What if somebody could take a photo of you out at the shops, and use it to identify exactly who you are – including your name, home address, phone number, and other personal data? There’s an app for that.
Clearview AI is a New York tech startup that has developed a facial recognition app with a database of images scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and “millions of other websites”, according to the NYTimes, and – because this is the inevitable dystopian future predicted by every sci-fi writer since 1950 or so – sold it to law enforcement agencies in the US. The app converts photos into mathematical vectors based on facial geometry, compares that info with its database, and serves links to those social media profiles or online sources where images matching them were uploaded. Kind of like Google’s reverse image search, but with extra creep XP.
Facial recognition is a controversial thing, with critics citing its obvious privacy concerns, questionable biometric accuracy and demographic limits, and false positives as problems. And although users should assume that everything on the internet is visible to the public, extracting personal info like this is in violation of most social media website terms of service. But so what?
“A lot of people are doing it,” Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That explains. “Facebook knows.”
Yes, mom. Facebook knows. Even if you copy-pasted that status telling Mark Zuckerberg he’s totally not ever allowed to browse your stuff, ever ever.