{"id":13972,"date":"2022-02-16T18:37:17","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T18:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/16\/clearview-ai-predicts-100-billion-photos-will-give-it-worldwide-facial-recognition-ability\/"},"modified":"2022-02-16T18:37:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T18:37:17","slug":"clearview-ai-predicts-100-billion-photos-will-give-it-worldwide-facial-recognition-ability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/16\/clearview-ai-predicts-100-billion-photos-will-give-it-worldwide-facial-recognition-ability\/","title":{"rendered":"Clearview AI predicts 100 billion photos will give it worldwide facial recognition ability"},"content":{"rendered":"

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And the company wants to expand beyond scanning faces for the police, saying in the presentation that it could monitor \u201cgig economy\u201d workers and is researching a number of new technologies that could identify someone based on how they walk, detect their location from a photo or scan their fingerprints from afar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The 55-page \u201cpitch deck,\u201d the contents of which have not been reported previously, reveals surprising details about how the company, whose work already is controversial, is positioning itself for a major expansion, funded in large part by government contracts and the taxpayers the system would be used to monitor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The document is made for fundraising purposes, and it is unclear how realistic its goals might be. The company said that its \u201cindex of faces\u201d has grown from 3 billion images to more than 10 billion since early 2020 and that its data collection system now ingests 1.5 billion images a month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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 \u201cdevelop favorable regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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No federal law regulates how facial recognition should be used, though some cities and states have passed bans or restrictions. The biggest tech giants, including Amazon<\/a>, Google<\/a>, IBM<\/a> and Microsoft<\/a>, have limited or ended sales of the technology, saying that are worried about its risks or that do not want to sell it to the public before Congress has established rules.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the presentation, Clearview argues that the industry-wide caution is a huge business opportunity. The company included its rivals\u2019 logos to note that it has little domestic competition \u2014 and that its product is even more comprehensive than systems in use in China, because its \u201cfacial database\u201d is connected to \u201cpublic source metadata\u201d and \u201csocial linkage\u201d information.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The presentation, which a recipient shared with The Post, throws a spotlight on the company\u2019s ambitions to become one of the world\u2019s leading merchants of surveillance technology, even as some lawmakers worry the company poses a dangerous threat to civil liberties and privacy rights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview has built its database by taking images from social networks and other online sources without the consent of the websites or the people who were photographed. Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube have demanded the company stop taking photos from their sites and delete any that were previously taken. Clearview has argued its data collection is protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Facebook, which forbids the automated copying, or \u201cscraping,\u201d of data from its platform and has an External Data Misuse team<\/a>, has banned Clearview\u2019s founder, Hoan Ton-That, from its site and has sent the company a cease-and-desist order, but Clearview has refused to provide any information about the extent to which Facebook and Instagram users\u2019 photos remain in Clearview\u2019s database, an official with Facebook\u2019s parent company, Meta, told The Post. The official declined to comment on any steps Meta may be considering in response.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview\u2019s cavalier approach to data harvesting has alarmed privacy advocates, its peers in the facial recognition industry and some members of Congress, who this month urged federal agencies to stop working with the company<\/a>, because its \u201ctechnology could eliminate public anonymity in the United States.\u201d Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) last year introduced a bill<\/a> that would block public money from going to Clearview on the basis that its data was \u201cillegitimately obtained.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview is battling more than 30 lawsuits in state and federal court, including litigation from attorneys general in New Jersey and Vermont and class-action suits in California, Illinois, New York and Virginia. The company is also facing a class-action suit in a Canadian federal court, government investigations in Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom and complaints from privacy groups of data protection violations in France, Greece, Italy and the U.K.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The governments of Australia<\/a> and France<\/a> have ordered Clearview to delete their citizens\u2019 data, saying the company had covertly monetized people\u2019s faces for a purpose \u201coutside reasonable expectations.\u201d \u201cThe indiscriminate scraping of people\u2019s facial images, only a fraction of whom would ever be connected with law enforcement investigations, may adversely impact the personal freedoms of all Australians who perceive themselves to be under surveillance,\u201d Australia\u2019s information and privacy commissioner, Angelene Falk, said<\/a> in November.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ton-That told The Post the document was shared with a \u201csmall group of individuals who expressed interest in the company.\u201d It included proposals, he said, not just for its main facial-search engine but also for other business lines in which facial recognition could be useful, such as identity verification or secure-building access.