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CBP signs Clearview AI deal to use face recognition for 'tactical targeting'
- mschuster91 9mo agoAnd this right here is why Clearview (and others) should have been torn apart back when they first appeared on stage. I 'member people who warned about something like this having the potential to be abused for/by the government, we were ridiculed at best, and look where we are now, a couple of years later.
- sailfast 9mo agoAlways easier when you can avoid the law and just buy it off the shelf. It’s fine to do this, we say, because it’s not being done by the government - but if they’re allowed to turn around and buy it we’re much worse off.
- digiown 9mo agoThat's why it doesn't make sense to ban governments from doing things while still allowing private companies. Either it is illegal to surveil the public for everyone, or the government can always do it indirectly with the same effect. I don't think the deal described here is even that egregious. It's basically a labeled data scrape. Any entity capable of training these LLMs are able to do this.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway894345 9mo agoI would much rather have a democratically elected and constitutionally constrained government than private enterprise with limitless power. It would also be helpful if the “government is bad” people would stop electing the people who seek to sabotage the government.
- plagiarist 9mo agoFacial recognition is not a legitimate private enterprise. It is a complete failure of legislation that it is allowed to exist.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoApple Face ID is not a good or legitimate feature? You just upset hundreds of millions of people
- heavyset_go 9mo agoMost people miss Touch ID on the iPhone.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoSo biometrtics are OK as long as it's not your face? Trying to derive the first principle here.
- plagiarist 9mo agoWhen it's allegedly stored in the Secure Enclave and the data unable to leave the device, it is obviously not the same interaction. I personally would be fine with a law making that distinction with the on-device recognition as legal.
- duped 9mo agoThis is why we should shun the people that build this stuff. If you take a paycheck to enable fascism, you're a bad person and should be unwelcome in polite society.
- runlevel1 9mo agoJust like when Verizon sold its customers' precise location history to data brokers who then sold it to law enforcement agencies.[^1] Laundered. [^1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-verizon-claim-that-selling-location-data-without-consent-is-legal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-ve...
- Manuel_D 9mo agoThat's not how the law works in the US. The government cannot have a third party take action on its behalf to do something that would be illegal for the government to do itself. This is why the Biden administration had a restraining order filed against it, on account of them pressuring social media companies to ban content it didn't like. This violated the First Amendment, despite the fact that it was a third party that was doing the actual banning at the behest of the government. The government could legally create its own facial recognition technology if it wanted to. They're not avoiding the law, facial recognition isn't illegal.
- mothballed 9mo agoThat's pretty much how KYC works. The government can't just willy nilly demand papers of everyone going into the bank to open up an account due to the 4th amendment. So they just make the bank do it so it is a "private" act, and then for instance IRS is authorized to do warrantless seizure on the accounts which are now tied to names that were forced to be revealed under KYC laws.
- Manuel_D 9mo agoThe government doesn't need a warrant to access bank records, as per the US's banking laws. They just need an administrative subpoena, which doesn't have to be signed off by a judge. This is not and example of the government sidestepping laws through a third party. You just don't like the existing laws, and would prefer to make certain things illegal that are presently legal.
