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Clearview AI: secretive company that might end privacy as we know it (2020)
- gorbachev 3y agoI'm convinced any tool like this can only be fought by turning the tables, by using them against the people who abuse them, the owners/executives of the companies and legislators who allow the abuse.
- ingonealan3 3y agoI am starting to believe that this is, most likely, the best way out of a lot of the mess we find ourselves in, in the modern digital world. We, the laypeople, are under scrutiny in so many ways, our lives being recorded all the time. The basic asymmetry is that, on the other hand, the powerful have tools at their disposal to hide from scrutiny, and at the same time have access to the data collected on us. With well designed systems, we could remove this unfair advantage that they have, and level the playing field.
- klabb3 3y agoWould it be immoral with a community effort to track and publicize the movements of the executives and enablers of such enterprises? Similar to ElonJet.
- RamblingCTO 3y ago1. it's from 2022 2. https://archive.ph/wmOpD https://archive.ph/wmOpD
- 3np 3y ago> Published Jan 18 2020, Updated Nov 2 2021
- RamblingCTO 3y agoYou're right, it was archived in 2022
- smeagull 3y agoIf this site is going to rely on archiving sites to allow people to read articles, perhaps you should just post the archive link to begin with.
- december456 3y agothe archive website didnt write that article nor do they fund it. Their business model might be ridiculous, but they pay their reporters using that.
- smeagull 3y agoAnd? We're here discussing an article most can't access otherwise. Why give them this? Find another source.
- synthoidzeta 3y agoGift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html?unlocked_article_code=MSLhAp2tLpyp8fYvkqb5HR-k01FDrfcMpIFC_CnZiD4cvjLfH8ZmgjlI7g0g8r-7xZ86lA55UFHpSoX4ZVpm1M3kgI7-oivlTcOyYe0mm317Q859TTENqZL6b3zj7agqfW5JlCA6gJdd_KMLUlPd8tL6YJQD4r6zDp-iIKFuSf57cgrPtPCvhoUAj12x32MA95taxS_OagmR-A2_AVkvOQ5U6_cL7tzpAE33bp5B99SXMbZgX5dQlIuI3LLfiGQ4HzEqSCcMpPmQF0tq-Uf1HjABbWbLVge38OnvwGd7DDyXA64I3fLw2O-WbFzjkGGqn_454sw3osiHBFYcFsbsf1jGzZbJt_k_GUHeBbftMR2vMw&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-priv...
- c7b 3y agoPretty sure that pretty much all of their business practices are GDPR violations. So we do have a choice - we could either end privacy, or have legislation that ends a potentially profitable startup.
- croes 3y agoThe answer is pretty simple: Privacy matters more. There are millions of ways for profit but you only have one privacy.
- slackfan 3y agoPrivacy doesn't matter and GDPR is not a solution.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoYour privacy may not matter to you. For most of us here, though, our privacy matters to us. So "privacy doesn't matter" seems like a rather incorrect generalization.
- slackfan 3y agoRegardless of what we preach the fact of the matter is that privacy has been eroded to hell and back. These governments that have eroded it were (mostly) duly elected by the people. If this is what the representation of the people is, then well, Privacy doesn't actually matter. Welcome to democracy, etc. to anybody but a fringe minority.
- croes 3y agoDo you live in a glass house?
- FpUser 3y agoI care about my privacy. Why should I care about profitability of startup that violates it.
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- vijucat 3y agoA relevant article that comments on this one: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/The-person-behind-a-privacy-nightmare-has-a-14993625.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/The-person-behi...
- SheinhardtWigCo 3y agoShot: > 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. Chaser: > Clearview tries to pre-empt concerns with an F.A.Q. document given to would-be clients that says its customer-support employees won’t look at the photos that the police upload.
- isoprophlex 3y agoClearly the countermove is to train an image generator on your face and flood the internet with fake data. Have your face appear tagged in weird remote places, with several made up names, on statues, in ancient manuscripts. Pretend to be dead, pretend to be a medieval monk, a war hero from the 1940s, a fictional character. Poison those ratty algorithm with nonsense and hide within the noise.
- herunan 3y agoNot a bad idea, to be honest.
- probably_wrong 3y agoThe countermove is what D-ID (YC funded, IIRC) said they would do and then changed their mind: train a face recognition library to generate modified versions of a picture such that a human would still believe it's the same person, but different enough that face recognition systems think it's someone else. Then use those pictures in all of your internet socials. Edit: according to this article they did develop that, but they don't offer the service to individuals: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/05/d-id-launches-its-initial-product-with-customers-in-printing-automotive-and-financial-services/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/05/d-id-launches-its-initial-...
- Tarq0n 3y agoFacial recognition algorithms are a set of different and developing models. There's no guarantee any system aimed at the weaknesses of an existing algorithm would work against different or future facial recognition systems.
