug transactions. The counter-counterargument (libertarian) is that such forms of crime are actually victimless and the solution is to legalize and regulate all such drug transactions, to move them into the same sphere as alcohol sales. It would be a very curious world, however, in which anyone could point their phone at anyone else and get an immediate background report on them (which is apparently what the government agencies like the FBI want to be able to do), including their home address, phone number, credit history, educational background, criminal records if any, online browsing habits, family and business relationships, medical history, travel patterns... that would be a very creepy world indeed. It already seems to exist for the secret police, however, with tools like Palantir coupled to this facial recognition system. The potential for gross abuse is pretty obvious. Government regulation banning all such facial recognition software and data collection and aggregation is the only realistic option if we want to prevent such a dystopian future. People should have a right to privacy, even if this destroys the business model of Google, Facebook, and other personal data-based targeted advertising platforms, and so what if it makes the job of law enforcement harder? Read the Bill of Rights, about half of it is all about making it harder for law enforcement to snoop on citizens.
- whodunnit 5y ago
  Information ownership and a digital bill of rights would solve this. It should be considered a basic human right to own one’s information just as one owns one’s body.
- novok 5y ago
  Yup, police always want the power relationship to be one way. You see it today with special public records exceptions, special license plates and more, which are not available for many others who would benefit, like DV victims, psychologists, and more.
deleted 5y ago
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7d5TJ3v9uxqs9J8 5y ago
[dead]
hellbannedguy 5y ago
wellthisisgreat 5y ago
The match between what Clearview AI is doing and it's founder's personal stories is just... cinematic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That
hbarka 5y ago
I don’t know what the statistics are for stolen license plates but it seems to me, here in the San Francisco Bay Area anyway, that whenever there’s a recorded incident of a robbery or assault where the perpetrators used a getaway car, in all likelihood they put stolen plates on the car. Here’s an example of a gang who prowled around with impunity, comfortable that their cars could not be traced because they would just put stolen plates. https://sfist.com/2021/12/15/six-bay-area-men-arrested-for-a-staggering-alleged-70-attacks-on-asian-women/ https://sfist.com/2021/12/15/six-bay-area-men-arrested-for-a... Technology like Clearview could find a use case not just for facial recognition but vehicle recognition with validation to the license plate. We have many checkpoints and toll junctions where it can be installed and just run these exception checks. At the very least it would establish statistics on these gangs that are committing crimes with impunity. Vehicle recognition would be much easier than facial recognition.
- yeetaccount4 5y ago
  I think in 10-20 years they’ll have this and more. Imagine dash cam videos from cop cars being analyzed and correlated by software so that someone who sped in between two cop cars 100 miles apart gets ticketed because they could not have got from one to the other without speeding.
weare138 5y ago
https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
ipaddr 5y ago
I've tried Clearview and it's more sizzle than steak. The images available were like a crippled duckduckgo search. There were photos available you didn't expect or find elsewhere. Primarily headshots. Shots with enough clarity are required which removes most poor quality facebook / myspace / instagram photos as the facial features are not clear enough and the resolution is poor. It doesn't connect someone to a single identity and gather different social aliases and build a social graph. It's another tool that simplifies a basic search. Honestly it's disappointing. I'd be worried about what acxiom is building. They can identity you anywhere online and connect you to other sites you visit.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  The fact that the product sucks doesn't invalidate the badness of it existing.
boppo1 5y ago
This is an issue, but I'm curious, would it be possible to do a sort of 'denial of service' attack on the AI by overloading the internet with deepfakes? What if there are 50 deepfaked 'similars' to me out there?
- landemva 5y ago
  Create dirty data and the whole dataset becomes less valuable. This would need some automation for dirty names and dirty faces and upload to public websites.

241 points by danso 5y ago

This is a great way to get a paranoid schizophrenic to send mail bombs to your company. Anyone who works at this company is utterly morally bankrupt and anyone with their morals intact should blacklist them.

quocanh 5y ago

Facial recognition software.