- mothballed 9mo agoThere wouldn't be any identity linked for an anonymous bank account to 'access', were it not for the warrantless search of your papers required under KYC but done via private entity (sidestepping 4th amendment) to open an account. That part is done without even a subpoena. That is, the US banking laws force private actors, under color of law, to systematically inspect the papers of those opening an account, which conveniently sidesteps the 4th amendment implication of the government searching the papers themselves at everyone opening an account at the bank. And then allows the government to act on the information of that forced search, even without a warrant. ---------- re: below due to throttling ------- I'm referring to this: >The government cannot have a third party take action on its behalf to do something that would be illegal for the government to do itself. It is illegal for the government to violate the 4th amendment, whether or not a 'law' beyond what is written in the constitution is present. Clearly the government would love to just take all your information directly when you open an account, as that would be even better for them, but due to the 4th amendment they can't do that. But just asking or without a warrant requiring the bank to act on it or reveal it is almost as easy, so they just sidestep that by just requiring via the law the bank to search your papers instead. It's effectively a government imposed search but carried out by a 3rd party. -------------------- >This is just factually wrong. The Bank Secrecy Act specifically requires that banks to provide this info. The 4th amendment does not prohibit this. If a bank refused to provide this required information, the government would go in and get that information directly. >Again, no law is being avoided. You just don't like the This is not 'just factually wrong.' The bank is doing the search instead of the government. A blanket search of everyone, even without a subpeona, even without an individualized notice, even without any sort of event that would require reporting to the government under the BSA, even then they still are required to search the information even in the instances that it doesn't end up being required to be transmitted to the government. You're saying the portion of data the government collects might be 4A compliant, but that doesn't mean the private actor being forced to collect information that doesn't even get reported is 4A compliant if the government did it. You're just saying the subset of required KYC collected information that ends up transmitted to the government was 4A compliant, which isn't sufficient to establish the government could have collected all the information to begin with under the 4A as they have required the bank to do. >the government would go in and get that information directly A blanket sweep of everyone's information willy nilly by the government is not 4A compliant, that's why they've had the bank do it on their behalf.
- comrade1234 9mo ago[flagged]
- j45 9mo agoWired still seems to write some good pieces.
- toomuchtodo 9mo agoI subscribe to keep the reporting going. Journalism costs money. Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982633 - February 2026 (ProPublica, 404media, APM Marketplace, Associated Press, Vox, Block Club Chicago, Climate Town, Tampa Bay Times, etc get my journalism dollars as well)
- skiman10 9mo agoAre we the same person? I subbed to Wired last year during a sale and uh... I was never given a premium account linked to my email and support would never answer me. I signed up for the print edition as well and never received any of those. I was getting their newsletter though and that was new. Then I emailed to cancel when I got a billing notification to my email and they were able to cancel it just fine so apparently I did have an account? And then like two weeks ago I received the latest print edition. Truly have no idea what that was about, but anyway glad to see someone else out here supporting almost all the same news orgs as me (404media is amazing!)
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago>Journalism costs money. They've sold out for years already, maybe decades. Why fund them now when the corruption is out in the open? AP is really one of the few places I'd even consider donating to at this point.
- laweijfmvo 9mo agoare you using a vpn or something like that that might look like “you” have read wired articles?
- observationist 9mo agohttps://archive.is/3qywb https://archive.is/3qywb
- neuroelectron 9mo agoDon't we already have facial recognition technology that isn't based on AI? why is throwing AI into the mix suddenly a reasonable product? Liability wavers?
- dylan604 9mo agoI think the facial rec systems you're thinking of will recognize faces, but not ID them. They need you to label a face, and then it recognizes that face with a name from there on. Clearview is different in that you can provide it an unknown face and it returns a name. Whether it's just some ML based AI vs an LLM, it's still under the AI umbrella technically.
- lazide 9mo agoUh no? Facial recognition to names has been the bread and butter of facial recognition since the beginning. It’s literally the point.
- dylan604 9mo agoThere are plenty of facial rec systems. Thinking of systems like in iOS Photos, or any of the other similar photo library systems. I think pretty much everyone would be freaked out if they started IDing people in your local libraries.
- OutOfHere 9mo agoWe need a Constitutional amendment that guarantees a complete right to anonymity at every level: financial, vehicular, travel, etc. This means the government must not take any steps to identify a person or link databases identifying people until there has been a documented crime where the person is a suspect. Only if an anonymous person or their property is caught in a criminal act may the respective identity be investigated. This should be sufficient to ensure justice. Moreover, the evidence corresponding to the criminal act must be subject to a post-hoc judicial review for the justifiability of the conducted investigation. Unfortunately for us, the day we stopped updating the Constitution is the day it all started going downhill.