- jojohohanon 3y agoI want someone to make the ugly shirt.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoOr just give up on privacy in the sense you mean. Ultimately we’re all living in meatspace. I was happier when I just accepted it. I’ve been on both sides of the privacy fence — when I was in my 20s I cared deeply about not being known, as you say. But it was self destructive, and I’ve seen many people who end up as reclusive as I was. It’s fine to have privacy. And it’s necessary. But obsessing about it too much can really get to you, in a way that’s sort of hard to articulate. If someone knows the city you live in, is that really a big deal? Now, there is the flip side of this. I recognize this is a privileged position to have. Some people’s lives have been ruined due to harassment of their physical location, and I am fortunate not to have to worry. It’s particularly easy for me to say this as a man, since women have a very different threat model. But as with all things, it’s a balance. The cold truth is that technology will only accelerate the trends that first Facebook and now Clearview are exploiting. Just be happy and live a nice life. I hid too long.
- michaelmrose 3y ago>One reason that Clearview is catching on is that its service is unique. 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.” So I own the copyright to the image I uploaded to facebook I licensed it to Facebook they stole it from Facebook. Did they infringe my copyright?
- Anarch157a 3y agoLinkedIn lost a lawsuit over that subject, which effectively nullifies those terms.
- michaelmrose 3y agoLinkedin lost a case questionably decided by a the single most reversed circuit which is binding in only that circuit, which is liable to be decided differently in another, which will provide impetus for the supreme court to take it up. That decision is in fact in the middle of being ripped up. It is the opposite of decided law. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/LinkedIn-Wins-Latest-Court-Battle-Against-Data-Scraping/635938/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/LinkedIn-Wins-Latest-C... It's going to be ultimately decided that violating the TOS to scrape after being told not to is legally questionable and furthermore questionable acquisition further any already ridiculous claim to fair use.
- lll-o-lll 3y ago> Did they infringe my copyright? Yes. How are you going to stop them?
- michaelmrose 3y agoSeems like the logical thing would be for some attorney to do the leg work for a class action lawsuit and ask for essentially all of their money given the number of acts of infringement.
- jefftk 3y ago
- smallnix 3y ago> goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government I believe that is not true
- Hnrobert42 3y agoSource?
- thedailymail 3y agoThis recent article from 404 Media details how a few companies are already making it possible to doxx individuals based on single images posted on social media using facial recognition AI. I experimented with two of the free sites alluded to in the article (PimEyes and facecheck.id), using a photo of my face that is not online. Both sites turned up a lot of images of me, including some that were 10+ years old and a few I had never seen before, collectively making it possible to identify my name, employer, city of residence, partial career history, etc. I'd say the problem is not just Clearview. https://www.404media.co/taylor-swift-facial-recognition-tiktok-removes-videos/ https://www.404media.co/taylor-swift-facial-recognition-tikt...
- mgaunard 3y agoDidn't Google image search use to do this, until they chose to disable it? Yandex remains somewhat usable for that purpose.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kbos87 3y agoThere’s so much emphasis of government use of these tools, but I’m a lot more weary of a world where consumers have easy access to facial recognition. Pimeyes is a free and shockingly effective way to figure out who someone in a photo is. High schoolers have already adopted it - poke around on TikTok and you’ll see them uploading images to figure out who that athlete from another school or random stranger on the street is. It’s already here.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- robbywashere_ 3y agoIf only there was a body of democratically elected leaders who could help enact policies and laws for this sort of thing. In the interest of the majority of the citizen class
- areoform 3y agoI once got into a shouting match with one of the founders of this company. In the middle of the argument, he said to me, quote, “you civil libertarian/liberty types are going to lose." During the same conversation, he also implied that people who cared about liberty and privacy were dinosaurs. And companies like his were Chicxulub impactor. I hope that in a few years, I can confidently say that he's wrong.
- soderfoo 3y agoIt's truly scary how zealous some people can become and how the double down in the face of criticism. A little introspection and contemplation is always good.
- barrysteve 3y agoHe's not wrong. It doesn't matter, when liberty goes, so will the lifeblood of technological change. The company founder types are building their own mausoleum. When this is all said and done, the matrix, star trek, ect will only be populated by those guys. The rest of us will be happy and free from it, with real resources and real likes.
- FFP999 3y ago[dead]
- XitN 3y agoAccording the article the data base consisted of about 3 billion faces, in 2020 when the article was published. If you go on their web page it says that is now consists of 30 billion, quite an increase
- specialist 3y agoThe right to control our public exposure is just one facet of the right to privacy. The right to privacy is personal sovereignty. Meaning control over oneself. I am my data, my data is me. I own all data about me. Recognizing our collective right to privacy prohibits facial recognition used for mass surveillance. Firstly, each person must consent to being represented in those datasets. Secondly, each person must consent to being tracked. Have you given consent? I certainly have not. I wasn't even asked.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang 3y agoRelated: Clearview AI helps law enforcement match photos of people to their online images - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083775 - Jan 2020 (156 comments)