I read a fantastic new book this weekend – “Your Face Belongs To Us” by Kashmir Hill. An incredibly well-researched story about Clearview AI, the development of facial recognition, and the risks and dangers that unfettered access to biometric search engines pose to us all, including the end of anonymity. Clearview claims to have scraped and indexed over 30 billion faces from the internet… scary! 🤯☠️
With one look at (or picture of) somebody, imagine if you knew everything that had ever been posted about them (with or without their consent). Name, job, address, ALL their photos… in an instant… a stalker’s paradise… very scary! ☠️☠️
Th Meta / RayBan collab, for example… a potential match made in hell… one that is covered briefly in the book…
I’ve long been interested in privacy and biometrics (developed biometric ID verification for Revoke to facilitate exercising DSARs, Atam Kiosks typically use biometric ID verification for electronic visas or verifying ID prior to SIM issuance or top-up). It’s not the one-to-one “are these two faces the same person?” questions that are a problem, it’s the “find all faces the same as this one” with eery accuracy that scares me. It’s only made possible by virtue of the fact that billions of faces have been scraped and processed… possibly legally in some jurisdictions, but in my view, definitely unethically! 😠
In March 2020, when Clearview was still available in the UK, I issued a DSAR of my own… 1st page of results below (2nd page was similar). All photos were relatively recent, nothing I didn’t expect. The algorithms must have improved since then… based on this evidence if you want to be a “new person” in Clearview terms, shave your head and grow a bit of a beard – as no matches for me from before this time were discovered (there are definitely some online!). This approach may not work for everybody… 😅
Strongly recommend the book if you have an interest in privacy: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691288/your-face-belongs-to-us-by-kashmir-hill/
There is no doubt that *some* good could be achieved with Clearview (and/or others providing a similar service) in terms of law enforcement and finding actual criminals, but there is such a high risk of privacy infringement, abuse, false positives… many real examples in the book.
Clearview had a £7.5 million fine by the UK ICO overturned this month… the story is on-going… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67133157
What do you think? Are you looking forward to Minority Report? 🤔 It’s happening sooner than you think… 😬
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