Clearview AI has announced it aims to put almost every human's face in its facial recognition database, making'almost everyone in the world will be identifiable' A controversial AI company has announced it aims to put an image of nearly every human face in its facial recognition database, making it possible for'almost everyone in the world [to] be identifiable.' In its latest report in December, facial recognition firm Clearview AI told investors that the company is currently collecting 100 billion photos of human faces for the unprecedented campaign, which will be stored in its dedicated database. The collection of images - approximately 14 photos for each of the 7 billion people on the entire planet, scraped from social media and other sources - would extensively bolster the company's extensive surveillance system, already the most elaborate of its kind. The American company headquartered in Manhattan further told investors that its'index of faces' has grown from 3 billion images to more than 10 billion since the start of 2020. The firm's technology has already been used by myriad law enforcement and government agencies around the world, helping police make thousands of arrests by aiding in various criminal investigations.

The controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI reportedly told investors that it aims to collect 100 billion photos--supposedly enough to ensure that almost every human will be in its database. With $50 million from investors, the company said, it could bulk up its data collection powers to 100 billion photos, build new products, expand its international sales team and pay more toward lobbying government policymakers to "develop favorable regulation." "It limits the uses of its system to agencies engaged in lawful investigative processes directed at criminal conduct, or at preventing specific, substantial, and imminent threats to people's lives or physical safety." A federal judge "rejected Clearview's First Amendment defense, denied the company's motion to dismiss, and allowed the lawsuits to move forward," the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote yesterday. A Vice report yesterday quoted Ton-That as saying that Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber have "expressed interest" in using Clearview facial recognition "for the purposes of consent-based identity verification, since there are a lot of issues with crimes that happen on their platforms."

The controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI reportedly told investors that it aims to collect 100 billion photos--supposedly enough to ensure that almost every human will be in its database. "Clearview AI is telling investors it is on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure'almost everyone in the world will be identifiable,' according to a financial presentation from December obtained by The Washington Post," the Post reported today. There are an estimated 7.9 billion people on the planet. The December presentation was part of an effort to obtain new funding from investors, so 100 billion facial images is more of a goal than a firm plan. However, the presentation said that Clearview has already racked up 10 billion images and is adding 1.5 billion images a month, the Post wrote.

In March 2020, two months after The New York Times exposed that Clearview AI had scraped billions of images from the internet to create a facial recognition database, Thomas Smith received a dossier encompassing most of his digital life. Using the recently enacted California Consumer Privacy Act, Smith asked Clearview for what they had on him. The company sent him pictures that spanned moments throughout his adult life: a photo from when he got married and started a blog with his wife, another when he was profiled by his college's alumni magazine, even a profile photo from a Python coding meetup he had attended a few years ago. "That's what really threw me: All the things that I had posted to Facebook and figured, 'Nobody's going to ever look for that,' and here it is all laid out in a database," Smith told The Verge. Clearview's massive surveillance apparatus claims to hold 3 billion photos, accessible to any law enforcement agency with a subscription, and it's likely you or people you know have been scooped up in the company's dragnet.

In March 2020, two months after The New York Times exposed that Clearview AI had scraped billions of images from the internet to create a facial recognition database, Thomas Smith received a dossier encompassing most of his digital life. Using the recently enacted California Consumer Privacy Act, Smith asked Clearview for what they had on him. The company sent him pictures that spanned moments throughout his adult life: a photo from when he got married and started a blog with his wife, another when he was profiled by his college's alumni magazine, even a profile photo from a Python coding meetup he had attended a few years ago. "That's what really threw me: All the things that I had posted to Facebook and figured, 'Nobody's going to ever look for that,' and here it is all laid out in a database," Smith told The Verge. Clearview's massive surveillance apparatus claims to hold 3 billion photos, accessible to any law enforcement agency with a subscription, and it's likely you or people you know have been scooped up in the company's dragnet.

Civil liberties activists are suing a company that provides facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies and private companies around the world, contending that Clearview AI illegally stockpiled data on 3 billion people without their knowledge or permission. The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court in the San Francisco bay area, says the New York company violates California's constitution and seeks a court order to bar it from collecting biometric information in California and requiring it to delete data on Californians. The lawsuit says the company has built "the most dangerous" facial recognition database in the nation, has fielded requests from more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies and private companies and has amassed a database nearly seven times larger than the FBI's. Separately, the Chicago Police Department stopped using the New York company's software last year after Clearview AI was sued in Cook County by the American Civil Liberties Union. The California lawsuit was filed by four activists and the groups Mijente and Norcal Resist.

This week, the Los Angeles Police Department told BuzzFeed News that it would stop using Clearview AI, the company that scraped billions of images from the internet, including social media sites, to form a massive searchable database of faces and identities. Reading that story, it's important to keep in mind that despite the headline, L.A. law enforcement is far from giving up facial recognition technology. The police department will still use its existing facial recognition database with more than eight million booking photos run by facial recognition contractor DataWorks Plus. DataWorks Plus sells photo management software that connects to third-party facial recognition algorithms, like those from NEC and Rank One. Last year, OneZero reported that DataWorks Plus was working on bridging these facial recognition databases across California in a service called the California Facial Recognition Interconnect.

This article is a transcript of a presentation I gave to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley about Clearview AI, a facial recognition company which the New York Times said "might end privacy as we know it." My presentation was based on an article earlier this year in Medium's OneZero. Thanks to the whole Rotary eClub team for the opportunity to present. This is the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley. Every week, we are trying to bring you cool and interesting material that will make you go, "Hmm. That's interesting," and hopefully will inspire you to act in some way, whether that's act in service, or perhaps even act in self defense. Because we are going to learn some really interesting stuff over the coming minutes, and that is a function of having as our speaker today, Thomas Smith. He goes by Tom when we were just speaking, so I'll refer to him as Tom. And Tom wrote an article recently that I found in OneZero, I think, via Medium. And I finished reading that article and thought, "Holy poop." So, so as a result of that, I actually reached out to him to say, "Could you speak to our Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley? And he was gracious enough to write back.

A security lapse at controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI meant that its source code, some of its secret keys and cloud storage credentials, and even copies of its apps were publicly accessible. TechCrunch reports that an exposed server was discovered by Mossab Hussein, Chief Security Officer at cybersecurity firm SpiderSilk, who found that it was configured to allow anyone to register as a new user and log in. Clearview AI first made headlines back in January, when a New York Times exposé detailed its massive facial recognition database, which consists of billions of images scraped from websites and social media platforms. Users upload a picture of a person of interest, and Clearview AI's software will attempt to match it with any similar images in its database, potentially revealing a person's identity from a single image. Since its work became public, Clearview AI has defended itself by saying that its software is only available to law enforcement agencies (although reports claim that Clearview has been marketing its system to private businesses including Macy's and Best Buy).

Facial recognition software firm Clearview AI, which has been criticized for scraping together a database of as many as 3 billion online images, has been hit with a data breach. The New York-based firm apparently had its list of customers including numerous law enforcement agencies stolen, according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the incident. The news site reported it had obtained a notice sent to Clearview's customers that an intruder had "gained unauthorized access" to its customer list, the number of searches customers have conducted and other data. Clearview said in the notice that the company's servers were not breached and that there was "no compromise of Clearview's systems or network." Video game legacy:Kazuhisa Hashimoto, creator of the'Konami Code' for video games, has died However, Clearview's attorney Tor Ekeland said, in a statement sent to USA TODAY, "Security is Clearview's top priority. Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw, and continue to work to strengthen our security."