On a clear day THEY can see ME (and YOU) FOREVER.
Linz, Wien | AT · 2001–2020 (© PP · Ewiges Archiv)
Clearview App: Ein Foto einer Person wird hochgeladen, die App durchsucht eine Datenbank mit mehr als drei Milliarden Bildern, die von Facebook, YouTube, Twitter und Millionen anderer Websites, Überwachungskameras etc. kopiert wurden. „Clearview bietet eine App, die mit nur einem Bild Menschen mit beunruhigender Präzision erkennt. Eine obskure US-Firma hat laut einem Bericht der "New York Times" rund drei Milliarden Bilder von Menschen aus dem Internet zusammengestellt, um eine umfassende Datenbank zur Gesichtserkennung zu entwickeln. Im vergangenen Jahr sei der Zugang dazu mehr als 600 Behörden als Service angeboten worden, schrieb die Zeitung am Wochenende unter Berufung auf das Unternehmen namens Clearview. . .“
„Der 31-jährige Ton-That erfand ein Tool, mit dem Sie die Straße nicht mehr anonym betreten können, und lieferte es an Hunderte von Strafverfolgungsbehörden, von der örtlichen Polizei in Florida bis zur F.B.I. und das Department of Homeland Security der Vereinigten Staaten. Sein kleines Unternehmen, Clearview AI, hat eine bahnbrechende Gesichtserkennungs-App entwickelt. Sie machen ein Foto von einer Person, laden es hoch und sehen öffentliche Fotos dieser Person sowie Links zu den Orten, an denen diese Fotos erschienen sind. Das System, dessen Rückgrat eine Datenbank mit mehr als drei Milliarden Bildern ist, die Clearview angeblich von Facebook, YouTube, Twitter und Millionen anderer Websites eingesammelt hat, geht weit über alles hinaus, was jemals in den USA erstellt wurde. Laut Angaben des Unternehmens haben im vergangenen Jahr mehr als 600 Strafverfolgungsbehörden mit Clearview begonnen. Und nicht nur die Strafverfolgung: Clearview hat die App auch an eine Handvoll Unternehmen lizenziert. . . “
New York Times, im Der Standard NYT Appendix, link s.u.; Original in der NYT print: 20200119; link s.u.
Text des NYT Print-Artikels (OCR-scan PP)
New York Times (appendix in Der Standard) 2020 01 26
An App Threatens the Idea of Privacy
A tool allows law officials to mine photos, raising the specter of a ‘dystopian future.’
By KASHMIR HILL
Until recently, Hoan Ton-That's greatest hits included an obscure iPhone game and an app that let people put Donald Trumps distinctive hair on their own photos.
Then Mr. Ton-That, 31, did something momentous: He invented, a tool that could end your ability to walk down the street anonymously, and provided it to hundreds of law enforcement agencies, ranging from local police in Florida to the F.B.I. and the United States Department of Homeland Security.
His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed in the United States.
More than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company. And not just law enforcement: Clearview has also licensed the app to a handful of companies.
“The weaponization possibilities of this are endless,” said Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University in California.
“Imagine a rogue law enforcement officer who wants to stalk potential romantic partners, or a foreign government using this to dig up secrets about people to blackmail them or throw them in jail.”
Although the company declined my interview requests, it was monitoring me. At my request, a number of police ‘officers had run my photo through the Clearview app. They soon received phone calls from‘ company representatives asking if they were talking to the media — a sign that Clearview has the ability to monitor whom law enforcement is searching olf.
In addition to Mr. Ton-That, Clearview was founded by Richard Schwartz — who was an aide to Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was mayor of New York — and backed financially by Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist behind Facebook and Palantir.
Another early investor is a small firm called Kirenaga Partners. Its founder, David Scalzo, dismissed concerns about Clearview, saying it’s a valuable crime-solving tool.
“I've come to the conclusion that because information constantly increases, there's never going to be privacy," Mr. Scalzo said. “Laws have to determine what’s legal. but you can’t ban technology. Sure, that might lead to a dystopian future or something, but you can't ban it”
Going Viral with Police
Police departments have had access to facial recognition tools for almost 20 years, but they have been limited to searching government-provided images. Mr. Ton-That, an Australian of Vietnamese descent, wanted to go way beyond that. He began in 2016 by recruiting a couple of engineers to perfect a facial recognition algorithm. They also designed a program that can automatically collect images of people’s from across the internet, such as emplyment sites, news sites, educational sites, and social networks including Facbook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Representatives of those companies said their policies prohibit such scraping.
Clearview created a directory that clustered photos with similar vectors, or mathematical formulas, into "neighborhoods." When a user uploads a photo of a face into Clearview's system, it converts the face into a vector and then shows all the scraped photos stored in that vector's neighborhood — along with the links to the sites from which those images came.
By the end of 2017, the company had a formidable facial recognition tool, which it began marketing to law enforcement.
