[HN Gopher] The file Clearview AI has been keeping on me
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The file Clearview AI has been keeping on me
Author : _Microft
Score : 129 points
Date : 2020-02-29 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| finnh wrote:
| Is it just me or are those results clearly based on using her
| name (from the ID she provided as part of her CCPA request)? To
| have zero false positives, and multiple different hair colors,
| etc ... strains credulity that is all based on face matching
| _only_.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I like the way they claim it stops "child molesters" but then
| goes on to say that Macy's uses it, presumably to identify
| shoplifters before they strike.
| spectramax wrote:
| How do we stop this? Can we sue Clearview through EFF with the
| grounds of violating copyright or some weird law?
|
| California/GDPR laws are great but they don't _stop_ the data
| collection, merely allow the user to access it.
|
| We need to make companies like Clearview completely and
| unquestionably illegal. I am infuriated and don't know what we
| can do.
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| What astounds me is that GDPR seems to have an actual effect.
| When it first became law I just assumed that companies would
| just move their servers to $not_europe and create shell
| companies if required.
| mirimir wrote:
| Maybe just add noise. For example, there are lots of apps that
| mix faces. So mix your face with a bunch of other faces, or
| even faces from https://thispersondoesnotexist.com and upload
| the results wherever.
| ajaygeorge91 wrote:
| stop uploading your pics to internet then
| carapace wrote:
| Exactly! People think the Internet is like Disneyland but
| it's actually more like the bad parts of Bangkok.
|
| Somewhere between the inter-networked machines and peoples'
| minds some kind of _magical thinking_ takes over.
|
| Why don't normal people understand that they are being
| actively fought by organized relentless enemies?
|
| In the old days cities had walls around them, I think we're
| barely getting to that point on the internet now, despite
| repeated and continuous raids by all kinds of marauders.
| tobr wrote:
| And stop having friends who might decide to upload photos
| they take of you? It's not a good solution to this problem.
| pravda wrote:
| Or, upload your pictures, and misname them.
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| That doesn't fix facial matching.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> "Clearview helps to identify child molesters, murderers,
| suspected terrorists, and other dangerous people quickly,
| accurately, and reliably to keep our families and communities
| safe."
|
| It helps to identify child molesters. "Think of the children".
| luckydata wrote:
| Until our way of governing ourselves doesn't change, everything
| scientists and engineers do can and will be converted into a
| weapon or tool of oppression. We should be more vigilant and we
| should demand better from our elected officials.
| pstuart wrote:
| We should always demand this, yet not count on it happening.
|
| It would be nice to find ways to take these weapons and use
| them for self-defense as well. I wish I had a clue of what that
| would look like.
| leggomylibro wrote:
| It would probably look like someone publishing the realtime
| location and browsing histories of powerful public figures.
|
| But good luck with that; there's a reason why that sort of
| information isn't sold on a per-person basis.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chris_f wrote:
| I don't see it get mentioned much, but Yandex's reverse image
| search [0] will also match similar facial images. It works
| surprisingly well.
|
| Other search images can obviously perform this function, but I
| think most stay away from it because of the creepy factor.
|
| [0] https://yandex.com/images/ - click on the camera for the
| reverse image search
| fortran77 wrote:
| Amazing! I just tried it on a picture of me, and it found
| several other photos of me that I had no idea were on the
| Internet, and a few photos of people that looked so much like
| me that I thought it was until I took a close look.
| simion314 wrote:
| Just tested it, it returns people with some similar features
| but that are obvious different persons, different face shape
| and size , maybe facial hair and glasses confuses it or they
| could not find any better matches so they returned just
| something so it is not empty.
| jsjddbbwj wrote:
| I tried it before and found it absolutely amusing because it
| would find tons of doppelgangers of any person.
| ghaff wrote:
| I tried it with a picture of me and the top half dozen photos
| were, in fact, pictures of me. I was originally thinking
| there were also bizarrely a couple of photos of signs and
| then I realized I was standing next to a sign in the photo
| and that's what caused the algorithm to stick a couple of
| signs in there.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Supposedly any company in the EU that has data on you needs to
| proactively make you aware of this and allow you to have this
| data erased or rectified.
|
| I don't think all or even most companies respect this rule yet (I
| haven't heard of a single company about my data so far) but I
| think it's a powerful idea that would keep companies like
| Clearview from being able to build up such large databases
| without people knowing about it.