hirundo 5y ago

So Clearview has a database of billions of faces scraped from the internet, and sells subscriptions to match photos on that data. I don't think we can put this capability back in the box. There is no moat around it. Keyhole once had a similar business model for satellite data. Then Google bought them and offered it to everyone for free, making a fortune. I hope that Clearview's path goes the same way. If this is available to law enforcement and anyone else who can afford it, better for it to be available to everyone. If big brother can have it, little brother should too. There is no serious prospect of withholding it from big brother. I think I'd rather have privacy from both, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago
Billions of faces sure. How many of those are duplicates? How many of each person do they have and in what quality? A low res snap from a traffic camera is useless. To distinguish individuals you need a lot of data.
woodruffw 5y ago
The "moat" in this case would be overwhelming legislative action, criminalizing Clearview and its ilk out of existence. The law (supposedly) exists to ensure and protect the commonweal, and we should apply it instead of sitting on our hands and lamenting the market's unwillingness to self-legislate. That probably won't happen, of course.
- nyolfen 5y ago
  this only works in one country at a time, you can rest assured that other governments have your face tucked away in a datacenter
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Sure. I'll work on fixing the place I live, sleep, and eat for the time being. Liechtenstein can wait!
    - rebuilder 5y ago
      But can the other Five Eyes states wait? Offshoring outlawed domestic surveillance to allies seems to be the name of the game now.
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        I'm not confident that anything will stop US military and defense intelligence (which is completely distinct from the FBI, as a domestic LEO) from doing shady things. Instead of worrying about how they're going to get around the law (they can do parallel construction on the Moon, for all I care), I'd prefer to have a sufficiently big punishment waiting for them when the public finally learns about it.
        OtomotO 5y ago
        Time will punish them. As it did with any imperium in the past, as it will until the last ape on this space rock has ushered their last breadth. Time is lord of all of us. Peasants and emperors alike
      - lern_too_spel 5y ago
        There is no evidence that this happens, and it is illegal for the US government to ask another country to spy on its citizens. If it happened, the resulting lawsuits would make headlines for weeks, and there would be forced resignations.
aboringusername 5y ago
At the end of the day, our computers and smartphones are just data input/output machines. Humans generate petabytes of data yearly, and that data is going to be stored, processed and used, forever. The invent of HDDs, fibre internet and increased processing power means more can be done with that data. It's entirely plausible entire streams of stored encrypted data (TLS, openvpn etc) may one day be decoded and provide fascinating insight's into human behavior. (I wouldn't be surprised if there was a giant archive of every single byte of FB/Twitter/Reddit/HN data in a DC somewhere...even this post!) I think we need to accept and embrace this, and that privacy is now a fight that is, for better or worse, a lost cause. Covid generated even more streams of data through sequencing, and you can be sure all of this is being stored, forever. You can, and probably should, fight against it, but if you're a human alive today you should know many bits of data (about you) will almost certainly be contained on many disks for future generations to look at, and that isn't likely to change any time soon (short of a major regression in human capability and understanding)
cameldrv 5y ago
Has anyone tried suing Clearview for copyright infringement? It seems like wouldn't have a legal right to be using these images.
- tyingq 5y ago
  I would guess they would cite transformative use.
- pdkl95 5y ago
  If they are making false claims about you that cause serious damage to your reputation (like telling the FBI you look like a terrorist), then sue them for libel.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Wouldn't you have to prove you don't look like a terrorist? Clearview is probably saying that if you convert an image, or set of images, of a person to vector(s) then there are some similar vectors that are associated with a terrorist. If they are saying it, it's because it's probably true in their implementation.
  - creato 5y ago
    I probably do look like a terrorist somewhere. The problem isn't identifying that person and associating them with me, the problem is treating that information as significant, and that's on the FBI (in your hypothetical scenario).
gjsman-1000 5y ago
I think that one potential solution would be for the SCOTUS (who has made very wrong decisions in the past) to rule that third-party information is protected and requires a warrant just like entering your home. The decision to allow warrantless requests from businesses was a major error (or, maybe, malicious decision) in my view. Step 2 is to ban such activity or rule that it is copyright infringement. And to maybe admit that scraping needs more guardrails and regulation.
- hermitdev 5y ago
  Maybe we should just leverage the existing copyright penalties our beloved MPAA and RIAA lobbied so hard for? What is it... 15 years in jail and $250,000 fine per violation? Isn't that what the scare screens on DVDs always warned me about? If they're claiming 1B photos they've scraped and violated copyright on...
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Rule #1 (as famously learned by SpaceX and Tesla) about doing new and risky things: Don't ask permission. Deal with the consequences later. They'll probably be smaller than if you had asked.
RobSm 5y ago
"and offered it to everyone for free, making a fortune" - this makes no sense
- hirundo 5y ago
  This is Google Earth and Maps. They're free to users, but make Google billions on ads.
  - gundmc 5y ago
    > This is Google Earth and Maps. They're free to users, but make Google billions on ads Citation needed. Google only recently started showing ads in Maps and there is no way it's near billions at this point.
    - hirundo 5y ago
      I don't have that citation. But Google doesn't spend billions on growing and maintaining apps just for public benefit. Those services pull their weight (now or prospectively) or Google would pull the plug. Generally their strategy is to drive traffic to search, and ads.
    - blihp 5y ago
      It's more subtle than just showing a traditional ad. When you search on a business (i.e. restaurant, hotel etc) in a given area, businesses are often paying to show up prominently in the results and/or when you're zoomed out.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
      They don't need to. They can show more relevant ads in search or email if they know where you are on the maps.
  - simplestats 5y ago
    They have pricing plans for business users: https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/ https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/ I suspect if anyone uses it too much per hour or something, they will block you awhile and ask you to sign up for a plan. This is what google translate does.
cletus 5y ago
Here’s the best description I’ve heard of why that’s a bad idea. It basically goes (paraphrased): > Q: What would happen if you could look at someone and know who they are and where they live or work? > A: A lot of women would die. Google maps has some safeguards like certain areas have no imagery but really the biggest thing is it’s not fine detailed enough to be a threat to anybody. In fact, US law prevents (IIRC) sub-meter pixels on commercial satellite imagery.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  In the US, most women who become violent crime victims are victimized by someone they know. More men are victimized by "stranger danger." At least according to the FBI’s uniform crime report. I’m skeptical this proposal would change existing crime patterns much.
OtomotO 5y ago
Of course we can. A few nukes in the stratosphere will do the trick. On a more serious note: I agree. Everyone should have that ability, then the worth decreases rapidly. Still some players could act on the info more aggressively than others, but it would level the playing field to some extent.
OtomotO 5y ago
So the concept of in dubio pro reo is dying faster and faster and all we do is shrug and tell ourselves we can't do anything about it.
astrea 5y ago
I'm sorry, but this is a horrible take. I don't want every Joe Schmoe to have this capability in their back pocket. I can't even trust vetted people who have been elected into power to use it responsibly. Why on earth would I trust the drunk creep at the local dive with it? This is like saying every household in America should have an M1 Abrams because their value would rapidly decrease and therefore they'll be less dangerous.
hermitdev 5y ago
> So Clearview has a database of billions of faces scraped from the internet, and sells subscriptions to match photos on that data. I fully expect a class action lawsuit for Illinois residents soon. They need explicit opt in for biometric collection, regardless of how they obtained their photos.
- joliv 5y ago
  See In Re: Clearview AI, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation (1:21-cv-00135)
doopy1 5y ago
I mean... I think it can be re-built from the ground up if the funding were there, but the type of people who build surveillance tools using nebulous data collection methods tend not do make a public service out of it.

