Hard Pass: Clearview Offers To Help Out With COVID-19 Contact Tracing

from the [incoherent-screaming-into-the-void] dept

Clearview AI is inserting itself into a discussion no one invited it to participate in. The discussion around contact tracing to manage and (hopefully) impede the spread of the coronavirus involves multiple governments around the world. It also includes Google and Apple, who are partnering to create a platform for contact tracing apps.

At least in the case of Google and Apple's offerings, there appears to have been a serious discussion about protecting users' privacy as much as possible while still offering a valuable service to government health agencies and people concerned about contracting the virus.

Now, Clearview has blundered into the discussion -- a company that has shown utter disdain for the millions of people it has force-fed to its multi-billion image database via social media site scraping. There is no opting in or out of this collection -- one that Clearview is selling to law enforcement agencies in the US and to government agencies around the world. If it's on the web, it's likely already in Clearview's database.

In a brief discussion with NBC News, CEO Hoan Ton-That pitched his idea for a Clearview-based contact tracing program. What Ton-That wants to do is tie his app and its database to thousands of CCTV cameras located in stores, parking lots, gyms, and other locations where, as he puts it, "there's no expectation of privacy." Ton-That doesn't explain how his system will be notified of a person's COVID status, but he's pretty sure his software will be able to recognize faces accurately. Clearview's facial recognition AI remains unproven, but it's supposedly capable of making guesses about faces using images as small as 110x110.

Ton-That also seems unconcerned about the privacy implications of adding people's health status to his enormous database of scraped personal information. He says any limitations on gathering/storage of this info would be up to whoever decides to take him up on his unsolicited offer.

Obviously, no one should do this. The AI is unproven and Clearview is far from trustworthy. Activist group Fight For The Future has issued its official statement on Clearview's contact tracing pitch. It's short but punchy.

“Absolutely the fuck not,” said Evan Greer (she/her), the groups Deputy Director.

As FFTF points out, adding Clearview to the mix just adds more potential privacy violations to the mix by dumping people's health info into a database that's already being accessed by a number of private companies and government agencies around the world. Ton-That appears to assume that anyone in a "public" area is fair game for his company. Adding thousands of cameras operated by hundreds of private companies would provide a steady flow of facial images (some tied to very personal information) into his database, making his product even more enticing to government agencies.

Hopefully, no one will let Clearview near any of this. Facial recognition adds nothing to contact tracing -- something that can be done almost anonymously using the platform developed by Google and Apple. Hoovering up facial images -- along with location data and health info -- is a privacy nightmare. And there's probably no company that should be trusted less with your personal info than Clearview, which has repeatedly demonstrated it cares nothing about the millions of people it has turned into fodder for its unproven tech.

Filed Under: artificial intelligence, contact tracing, facial recognition, hoan ton-that, privacy, trade-offs
Companies: clearview, clearview ai

Facial Recognition Developer Told Cops To Test Out The Software By Running Searches On Friends And Family

from the inappropriate-access-is-the-baseline dept

More information about super-sketchy facial recognition software developer, Clearview, is being made public… none of it good.

Clearview -- an app created by a developer (Hoan Ton-That) whose previous software put Trump's hair on people's photos -- is now perhaps the most infamous name in the loaded field of facial recognition tech developers. Ton-That's app links to a proprietary database of face photos that's several times larger than any the US federal government has managed to create.

But the only thing proprietary about it is the access. The photos that make up the supposed 3 billion images stored on Clearview servers all come from other companies' websites. Any site that encourages users to upload photos of themselves has been scraped by Clearview, allowing it to amass a few billion photos with very little effort or expenditure on its part.

Those being scraped aren't happy. While it's not definitely illegal to violate sites' terms of service to scrape photos for resale, it's kind of discouraged. As long as this remains unsettled, Clearview is free to scrape sites for photos and sell access to its database to cops.

Clearview may or may not be selling a lot of access to a lot of cops. I don't normally use that mostly-meaningless (and wholly-useless) phrase, but Clearview hasn't exactly been honest about its law enforcement partnerships. The company has claimed in marketing materials it has been instrumental in identifying wanted criminals and providing lists of suspects for cold cases. Conversations with the agencies named in Clearview's sales pitches have pointed out the company's claims are exaggerated, if not completely false.

Fudging facts is just part of the business model, apparently. Ever since Kashmir Hill's investigation of the company for the New York Times went public, multiple journalists have dug up even more details about the company. Every new story makes the company look even shadier.

Clearview insists it's a powerful tool that should only be used responsibly by government agencies. But it actually says something else to the law enforcement agencies it pitches its product to, according to documents obtained by Buzzfeed.

[I]n a November email to a police lieutenant in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a company representative encouraged a police officer to use the software on himself and his acquaintances.

“Have you tried taking a selfie with Clearview yet?” the email read. “It’s the best way to quickly see the power of Clearview in real time. Try your friends or family. Or a celebrity like Joe Montana or George Clooney.

“Your Clearview account has unlimited searches. So feel free to run wild with your searches,” the email continued.

The email chain also encouraged the department to freely use its "Invite User" function to give access to as many people as possible, with Clearview stating it would "immediately" open demo accounts for each invited user. "Running wild" must have worked for the Green Bay PD. It ended up signing a $3,000 contract with Clearview.

Clearview's insistence that this irresponsibility is being handled responsibly by the company doesn't make things much better. It asks the police to police themselves, something they often seem incapable of doing.

“As as [sic] safeguard we have an administrative tool for Law Enforcement supervisors and administrators to monitor the searches of a particular department,” Ton-That said. “An administrator can revoke access to an account at any time for any inappropriate use.”

Run wild… in moderation. It's unclear how many law enforcement agencies have been offered the same pitch: an invitation to run inappropriate searches to test drive the product. But it could be in the hundreds. Or it could only be dozens. Clearview's claims continue to shift, moving upwards with each new iteration of its website, which is now being scrubbed a bit cleaner as the company faces more scrutiny. At one point, Clearview said it was being used by 600 law enforcement agencies, putting it up there with Amazon's Ring. Now, it says it's working with "over a thousand independent law enforcement agencies."

"Working with" may mean nothing more than "sent marketing materials to." Or it could be Clearview is abusing its own code of conduct by running unsolicited searches on criminal suspects and forwarding this information to agencies. It has made bogus claims in the past about its contributions to investigations and it will likely continue to do so until it feels the endless rebuttals are hurting its ability to close sales.

The sales pitches are already light on facts. Going forward they might also include very questionable assertions about citizens' rights and freedoms, like the one Clearview investor David Scalzo made on Dilbert creator Scott Adams' podcast. Apparently, the thing that makes America great is the ability to scrape social media websites for photos and sell access to this database to law enforcement officers.

"The reason why America is the greatest and most prosperous is because of our Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment ... says that we do not have to be hidden to be free,” he said. “We do not have to be hidden to say what we want, to share ideas, to share information, and to be with people.”

Ah. The 28th Amendment: "If you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." I'm sure plenty of states would be willing to ratify this endorsement of unchecked domestic surveillance. While there is little expectation of privacy in public social media posts, the expectation that these won't be harvested in bulk by third parties and sold to the government remains unchanged. Given the many flaws of facial recognition tech (built-in bias, high false positive rates), having nothing to hide should still give most people plenty to fear -- especially when a private company is encouraging cops to "run wild" with unproven software.

Filed Under: facial recognition, hoan ton-that, police, scraping
Companies: clearview, clearview ai