According to a Clearview sales presentation reviewed by The Times, the app had helped officers identify a range of individuals: a person who was accused of sexually abusing a child whose face appered in the mirror of someone’s else gym photo; the person behind string of mailbox thefts in Georgia; an unidentified man found dead on an Alabama sidewalk; and suspects in multiplie identity-fraud cases.
In February, the Indiana State Police started experimenting with Clearview. They solved a case within 20 minutes of using the app. In Gainesville, Florida, Detective Sergeant Nick Ferrara said he had previously relied on a state-provided facial recognition tool, FACES. He found Clearviews’s app to be superior. “With Clearview you can use photos that aren’t perfect,“ Sergeant Ferrara said. “A person can be wearing a hat or glasses, or it can be a profile shot or partial view of their face.”
United States federal law enforcement, including the F.B.l. and the Department of Homeland Security, are trying it,as are Canadian authorities, according to the company and government officials.
‘We're All Screwed’
Mr. Ton-That said the tool does not always work. Most of the photos in Clearview's database are taken at eye level. Much of the material that the police upload is from surveillance cameras on ceilings or walls. “They put surveillance cameras too high." Mr. Ton-That said. “The angle is wrong for good face recognition.”
Despite that, the company said, its tool finds matches up to 75 percent of the time. It is unclear how often the tool delivers false matches.
But current and formerlaw enforcement officials say the app is effective. “For us, the testing was whether it worked or not,” said Chuck Cohen, a former Indiana State Police captain.
One reason that Clearview is catching on is that its service is unique. That's because Facebook and other social media sites prohibit people from scraping users’ images — Clearview is violating the sites’ terms of service.
“A lot of people are doing it." Mr. Ton-That said. "Facebook knows."
Jay Nancarrow, a Facebook spokesman, said the company was reviewing the situation with Clearview and “will take appropriate action if we find they are violating our rules.”
Some law enforcement officials said they didn't realize the photos they uploaded were being sent to and stored on Clearview's servers. Clearview says it won't look at the photos that the police upload. But Clearview now possesses a growing database of individuals who have attracted attention from law enforcement.
“it's creepy what they're doing. but there will be many more of these companies. There is no monopoly on math," said Al Gidari, a privacy professor at Stanford Law School in California. “Absent a very strong federal pi'ivac_v law, we‘re all screwed.”
Mr. Ton-That said his company sed only ptiblicly available images. If you change a privacy setting in Facebook so that Search engine can't link to your profile. your Face-book photos won't be included in the dzitzibase. he said.
But if your profile has already been scraped, it is too late. The company keeps all the images it has scraped even if they are later deleted or taken down, though Mr. Ton-That said the company was working on a tool that would let people request that images be removed.
Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at North-eastern University in Boston, sees Clearview as the latest proof that facial recognition should be banned in the United States. "we've relied on industry efforts to self-police and not embrace such a risky technology, but now those dams are breaking because there is so much money on the table." Mr. Hartzog said. “l don't see a future where we harness the benefits of face recognition technology without the crippling abuse of the surveillance that comes with it. The only way to stop it is to ban it."
No More Secrets
During a recent interview at Clearview’s offices in Manhattan,Mr. Ton-That demonstrated the app on himself. He took a selfie and uploaded-it; The app pulled up 23 photos of him.
Police officers and Clearview's investors predict that its app will eventually be available to the public. Mr. Ton-That said he was reluctant. “There's always going to be a community of bad people who will misuse it," he said.
But even if Clearview doesn't make its app publicly available, another company might. That could herald the end of public anonymity. Asked about the implications of bringing such a power into the world, Mr. Ton-That seemed taken aback. "I have to think about that.” He said. “Our belief is that this is the best use of the technology.”
On a clear day THEY can see ME (and YOU) FOREVER.
Linz, Vienna | AT · 2001–2020 (© PP · Eternal Archive)
Clearview app: A photo of a person is uploaded, the app searches a database with more than three billion images copied from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and millions of other websites, surveillance cameras, etc. “Clearview offers an app that recognizes people with unsettling precision with just one picture. An obscure US company, according to a report by the New York Times, has put together around three billion pictures of people from the Internet to develop a comprehensive database for facial recognition. Last year, access to it was offered to more than 600 authorities as a service, the newspaper wrote last weekend, citing the company called Clearview. , . “
“The 31-year-old Ton-That invented a tool that made it impossible for you to enter the street anonymously and delivered it to hundreds of law enforcement agencies, from the Florida local police to the F.B.I. and the United States Department of Homeland Security. His small business, Clearview AI, has developed a breakthrough facial recognition app. You take a photo of a person, upload it, and see public photos of that person, as well as links to where the photos were posted. The system, whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview is said to have collected from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and millions of other websites, goes far beyond anything that has ever been created in the United States. According to the company, more than 600 law enforcement agencies started using Clearview last year. And not just law enforcement: Clearview has also licensed the app to a handful of companies. , , “
New York Times, in Der Standard NYT Appendix, link see below; Original in the NYT print: 20200119; see link