monkeybutton 5y ago

Clearview has recently been getting into trouble for their practices in Canada: https://globalnews.ca/news/8451440/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-order-stop/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8451440/clearview-ai-facial-recog... Edit: What they are doing here is illegal and they've since dropped operations in Canada. However they still track Canadian citizens and sell their services to anyone who wants to buy it outside of Canada. They've basically told Canadian citizens and the government here to go pound sand. I'm not sure how this gets resolved without new international agreements over privacy?

Scoundreller 5y ago
Arrest their directors, employees and investors upon entry into Canada. Same with europe if this violates GDPR (likely). We’d (rightfully or wrongfully) treat a cocaine cartel “shareholder” the same way.
- ls15 5y ago
  It already has been deemed illegal in the EU: https://noyb.eu/en/clearview-ai-deemed-illegal-eu https://noyb.eu/en/clearview-ai-deemed-illegal-eu
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Your response reminds me of a case where a Russian citizen who operated an online gambling site went on vacation to some Caribbean Island. Except he never made it because the plane he was on made an unscheduled stop in Florida. The FBI also happened to be waiting for the plane to land and he got arrested. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It would've taken place around mid-2000s.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    This guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carruthers Whenever you change planes in USA, you are formally entering USA and subject to regular USA law. The bigger case more recently was Belarus forcing down a Ryanair plane carrying an activist while overflying Belarusian airspace to arrest him: https://www.voanews.com/a/europe_lukashenko-defends-diverting-flight-belarus-arrest-activist/6206213.html https://www.voanews.com/a/europe_lukashenko-defends-divertin... There’s also a Case out there of a birth on a flight between USA and Qatar being granted Canadian citizenship because the flight was over Canadian soil at the time of delivery: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_aboard_aircraft_and_ships https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_aboard_aircraft_and_sh... https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/air-born-will-baby-delivered-mid-flight-get-canadian-citizenship-1.2368565 https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/air-born-will-baby-deli...