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He said Clearview\u2019s photos have \u201cbeen collected in a lawful manner\u201d from \u201cmillions of different websites\u201d on the public Internet. A person\u2019s \u201cpublic source metadata\u201d and \u201csocial linkage information,\u201d he added, can be found on the websites that Clearview has linked to their facial photos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Facial recognition companies have traditionally built algorithms that can be used to search through their clients\u2019 photo databases, such as driver\u2019s-license images<\/a> or jail mug shots<\/a>. But Ton-That has argued in testimony to public officials that swiping photos from the Internet has allowed the company to create a powerful crime-fighting tool. \u201cEvery photo in the data set is a potential clue that could save a life, provide justice to an innocent victim, prevent a wrongful identification, or exonerate an innocent person,\u201d he said Wednesday in a statement to The Post, an echo of similar assertions he has made in public forums.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview, he told The Post, does not intend to \u201claunch a consumer-grade version\u201d of the facial-search engine now used by police, adding that company officials \u201chave not decided\u201d whether to sell the service to commercial buyers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If Clearview did decide to sell any technology to a nongovernmental buyer, Ton-That said, the company would first tell a federal court in Illinois, where Clearview is defending itself against class-action claims that it violated a state law requiring companies to obtain people\u2019s consent before collecting their facial data.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a court filing<\/a> Monday, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, who is presiding over the case, upheld most of the plaintiffs\u2019 arguments challenging Clearview\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview has dismissed criticism of its data collection and surveillance work by saying it is built exclusively for law enforcement and the public good. In an online \u201cprinciples<\/a>\u201d pledge, the company said that it works only with government agencies and that it limits its technology to \u201clawful investigative processes directed at criminal conduct, or at preventing specific, substantial, and imminent threats to people\u2019s lives or physical safety.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the presentation shows the company has based its \u201cproduct expansion plan\u201d on boosting corporate sales, from financial services and the gig economy to commercial real estate. On a slide devoted to its \u201ctotal addressable market,\u201d government and defense contracts are shown as a small fraction of potential revenue, with other possible sources including in banking, retail and e-commerce.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Is there anything \u201cthey wouldn\u2019t sell this mass surveillance for?\u201d said Jack Poulson, a former Google research scientist who now runs the research advocacy group Tech Inquiry<\/a>. \u201cIf they\u2019re selling it for just regular commercial uses, that\u2019s just mass surveillance writ large. It\u2019s not targeted toward the most extreme cases, as they\u2019ve pledged in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview said in 2020 that it would stop working with private businesses following a BuzzFeed News report<\/a> that found the company had offered its tool to stores, banks and other companies, including through 30-day free trials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In his statement to The Post, Ton-That said, \u201cOur principles reflect the current uses of our technology. If those uses change, the principles will be updated, as needed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview clients can upload a photo to look for matches in the company\u2019s face database, with the results often linking to the person\u2019s other accounts across the Web. The company said its \u201cindex of faces\u201d is now 11 times larger than the facial databases of \u201cany government or nongovernment entity today.\u201d (Many of the company\u2019s claims in the document, including that one, could not be independently verified.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview was a little-known start-up until a New York Times report<\/a> in early 2020, based on internal emails and public records uncovered by researchers, revealed the extent to which local police departments had begun using it to hunt down potential suspects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company said it has since grown its client list to more than 3,100 law enforcement agencies across the U.S., including the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But much of its new pitch to investors centers on its pursuit of the \u201climitless future applications\u201d of nongovernment work, including in banking, health care, insurance and retail. \u201cEverything in the future, digitally and in real life, will be accessible through your face,\u201d the presentation says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company said in the presentation that it is hoping to raise $50 million in a third round of investment, known as a \u201cSeries C.\u201d The company raised $30 million in a similar funding round last summer, which valued the company at $130 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Its relatively modest valuation, tech experts suggest, could be a reflection of the saturated market for facial recognition algorithms, the company\u2019s legal precarity, or the fact that its biggest selling point, its vast facial-data cache, has been called<\/a> \u201cillegitimately obtained.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company said in the presentation it could \u201crevolutionize\u201d how workers in the gig economy are screened and be used to evaluate people on apps used for dating or finding babysitters, house cleaners or repair contractors. