Clearview AI Facial Recognition Unmasked - Leaked to News Outlets

Scraping Internet Images Controversy Continues - Hacked Data Leaked?
Website States: For Law Enforcement Use Only

'Clearview's Facial Recognition Used By DOJ, ICE, Macy’s, Kohl's, Walmart, & The NBA'

A BuzzFeed News review of Clearview AI documents has revealed: company working with more than 2,200 law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the world

The United States’ main immigration enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, retailers including Best Buy and Macy’s, and a sovereign wealth fund in the United Arab Emirates are among the thousands of government entities and private businesses around the world listed as clients of the controversial facial recognition startup with a database of billions of photos scraped from social media and the web.

The startup, Clearview AI, is facing legal threats from Facebook, Google, and Twitter, as well as calls for regulation and scrutiny in the US. But new documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News reveal that it has already shared or sold its technology to thousands of organizations around the world.

In its quest to create a global biometric identification system to span both public and private sectors, Clearview has signed paid contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and Macy’s, according to the document obtained by BuzzFeed News. The company has credentialed users at the FBI, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Interpol, and hundreds of local police departments. In doing so, Clearview has taken a flood-the-zone approach to seeking out new clients, providing access not just to organizations, but to individuals within those organizations — sometimes with little or no oversight or awareness from their own management.

Kohl's with 2,000 searches and Macy's with 6,000 searches are among the private companies with the most searches.

Clearview’s software, which claims to match photos of persons of interest to online images culled from millions of sites, has been used by people in more than 2,200 law enforcement departments, government agencies, and companies across 27 countries, according to the documents. This data provides the most complete picture to date of who has used the controversial technology and reveals what some observers have previously feared: Clearview AI’s facial recognition has been deployed at every level of American society and is making its way around the world.

The New York–based startup has claimed its controversial technology is intended as a tool for police and that it was prioritizing business in North America. “It’s strictly for law enforcement,” Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That said on Fox Business earlier this month. He noted in a Feb. 5 statement to BuzzFeed News that his company was “focused on doing business in USA and Canada.” But in reality, Clearview AI has also been aggressively pursuing clients in industries such as law, retail, banking, and gaming and pushing into international markets in Europe, South America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.

In reply to an extensive list of questions, Clearview attorney Tor Ekeland said, "There are numerous inaccuracies in this illegally obtained information. As there is an ongoing Federal investigation, we have no further comment."

Clearview has attracted a whirlwind of attention for claiming it had built unprecedented facial recognition trained on an ever-increasing database of more than 3 billion photos ripped from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other websites. In a January interview with the New York Times, Ton-That said the company was working with 600 law enforcement agencies across the country and had provided the software, which can be used on a desktop computer or through a mobile app, to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

The internal documents, which were uncovered by a source who declined to be named for fear of retribution from the company or the government agencies named in them, detail just how far Clearview has been able to distribute its technology, providing it to people everywhere, from college security departments to attorneys general offices, and in countries from Australia to Saudi Arabia. BuzzFeed News authenticated the logs

“This is completely crazy,” Clare Garvie, a senior associate at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law School, told BuzzFeed News. “Here’s why it’s concerning to me: There is no clear line between who is permitted access to this incredibly powerful and incredibly risky tool and who doesn’t have access. There is not a clear line between law enforcement and non-law enforcement.”

Jacinta González, a senior campaign director at Mijente, a Latinx advocacy group told BuzzFeed News that ICE’s use of Clearview in the absence of a regulatory framework is troubling. “This tool goes way beyond anything that is legal, and there is literally no accountability for how they're going to use this tool,” she said. “They could walk into a supermarket, scan people, see if it matches up, and deport them immediately.”

More than 200 companies have Clearview accounts, according to the documents, including major stores like Kohl’s and Walmart and banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America. While some of these entities have formal contracts with Clearview, the majority — as with public sector entities — appear to have only used the facial recognition software on free trials.

For a company that maintains its tools are for law enforcement, Clearview’s client list includes a startling number of private companies in industries like entertainment (Madison Square Garden and Eventbrite), gaming (Las Vegas Sands and Pechanga Resort Casino), sports (the NBA), fitness (Equinox), and even cryptocurrency (Coinbase).

Employees at big-box retailers, supermarkets, pharmacy chains, and department stores have also trialed Clearview. Company logs reviewed by BuzzFeed News include Walmart (nearly 300 searches), Best Buy (more than 200 searches), grocer Albertsons (more than 40 searches), and Rite Aid (about 35 searches). Kohl’s, which has run more than 2,000 searches across 11 different accounts, and Macy’s, a paying customer that has completed more than 6,000, are among the private companies with the most searches.

Employees at mobile carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile also appear in the Clearview documents. None of these companies appear to be paying customers, but their employees are listed as having collectively run hundreds of Clearview searches. AT&T, which searched for some 200 people, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the company did not pay for the service, but declined further comment.

Clearview’s code of conduct states that individual users must be “authorized by their employer” to use the tool, but that seems to be more of a guiding principle than an enforceable rule. Clearview’s documents show that at Home Depot, five accounts ran nearly 100 searches.

“We don’t use Clearview AI,” a Home Depot representative told BuzzFeed News when asked for comment. “Curious why you thought we’re a client.”

Garvie was alarmed by Clearview’s application to retail settings, noting that it could lead to the profiling of customers for shoplifting or theft.

“That to me is a concerning premise because not only is there a complete absence of transparency into who gets suspected of shoplifting, and whether there’s any redress provided to an individual,” she said.
buzzfeednews.com theverge.com

Editor's Note: Good that it’s being ‘unmasked’, as scraping images is just a completely invasive process with no boundaries, consent, approval, or deletions. Which could lead to an overreaction in Congress.

And while the privacy advocates are even questioning the mainstream ethical approach currently used by the prevailing solution providers, this process of unbridled mass identification and matching will eventually lead to potentially overregulation. Especially given the misrepresentations Clearview's made to the industry.

Sure, it's growing rapidly and is widely popular, but consider the fact that it completely eliminates privacy - completely. This is not just a step on that slippery slop, it's a leap down the slope. Just a thought that may not be very popular. - Gus Downing