tentacleuno 5y ago

The fact that Clearview have such a comprehensive database in the first case is rather unnerving. Shouldn't there have been some sort of legislation to stop them? One private company having access to this information is not a good idea.

aboringusername 5y ago
There's nothing really stopping anyone making such a database considering as I understand they just scraped faces from the public internet. There's no proof they were colluding with anyone. For example, you could scrape and download every single public tiktok video and use that data as you see fit, if you can access it via a web browser it's fair game these days.
- larvaetron 5y ago
  So copyright isn't a thing anymore?
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    Probably can’t sue for damages if you can’t prove damages, and probably can’t sue for statutory damages if you can’t prove they’ve got your IP (since it’s their database is an opaque box to you and me).
  - analog31 5y ago
    I think the process of recovering damages should be standardized, like it is for music recordings: A fixed, but fairly stiff, penalty per offense. This would encourage bounty hunters to go after offenders, and split the proceeds with the owners. The act of offering to sell or share personal information would be interpreted as "intent," and automatically triple the damages.
- rebuilder 5y ago
  I’m not sure that’s true in the EU, for instance. It seems like it would fall foul of the GDPR, doesn’t it?

sneak 5y ago

What's it say about the rule of law in the USA when the leading domestic federal organization for investigation of criminal activity is fine using databases obtained illegally? What's it say about the police being subordinate to the law?

aboringusername 5y ago
Can you source the claims of databases being obtained illegally? An interesting conversation of "consent" comes to mind - I think the issue is if somebody's face appears in a news article is it allowed to then download that same image and store it for unrelated purposes? Wouldn't that make google image search illegal? How about FB's now defunt face matching system they just removed? As far as I have seen some regulators have demanded the data be deleted as it might be considered to breach GDPR, but there are absolutely countries (like the USA) where this is considered absolutely acceptable behavior. So far, no public court cases with decisions can be found anywhere from what I can see.
- sneak 5y ago
  Clearview is selling use of the imagery without a license. If you or I scraped everything off of Instagram and started offering derived data as a SaaS, we'd go to jail. These people don't because they're using it to help the cops.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    They are selling the images themselves... if you scraped all the images off Instagram to make a list of the most popular memes and songs of the week the lawsuit would be much more difficult against you.
  - creato 5y ago
    I don't think that is true. Scraping Facebook and the like has already been litigated several times. I can't find the outcome of those cases, but jail is definitely not a possibility.

Ephil012 5y ago

The worst part about Clearview is there is no way to easily opt-out if you do not live in California or Illinois. I wrote Clearview an email a long time ago saying I would like my data removed. They asked for my ID to verify who I was. Clearview responds saying thanks for sending your ID, but you aren’t a California resident so we don’t have to remove your data. I wrote follow up emails still asking if they could consider removing it. After my follow up email, they just stopped responding. It’s been months now and no word back. I get that they have no legal obligation to, but they should provide people a way to opt-out in other states. It felt like a bait and switch to ask for my personal information then just ghost me. However, I guess nobody can expect Clearview to be a moral company.

hermitdev 5y ago
In Illinois, one has to opt in for biometric collection, not opt out. If they have anything on me, they're already breaking the law.
staplers 5y ago
Not to mention you gave them even more (highly sensitive) personal data about yourself.
- Ephil012 5y ago
  Typically with these types of requests it isn’t abnormal to have to give over an ID. I don’t like the idea of doing it, but usually it’s the only way to do it. Even if you’re a California resident, you’re forced to upload your ID to remove data. It is kind of a no-win scenario. Either they keep your facial data or you give over highly sensitive data to get the facial data removed. I only did it because it seemed initially they were willing to remove the facial data (despite their very delayed response).
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sneak 5y ago
Rent a cheap place in California or in the EU. Establishing second residence isn't that expensive.

user764743 5y ago

Of course the FBI would be collaborating on surveillance with the far-right, including weev & friends. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-alt-right_n_5e7d028bc5b6cb08a92a5c48?ri18n=true https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/clearview-ai-facial-reco... https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-ai-far-right-white-nationalists-connections-report-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-ai-far-right-white...