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The presentation included the logos for a number of different companies, including Airbnb, Lyft and Uber, and Ton-That said they were \u201cexamples of the types of firms that have expressed interest in Clearview\u2019s facial recognition technology for the purposes of consent-based identity verification, since there are a lot of issues with crimes that happen on their platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But spokespeople at those three companies told The Post they had no plans to work with Clearview and had never expressed interest in a partnership.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Several other companies whose logos Clearview used as examples of potential business partners, including the babysitter service Sittercity<\/a> and the shopping-mall giant Simon<\/a>, also said they had no plans to pursue any relationship with the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Justine Sacco, a spokeswoman with the Tinder and OkCupid parent company Match Group, said the companies had discussed nothing and that \u201cClearview is misusing our logo and does not have permission to use it in their materials.\u201d An official at another company said they were furious to have been included in Clearview\u2019s presentation and were considering their legal options.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview also said in the presentation that its systems could be used to solve \u201ctough physical security problems\u201d in retail and commercial real estate markets, and it included the logos of mall giants and superstores, including Target and Walmart. Those companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company said in the presentation that it has developed other systems beyond facial recognition, including for recognizing license plates and \u201cmovement tracking,\u201d and that it is developing or researching a number of other surveillance techniques: camera software to detect guns and drugs; \u201cgait recognition\u201d systems to identify a person based on how they walk; \u201cimage to location\u201d systems to pinpoint a person\u2019s whereabouts based on a photo\u2019s background; and \u201ccontactless fingerprint\u201d recognitions systems to scan a person\u2019s identity from afar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The document offers no details on how those systems work, if at all. Ton-That said the technologies \u201care all for the purpose of public safety, are in various stages of research and development, and have not been commercialized or deployed in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In an open letter<\/a> last month, Ton-That said the company could \u201cset an example of using the technology, not in a real-time way, but in a way that protects human rights, due process, and our freedoms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the presentation directly contradicts him by saying the company is building systems for real-time surveillance. Officials are working toward a \u201creal-time alerts\u201d system that companies could use to notify security agents if their spotted \u201chigh-risk individuals,\u201d one slide notes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company is also continuing work on augmented-reality glasses that the U.S. military could use in \u201cdangerous situations,\u201d one slide reads. The U.S. Air Force in November awarded<\/a> the company $50,000 to research the technology, federal spending records show. An official with the Air Force Research Laboratory has said the work is a short-term contract to test how well such technology would work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a September letter<\/a> to the U.K. Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Ton-That defended the use of real-time facial recognition watch lists for \u201cpeople of interest, missing people, those with outstanding warrants for serious offenses, or for a specific security-related purpose known in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clearview said in the presentation that its expansion plans would include spending millions of dollars more on data purchases and engineers specializing in data acquisition, and that it would build out its sales teams specializing in commercial, federal and international sales. It said it also wants to create a \u201cdeveloper ecosystem\u201d that would allow other companies to create applications using its data.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company said it is expecting to grow its annual federal revenue to $6 million this year, thanks to active expansions with DHS and the FBI and an \u201cimminent\u201d expansion from the Drug Enforcement Administration, and that it hopes to \u201cincrease overall usage\u201d by state and local police agencies by 300 percent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS agency, signed a potentially three-year, $1.5 million contract<\/a> with Clearview in September, federal records show. The FBI signed its own $18,000, one-year contract<\/a> in December; the presentation said it will grow to $2.4 million this year. The DEA declined to comment, and the FBI and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The presentation also said Clearview is \u201cachieving rapid international expansion,\u201d including signing deals in Panama and Costa Rica and pursuing other business in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. The company declined to offer further detail, and those deals could not be confirmed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Clearview document includes overt appeals to American patriotism, and the company has, as is common among some tech companies, argued that its success is imperative to stopping foreign powers from gaining the lead in surveillance-technology development. The company calls itself \u201cMade in the USA\u201d and, in several slides, compares itself with companies from China, Russia and Israel by affixing its logo next to an American flag.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But those arguments, Poulson said, should not distract from the company\u2019s expanded ambitions \u2014 or its appetite for business far beyond the U.S. government\u2019s own interests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey\u2019re explicitly trying to leverage the controversy about their company as a way to argue they\u2019re prominent,\u201d Poulson said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re combining that with a nationalist rhetoric \u2014 that the US has to out-surveil China to protect civil liberties. It makes no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n