- _3u10 9mo agoThat will be wildly unpopular with both parties and most importantly their constituents. I doubt even the libertarian party should they get the president, house and senate could pull it off
- catlover76 9mo ago[dead]
- OutOfHere 9mo agoNote that the Amendment would apply only to the government, not to private interests. Even so, i could be unpopular among advertisers and data resellers, e.g. Clearview, who sell to the government. I guess these are what qualify as constituents these days. The people themselves have long been forgotten as being constituents.
- plagiarist 9mo agoWhat do you mean "even" the libertarian party? Libertarians would remove whatever existing laws there are around facial recognition so that companies are free to do whatever they like with the data.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- josefritzishere 9mo agoSkynet. "You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable."
- charcircuit 9mo ago[flagged]
- iLoveOncall 9mo agoMeanwhile all AI face recognition software works poorely on non-caucasians.
- dylan604 9mo agoWith this administration, I think that is a feature not a bug
- aunty_helen 9mo agoSame could be said about the computer systems that have been developed in the last 20 years. But that hasn’t happened…
- HPsquared 9mo agoI wonder how many laws and sentencing guidelines etc are formulated with an implicit assumption that most of the time, people aren't caught.
- charcircuit 9mo agoI think it will reveal unfair laws and as a society we will have to rebalance things that had such an assumption in place.
- cucumber3732842 9mo agoIn my estimation all of the criminal ones and at least half of the civil ones.
- monknomo 9mo agoare you sure it won't enabled targeted enforcement for people law enforcement finds irritating, more than evenly applied law? It's still people setting the priorities and exercising discretion about charging.
- yababa_y 9mo agolocal laws forbidding facial recognition tech have never been wiser
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- lenerdenator 9mo agoWear a face mask in public. Got it.
- dylan604 9mo agoAren't we back to where this is illegal again, unless you're an ICE agent.
- lenerdenator 9mo ago"Hey man, doctor's orders. Gotta wear it to get allergy relief. And no, can't ask about it... HIPAA stuff."
- FireBeyond 9mo agoSadly, I'm sure that will go over "not well" with ICE agents who will happily assault you for carrying a phone...
- seanw444 9mo agoI disagree with the shooting too, but this is such a massive oversimplification of the event.
- FireBeyond 9mo agoAlright, I'll rephrase - "ICE agents have shown a bias towards escalation than de-escalation in conflict situations, be it pepper spray, assault, detention, or worse. I think that trying to get into a shouting match with them about HIPAA violations on removing your face mask are not likely to result in "okay, carry on, as you were"."
- dylan604 9mo ago"I'll show you mine if you show me yours"
- hackingonempty 9mo ago
- quantified 9mo ago225k USD per year sells us cheaply!
- jmyeet 9mo agoThere are certain people who believe that average citizens can be held responsible for the actions of their government, to the point that they are valid military targets. Well, if that's true then employees of the companies that build the tools for all this to happen can also be held responsible, no? I'm actually an optimist and believe there will come a time whena whole lot of people will deny ever working for Palantir, for Clearview on this and so on. What you, as a software engineer, help build has an impact on the world. These things couldn't exist if people didn't create and maintain them. I really hope people who work at these companies consider what they're helping to accomplish.
- the_gastropod 9mo agoI never worked at a company that could broadly be considered unethical, I don't think. But it was always a bit disheartening how many little obviously unethical decisions (e.g., advertised monthly plans with a small print "annual contract" and cancellation fee) almost every other employee would just go along with implementing, no pushback whatsoever. I don't know what it is, but your average employee seemingly sees themselves as wholly separate from the work they're paid to do. I have friends who are otherwise extremely progressive people, who I think are genuinely good people, who worked for Palantir for many years. The cognitive dissonance they must've dealt with...
- throw-qqqqq 9mo ago> I don't know what it is, but your average employee seemingly sees themselves as wholly separate from the work they're paid to do. Hannah Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil”. Many people think they are just following orders without reflecting on their actions.