hourislate 5y ago

The FBI, CIA, NSA and every other alphabet agency down to the state, municiple level already have access to your face, address, d.o.b, phone info, income, bills, investments, physical and online activity. Having the clearview info will help them build a better picture of who you hang with (all those photo's on FB, Snapchat, Insta, tiktok, etc) and the circles you keep. When they crunch all that data they'll be able to build a complete picture and remove any minutia of privacy you still might have had. Here's an idea for you folks who are chasing the next big thing, develop something that will erase a person from the matrix.

aboringusername 5y ago
Isn't this the acceptable nature of participating in a society? Covid was an opportunity to force people online - creating new accounts, accepting new privacy policies, getting used to Zoom calls and having more of your data legally recorded and used in ways you may not have considered (but you pressed "I agree" on that privacy policy!). You can live off grid, but even that is very difficult with satellites overhead and trying to avoid every CCTV camera or digital device that may vacuum you up is bordering on impossible. Unless you erase yourself from life, but even then someone will likely make a note of that somewhere ;).
donkarma 5y ago
Can't be too hard to make mismatching profiles with your face and different names and vice versa.

riazrizvi 5y ago

This technology is so widespread, Apple could do it, Microsoft could do it, Google could do it, Facebook could do it, but for some reason we are focusing on Clearview. I think it's because only Clearview is selling it to law enforcement, thereby turning a previously expensive human task of identification and tracking, into a cheaper automated one. I'm reminded of the line 'With great power comes great responsibility'. The more people who have the power, the greater the odds that the responsibility will be abused in the pursuit of profit or even darker motives. History is littered with shithole autocracies that ran their corners of the world into the ground by eliminating economic participation and mobility using new advancements that delivered new concentrations of power. Here this technology gives smaller and smaller jurisdictions the power to turn themselves into absolute authorities, and it needs to be balanced with better oversight, better protections for people to move around without harassment. I hope this country is able to create and uphold new Federal legislation to that effect. Otherwise it's going to back an awful lot of people into a corner. I guess this is the big political question being fought out between the two main parties right now...

JudasGoat 5y ago
On Clearview's website they state they have 3 billion facial images scraped from the web. That seems to be a low cost of entry to accomplish the same level of service. I am a bit surprised that the FBI wouldn't have a similar database.
nerdponx 5y ago
We are concerned about the other companies doing it. At least I am.

areoform 5y ago

Clearview AI is disturbing. I have had a public conversation with one of the founders (who had left the company), where he said, "you civil libertarian types are all going to lose. We are going to steamroll you." And dismissed any and all concerns related to the technology. They've taken the data without consent and sold it to police departments across the world with provable records of human rights violation, whilst claiming a 100% facial match accuracy. I am not exaggerating. They claim — to the police departments they sell to — that their technology is 100% accurate and doesn't have false positives. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-accurate-aclu-absurd https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/clearv... They are a combustible mix of greed and ambition with lies sprinkled into the mix. It astounded me that he had the gall to say and imply in a public setting that they are "civil libertarian types" (like me) were going to go the way of the dodo and that the totalitarian surveillance state was the way of the future. I hope he is proven wrong. And I hope that they get sued and sanctioned out of existence like the NSO Group.

boppo1 5y ago
> public conversation Is there a verifiable record somewhere? I think there's no outrage because this is unknown to laypeople. However, I've very confident this would be a unifying issue for far left and right internet-outrage machines.
stareblinkstare 5y ago
> "you civil libertarian types are all going to lose. We are going to steamroll you." And dismissed any and all concerns related to the technology. That's pretty spot on, matches with my experience as well as every historical record ever written. We have a country right now that has installed labor/concentration camps and the rest of the world is dancing to their fiddle. Steamroll is an understatement. I don't want to know what is going on at those camps, but it wouldn't surprise me if many wish they could be steamrolled to end it all. "Civil Libertarian Types" are abound on HN. They forget human nature and think that change is right around the corner. Sometimes I wonder if they're playing the devil's advocate or if they're really that stupid. It's bread and circuses of a very amusing and gullible sort. These sort of people have no incentive whatsoever to change what they're doing. So yes, they're laughing at you as they fuck you over and profit from it. They know you're powerless, and they know you know it too. What are you going to do about it? I'd genuinely like to see more than keyboard warring from you CLTs, but you're pretty useless about the whole thing.