|
| I really hope the EU will keep strengthening subject rights as I
| think it's a very good solution to most problems involving the
| use of personal data.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Can anyone chime in on why California's law is necessary to force
| the deletion of your data? Wouldn't these photos be subject to
| copyright law?
| simion314 wrote:
| From what someone said in a previous thread the copyright part
| is not that simple, so as an example the person that takes the
| picture can claim the copyright not the subject. Probably there
| is a different law that would prevent others to make money
| using your image but is not the copyright AFAIK
| guitarbill wrote:
| But selfies would be pretty unambiguous, no? Maybe even
| enough to get the ball rolling on a class-action, if enough
| Californians requested their data and got back a bunch of
| selfies.
|
| I'd also like to see what would happen if Europeans reported
| them to their data protection agencies. Nothing will happen
| to the company, since it's in the US, but it might make the
| life of the execs hard if they ever wanted to do business in
| Europe.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| >Probably there is a different law that would prevent others
| to make money using your image but is not the copyright AFAIK
|
| There is a right of publicity [1] that tends to come into
| play if I want to use a photo of you for commercial purposes
| like advertising. However, if I sell a candid photo of you
| that I took in public to a newspaper or if it's in a book I
| sell that's OK. (Assume it's straightforward use and nothing
| that could be misconstrued or deliberately misrepresents you
| in some way.)
|
| No idea about this case and IANAL. But it seems in general
| that I would be able to freely use images on the Internet for
| training models and for other purposes that don't involve
| republishing those images.
|
| [1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-right-
| publicity....
| bsanr2 wrote:
| I'm trying to understand where subject release documents
| fit into this. So I don't have to get those signed to take
| pictures of people, even in public? What if it's a still
| from video?
| ghaff wrote:
| A model release form gives the right to use a photo for
| most purposes* including things like marketing
| literature, e.g. the classic happy smiling diverse
| workers found on company websites and in promotional
| brochures. However, if I just take a photo of you in a
| public place I can upload it to Flickr, post it on my
| website/blog, sell it to The New York Times for editorial
| use, etc. You have fairly limited rights to photos of
| yourself taken in public.
|
| A video is just a sequence of still frames so I don't
| know why that would be any different.
|
| IANAL. Added: I'm primarily familiar with the US. Your
| mileage may vary elsewhere.
|
| *subject possibly to what I wrote earlier about
| misleading or defamatory purposes, e.g. if I use a photo
| of you to illustrate an article about neo-nazis.
| llarsson wrote:
| Google has all the data and algorithmic chops required for this,
| too.
|
| Just use their reverse image search feature, as helpfully
| explained here:
|
| https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1325808?co=GENIE...
|
| They have tons of images from social media sites, too.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Google actually already does image recognition internally, and
| they did it for at least 5+ years.
| danso wrote:
| But image similarity is not the same as face recognition. I
| just uploaded the photo the author gave to Clearview, and it
| returned none of the photos Clearview found - just other front-
| facing flatly-lit mugshots of other people.
|
| Of course Google can do this internally (and FAcebook could do
| it even better) - but the public-facing image search does not
| do what Clearview purports to do.
| extesy wrote:
| Shortcut to the page with data access and opt out request forms:
| https://clearview.ai/privacy/requests
| yoaviram wrote:
| Or send them a CCPA / GDPR erasure request:
| https://yourdigitalrights.org/?company=clearview.ai
| kurthr wrote:
| It's worth noting (as mentioned they are under security review)
| that apparently ClearviewAI lost their client database (hopefully
| that's all) to hackers last week. Along with being sued by the
| big boys, that's gotta hurt.
|
| https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/28/clearview-ai-los...
| buckminster wrote:
| > "Clearview does not maintain any sort of information other than
| photos," the company wrote. "To find your information, we cannot
| search by name or any method other than image."
|
| So a police force buys this product, searches for an image, and
| just gets more images. Really? What use would that be?
| Donald wrote:
| It links you to the source of the image which is presumably
| subpoenable for identity information.
| throwGuardian wrote:
| I think they also provide the origin of the images (example
| MySpace), and more often than not, the origin ends up with a
| definitive identity.
|
| The response report on the author, for instance, clearly
| identifies her
| [deleted]
| beholder1 wrote:
| The work of this system does not seem different from what's known
| of chinese face detection and surveillance systems.
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(page generated 2020-02-29 23:00 UTC)