- deaux 9mo ago> I have friends who are otherwise extremely progressive people, who I think are genuinely good people, who worked for Palantir for many years. The cognitive dissonance they must've dealt with... There's really nothing different about it than people working for Meta, AWS or Microsoft, and there are likely a dozen of those among us in this thread alone (hi!). Especially pre-Trump. Without the latter two companies gladly committing to juicy enterprise contracts with Palantir (continuing to this day), they would barely exist. Zuckerberg has caused magnitudes more death and destruction in the world than Karp could even dream of. Not for the latter's lack of trying, of course. And with similar amounts of empathy. Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel's combined empathy amounts to zero. None of them have more than any of the others. To be fair, I think at least at Microsoft, Google and indeed Palantir a lot of people have had large degrees of separation to the despicable stuff the companies are responsible for. Working on say, Xbox (Microsoft), or Gmail (Google), or optimizing Airbus manufacturing (Palantir), one can see how it's quite easy to defend at a surface level. In that sense I consider Meta the worst because Facebook/Instagram are effectively the entire business, with a little side of WhatsApp. Almost everyone is working directly on those two products, or is maybe one degree separated. I'm sure this won't be a popular opinion on here, but it may help you give a different point of view about your friends in a way. You should talk with them about it. Pre-MAGA, you'll likely find that ironically the place they worked at was internally more progressive than Meta or Microsoft. Did your friends quit voluntarily or were they booted? This is an interesting article [0]. This comment probably won't be very popular here, but I do invite those who instinctively reach for the downvote button to have a calm think and maybe reply before they do so. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/30/palantir-trump-karp-politics.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/30/palantir-trump-karp-politics...
- givemeethekeys 9mo agoHow long before the bring the price down and local PD's start using it too?
- nsriv 9mo agoNot sure if you're joking but Clearview's primary customers are local or metro police departments.
- farklenotabot 9mo ago[flagged]
- snarky123 9mo ago"Tactical Targeting" - you just know someone's PowerPoint presentation used the word "synergy" in it too.
- text0404 9mo ago[flagged]
- forshaper 9mo agoDid you mean Vietnamese supremacist?
- text0404 9mo agoNope. I meant white supremacist [1]. Notice I didn't say smart white supremacist. [1] https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5e8cc7922300005600169bd3.jpeg?ops=scalefit_2560&format=webp https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5e8cc7922300005600169bd...
- mothballed 9mo agoThey hired weev? Can you point out to where he founded or worked for the company?
- text0404 9mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Manuel_D 9mo agoNone of your links allege that Hoan Ton-That or Richard Schwartz is a white supremacist. What the Huffington Post piece does allege, is that for 3 weeks Smartcheckr (a different LLC that would later have its assets transferred to Clearview AI) hired one Douglass Mackey. Douglass Mackey had an online alias "Richard Vaughn" that was used to post white supremacist content. Ton-That states that he was unaware that Mackey was the real person behind Richard Vaughn. There's a vast gulf between "Clearview AI was founeded by white supremacists" and "Smartcheckr, which later merged with Clearview AI, employed for 3 weeks someone who posted white supremacist content under a pseudonym, unbeknownst to the Clearview AI founders". In fact, neither the Buzzfeed article nor the NYTimes piece accuse anyone of white supremacy.
- grvdrm 9mo agoI keep reading this as “CBS signs…” and can’t help thinking about that uncomfortable possible future moment.
- cyanydeez 9mo ago"Tactical Targetting": Whitewash stochastic terrorism to attack brown people before midterms.
- tcmart14 9mo agoI'm sure the anti-vax crowd who were foaming at the mouthes over the vaccine containing tracking chips will explain why this is needed and why its not a big deal.
- AtlasBarfed 9mo agoThis is the frontline fascist unit in the newly fascist US government. Fear anything they get funding to do. They have one aim and none of it is for the betterment of the people.
- puppycodes 9mo agoCompletely unsuprising as Clearview has been turning Orwell over in his grave for years.