Clearview AI

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Clearview AI
Clearview logo2.png
Clearview logo.png
Official App Icon [url text]
Type Facial Recognition Service
Launch Date 2017
Status Active
Product Line Clearview
Platform iOS
Website https://clearview.ai

Clearview AI is a facial recognition software company created in 2017. The service is capable of matching local photo uploads to public images online, often with the possibility of discovering the photographed person’s identity. The application has pulled public images from many popular sites, such as Facebook, YouTube and Venmo, among others. In total, Clearview AI has a bank of 3 billion public photographs used to match to uploaded photographs by users.[1]

The platform is mainly targeted to law enforcement agencies. With over 600 agencies already using the app, Clearview AI frequently assists officers to solve cases of shoplifting, credit card fraud and child abuse.[2] Despite the company’s claim that the platform is only used by law enforcement agencies, a data breach in 2020 revealed that the company was marketing its services to numerous commercial organizations.[3][4] As of now the platform is available allegedly solely to law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada.

Clearview has raised many concerns regarding privacy rights. A 2020 The New York Times revealed that the company was capable of monitoring which faces were able to be viewed by users, indicating that app results can be manipulated by its creators.


History

The company was founded in 2017 by Hoan Ton-That, an Australian-born programmer, and Richard Schwartz, an aide to former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, as a secretive project.[5] The company received its initial financial support from Peter Thiel and Naval Ravikant in a $200,000 investment.[6] The company has been linked to far-right supporters such as Chuck Johnson and Douglass Mackey, who Ton-That and Schwartz hired for their new project.[7]

Schwartz used his political connection to sell trials of Clearview AI to law enforcement agencies for $2000.[8] The main point of contact for Schwartz in these operations was Jessica Medeiros Garrison, a member of the Republican Party.[9] Schwartz has also attempted to engage prominent Democratic figures in the development of the app with marketing intentions.[10]

Ton-That and Schwartz attempted to market the product to numerous industries, eventually settling for law enforcement. The company offered a free 30-day trial to many law enforcement officers across the United States.[11] Previous to Clearview AI, law enforcement had other facial recognition technology; however, only with access to government-owned images and not public ones.

The First Solved Case

In February 2020, the Indiana State Police experimented with the platform to solve a case of murder.[12] Two men had started a fight in a park which culminated in one shooting the other. The conflict was recorded in security footage which, due to dim lighting and security camera positioning, prevented the police authorities from identifying the perpetrator.

The case was solved in 20 minutes with Clearview AI, which identified the shooters face with a Venmo profile picture.[13]


Technology

Clearview AI uses vectors to create a geometrical shape from human faces. Every time a photo is uploaded, the picture is compiled into a collection of vectors that quantify facial features such as distance between the eyes, angle of the jaw and nose size. The upload is then compared to many different “neighborhoods” of vectors. Each neighborhood is associated with one individual, and the app returns the neighborhood most closely associated with the uploaded image’s collection of vectors.[14]


Accuracy

The company has made conflicting reports of its products accuracy. In an interview with New York Times journalist Kashmir Hill, the Clearview AI team reported a 75% accuracy rate. Other company documents claim that the software has a 98.6% to 100% accuracy rate.[15][16]


Controversy

New York Times Article

In a 2020 New York Times article “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It”, by Kashmir Hill, the reporter exposed the manipulation of Clearview’s results in the interest of the company. In a failed attempt to visit Clearview’s empty New York City headquarters, Hill turned to law organizations which had been using the software, more specifically law enforcement agencies.[17]

When speaking to an anonymous police officer in the Indiana State police department, Hill asked to have their picture uploaded to the app, which the officer accepted to.[18] Despite its previous streak of success for the officer, the app had no results for the reporter. The officer later received a call from the company enquiring whether they were speaking to the media, something app developers asked users not to do.[19] This officer was later suspended from using Clearview.

Hill repeated this with other anonymous officers which resulted in the same outcome.


Controversy with social media sites

After discovering that Clearview had scraped over 3 billion images from their platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Venmo, Google, and Youtube sent cease and desist letter to Clearview requesting that they take down images pulled from those websites. Hoan Ton-That refused to accept by citing the First Amendment as Clearview’s right to information.[20]

References

  1. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  2. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  3. ↑ "Clearview AI", En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2020. Web. 26 Mar. 2020
  4. ↑ Ryan Mac, Caroline Haskins, Logan McDonald "Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Has Been Used By The Justice Department, ICE, Macy’s, Walmart, And The NBA", BuzzFeed News, Feb. 27, 2020
  5. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  6. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  7. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  8. ↑ "Hoan Ton-That", En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2020. Web. 26 Mar. 2020
  9. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  10. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  11. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  12. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  13. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  14. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  15. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  16. ↑ "Clearview AI", En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2020. Web. 26 Mar. 2020
  17. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  18. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  19. ↑ Kashmir Hill, "The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It", The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2020.
  20. ↑ "Hoan Ton-That", En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2020. Web. 26 Mar. 2020
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