photochemsyn 5y ago

I'm sure the FBI would go into hysterics if there was a publicly accessible facial recognition database of all FBI employees and all FBI informants - but is there really a problem with that? Why should secretive police organiziations - which have a notorious history related to the establishment of totalitarian states - be subject to different rules about data privacy then the general public is? Why shouldn't citizens have access to an app that allows them to easily identify undercover police seeking to infiltrate peaceful protest movements via facial recognition, for example? The counterargument (authoritarian) is that police spies are necessary to combat various forms of crime in which all parties to the criminal activity have no interest in reporting said criminal activity - for example, illegal drug transactions. The counter-counterargument (libertarian) is that such forms of crime are actually victimless and the solution is to legalize and regulate all such drug transactions, to move them into the same sphere as alcohol sales. It would be a very curious world, however, in which anyone could point their phone at anyone else and get an immediate background report on them (which is apparently what the government agencies like the FBI want to be able to do), including their home address, phone number, credit history, educational background, criminal records if any, online browsing habits, family and business relationships, medical history, travel patterns... that would be a very creepy world indeed. It already seems to exist for the secret police, however, with tools like Palantir coupled to this facial recognition system. The potential for gross abuse is pretty obvious. Government regulation banning all such facial recognition software and data collection and aggregation is the only realistic option if we want to prevent such a dystopian future. People should have a right to privacy, even if this destroys the business model of Google, Facebook, and other personal data-based targeted advertising platforms, and so what if it makes the job of law enforcement harder? Read the Bill of Rights, about half of it is all about making it harder for law enforcement to snoop on citizens.

whodunnit 5y ago
Information ownership and a digital bill of rights would solve this. It should be considered a basic human right to own one’s information just as one owns one’s body.
novok 5y ago
Yup, police always want the power relationship to be one way. You see it today with special public records exceptions, special license plates and more, which are not available for many others who would benefit, like DV victims, psychologists, and more.

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7d5TJ3v9uxqs9J8 5y ago

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hellbannedguy 5y ago

wellthisisgreat 5y ago

The match between what Clearview AI is doing and it's founder's personal stories is just... cinematic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Ton-That

hbarka 5y ago

I don’t know what the statistics are for stolen license plates but it seems to me, here in the San Francisco Bay Area anyway, that whenever there’s a recorded incident of a robbery or assault where the perpetrators used a getaway car, in all likelihood they put stolen plates on the car. Here’s an example of a gang who prowled around with impunity, comfortable that their cars could not be traced because they would just put stolen plates. https://sfist.com/2021/12/15/six-bay-area-men-arrested-for-a-staggering-alleged-70-attacks-on-asian-women/ https://sfist.com/2021/12/15/six-bay-area-men-arrested-for-a... Technology like Clearview could find a use case not just for facial recognition but vehicle recognition with validation to the license plate. We have many checkpoints and toll junctions where it can be installed and just run these exception checks. At the very least it would establish statistics on these gangs that are committing crimes with impunity. Vehicle recognition would be much easier than facial recognition.

yeetaccount4 5y ago
I think in 10-20 years they’ll have this and more. Imagine dash cam videos from cop cars being analyzed and correlated by software so that someone who sped in between two cop cars 100 miles apart gets ticketed because they could not have got from one to the other without speeding.

weare138 5y ago

https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

ipaddr 5y ago

I've tried Clearview and it's more sizzle than steak. The images available were like a crippled duckduckgo search. There were photos available you didn't expect or find elsewhere. Primarily headshots. Shots with enough clarity are required which removes most poor quality facebook / myspace / instagram photos as the facial features are not clear enough and the resolution is poor. It doesn't connect someone to a single identity and gather different social aliases and build a social graph. It's another tool that simplifies a basic search. Honestly it's disappointing. I'd be worried about what acxiom is building. They can identity you anywhere online and connect you to other sites you visit.

nerdponx 5y ago
The fact that the product sucks doesn't invalidate the badness of it existing.

boppo1 5y ago

This is an issue, but I'm curious, would it be possible to do a sort of 'denial of service' attack on the AI by overloading the internet with deepfakes? What if there are 50 deepfaked 'similars' to me out there?

landemva 5y ago
Create dirty data and the whole dataset becomes less valuable. This would need some automation for dirty names and dirty faces and upload to public websites.