[HN Gopher] Yesterday the FBI signed its first public contract w...
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Yesterday the FBI signed its first public contract with Clearview
AI
Author : danso
Score : 145 points
Date : 2021-12-31 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Ephil012 wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| Rent a cheap place in California or in the EU.
|
| Establishing second residence isn't that expensive.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Is clear view requiring people to _live_ in California or the
| EU for California /EU rights to apply??
|
| Those state's rights should apply for anyone present in those
| states (and possibly airspace) unless they idiotically wrote
| their laws.
| Ephil012 wrote:
| Yes, Clearview requires it. Technically, the laws can only
| cover residents of those areas so that is how Clearview is
| able to require residency.
| [deleted]
| staplers wrote:
| Not to mention you gave them even more (highly sensitive)
| personal data about yourself.
| Ephil012 wrote:
| 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).
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I wrote them an email saying I would like my data removed (I'm
| a california resident) and they asked for more data to help
| them remove me (a photo or something). It felt so backwards.
| Like they need to enter me into the database to ensure they
| don't enter me into the database? If complying with the law
| results in paradoxes like that, the business doesn't seem like
| it should be legal.
|
| I never sent them the photo.
| Ephil012 wrote:
| Yeah same, it feels very backward to me. I mean I can get
| that they want an ID to make sure you aren't filing a request
| on someone else's behalf without them knowing. Still, it is a
| bit disturbing they need an ID. Supposedly they don't do
| anything with the ID info, but you never know I guess. I sent
| the ID picture in hopes they'd remove the facial data,
| because they did for others. However, when they denied
| removing the data I instantly regretted sending the picture.
| A bit of a stupid move on my part to be honest.
| hbarka wrote:
| 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...
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hirundo wrote:
| 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.
| OtomotO wrote:
| 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.
| cletus wrote:
| 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 out 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.
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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.
| kodah wrote:
| I'll preface this with the fact that I'm _very_ pro-privacy.
| I don 't so much object to certain technologies or data
| collection; the cat is out of the bag to some extent. I do
| object to the conspicuous lack of regulatory frameworks. For
| instance, if you're going to use Clearview on a suspected
| terrorist my first question would be, "What due diligence and
| groundwork have you done to prove that they are in fact a
| terrorist?" If it's a known member of the Taliban who has a
| Twitter account that regularly calls for death to Americans,
| is that enough -- or is that some kind of edgy free speech?
| My point being, I'd like a very high bar to use these
| technologies and I'd like for them to be, mostly, used in
| apprehension rather than intelligence gathering.
| OtomotO wrote:
| The cat is out of the bag? So unleash the dogs!
| pdkl95 wrote:
| > "What due diligence and groundwork have you done to prove
| that they are in fact a terrorist?"
|
| The solution is to make this question _their_ (Clearview)
| problem. If you are offering a service that makes damaging
| claims about people, then you need to be _liable_ for any
| related damages if that claim is later found to be
| _slander_ / _libel_.
|
| The risk of a potentially huge ruling/settlement will be
| handled the same way it is handled in other professions: by
| paying for liability/malpractice insurance. Eventually, the
| insurance companies will handle the question of due
| diligence.
| aboringusername wrote:
| I would suspect in such cases they would have a 'case file'
| on such an individual. Perhaps it ought to be to the extent
| it would pass any reasonable jury in a court of law - I
| would be very surprised if this system isn't merely an
| addition to their existing toolset to help them
| validate/process data (perhaps as a verification system?
| finding individuals they are looking for?)
| lathiat wrote:
| Here in Australia we are continually passing laws
| removing judicial/court/judge oversight for things and
| replacing it with whimsical oversight you're lucky if
| someone outside of the requesting organisation looks at
| it. It's pissing me off :(
| nyolfen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Sure. I'll work on fixing the place I live, sleep, and eat
| for the time being. Liechtenstein can wait!
| rebuilder wrote:
| But can the other Five Eyes states wait? Offshoring
| outlawed domestic surveillance to allies seems to be the
| name of the game now.
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| There is no evidence that this happens, and it is illegal
| for the US government to ask another country to spy on
| its citizens.
| syshum wrote:
| Other governments lack the ability to take my property,
| take my freedom, or take my life.
|
| FBI has the ability, with a single action, to ruin any
| resident's of the US life, I think that is significantly
| more worrisome than if Russia or China has my face unless I
| lived in Russia or China
| ozfive wrote:
| I didn't down-vote you as I believe views like this
| should be stated but responded to properly. Your safety
| from foreign governments is not guaranteed even if you
| live within the borders of the United States. A perfect
| example of this is a post by someone else here on Hacker
| News pertaining to the tools that the Chinese government
| uses to identify dissidents outside of their borders.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/business/china-
| internet-p...
| cameldrv wrote:
| Has anyone tried suing Clearview for copyright infringement? It
| seems like wouldn't have a legal right to be using these
| images.
| pdkl95 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tyingq wrote:
| I would guess they would cite transformative use.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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.
| aboringusername wrote:
| 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)
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| 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.
| RobSm wrote:
| "and offered it to everyone for free, making a fortune" - this
| makes no sense
| hirundo wrote:
| This is Google Earth and Maps. They're free to users, but
| make Google billions on ads.
| gundmc wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| OtomotO wrote:
| 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.
| weare138 wrote:
| https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Clearview has recently been getting into trouble for their
| practices in Canada:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| user764743 wrote:
| Of course the FBI would be collaborating on surveillance with the
| far-right, including weev & friends.
|
| https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/clearview-ai-facial-reco...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-ai-far-right-white...
| tentacleuno wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So copyright isn't a thing anymore?
| analog31 wrote:
| 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.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| 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).
| rebuilder wrote:
| 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?
| nceqs3 wrote:
| Clearview is compliant with GDPR FYI
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That's an interesting position that is at least in
| dispute [1][2]. My prior based on how companies behave is
| that they are indeed in violation of the GDPR.
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/16/clearview-gdpr-
| breaches-fr...
|
| [2] https://fortune.com/2021/05/27/europe-clearview-ai-
| gdpr-comp...
| jtdev wrote:
| [deleted]
| hourislate wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 ;).
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| 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
| 7d5TJ3v9uxqs9J8 wrote:
| riazrizvi wrote:
| 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...
| areoform wrote:
| 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/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 wrote:
| > 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.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > I hope he is proven wrong.
|
| Was it the failed model that ran some phishing schemes and
| hired people to commit mass copyright infringement to build
| their database or the right wing politician that built
| ideological porn filtering software that blocked the ACLU and
| EFF?
|
| Are those really the people we want controlling technology
| that's ethically questionable?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_AI
| stareblinkstare wrote:
| > "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| donmcronald wrote:
| If I take a picture of my family and tag everyone on
| Facebook, I own the copyright to that picture and the
| metadata. If Clearview AI scrapes that image and uses
| that to build their database, they're violating
| copyright.
|
| Why don't they get prosecuted for industrial scale
| copyright infringement? IMHO it's because they're not
| violating the copyright of an ultra wealthy company or
| individual. It's _only_ normal people getting cheating,
| so nothing gets done.
| djrogers wrote:
| Copyright violation is a civil matter, not a criminal
| one. You don't have D.A.s prosecute people for civil
| crimes, you sue them.
| quocanh wrote:
| Facial recognition software.
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(page generated 2021-12-31 23:00 UTC)