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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFacial-Recognition company Clearview AI's entire client list stolen in data breach
https://www.cnet.com/news/clearview-ai-had-entire-client-list-stolen-in-data-breach/
The breach affected all of the facial recognition company's customers, many of which are law enforcement agencies.
Alfred Ng
February 26, 2020 8:52 AM PST
Clearview AI, a facial-recognition software maker that has sparked privacy concerns, said Wednesday it suffered a data breach. The data stolen included its entire list of customers, the number of searches those customers have made and how many accounts each customer had set up.
"Security is Clearview's top priority," Tor Ekeland, Clearview AI's attorney, said in a statement. "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."
The company didn't specify the flaw. The data breach was first reported by The Daily Beast.
Clearview's clients are mostly law enforcement agencies, with police departments in Toronto, Atlanta and Florida all using the technology. The company has a database of 3 billion photos that it collected from the internet, including websites like YouTube, Facebook, Venmo and LinkedIn.
</snip>
The breach affected all of the facial recognition company's customers, many of which are law enforcement agencies.
Alfred Ng
February 26, 2020 8:52 AM PST
Clearview AI, a facial-recognition software maker that has sparked privacy concerns, said Wednesday it suffered a data breach. The data stolen included its entire list of customers, the number of searches those customers have made and how many accounts each customer had set up.
"Security is Clearview's top priority," Tor Ekeland, Clearview AI's attorney, said in a statement. "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."
The company didn't specify the flaw. The data breach was first reported by The Daily Beast.
Clearview's clients are mostly law enforcement agencies, with police departments in Toronto, Atlanta and Florida all using the technology. The company has a database of 3 billion photos that it collected from the internet, including websites like YouTube, Facebook, Venmo and LinkedIn.
</snip>
Meanwhile, a mere few weeks ago...
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/11/21131991/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-database-law-enforcement
The worlds scariest facial recognition software, explained
Clearview AI built a massive database of faces that its making available to law enforcement, and nobodys stopping it.
By Rebecca Heilweil Feb 11, 2020, 12:30pm EST
Your Instagram pictures could be part of a facial recognition database thats been made available to law enforcement agencies. Thats thanks to Clearview AI, a mysterious startup that has scraped billions of images from across the web, including from social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
Law enforcement has been using facial recognition for a while. But Clearviews technology represents a scary step further than anything weve seen before, according to reporting from the New York Times. The secretive company says its created a database of over 3 billion images that have been scraped from all corners of the internet, including social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. From just a snapshot or video still, Clearview claims its app lets a police officer identify a face and match it with publicly available information about the person, within just a few seconds.
But is this a world we want to live in? Clearview argues that the tech can help track down dangerous people its site points to child molesters, murderers, suspected terrorists and is only meant for use by law enforcement. As the Times reported last week, the companys facial recognition has helped identify child victims in exploitative videos posted to the web. But critics say the technology is way too risky, enabling excessive surveillance and threatening our privacy rights. Another concern is that facial recognition, broadly, has also been shown to be less accurate on people of color, women, and other minority groups.
Faced with these concerns, the worlds biggest tech companies are stepping up, sending cease-and-desist letters to Clearview that order the company to stop scraping their sites for our data. But its not clear how much power those companies have, or how invested they actually are in protecting our personal information. While some lawsuits against Clearview are also popping up, its not yet apparent how Clearview could be stopped. That has privacy advocates pointing to the need for a federal law regulating, or even outright banning, facial recognition in the United States.
</snip>
The worlds scariest facial recognition software, explained
Clearview AI built a massive database of faces that its making available to law enforcement, and nobodys stopping it.
By Rebecca Heilweil Feb 11, 2020, 12:30pm EST
Your Instagram pictures could be part of a facial recognition database thats been made available to law enforcement agencies. Thats thanks to Clearview AI, a mysterious startup that has scraped billions of images from across the web, including from social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
Law enforcement has been using facial recognition for a while. But Clearviews technology represents a scary step further than anything weve seen before, according to reporting from the New York Times. The secretive company says its created a database of over 3 billion images that have been scraped from all corners of the internet, including social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. From just a snapshot or video still, Clearview claims its app lets a police officer identify a face and match it with publicly available information about the person, within just a few seconds.
But is this a world we want to live in? Clearview argues that the tech can help track down dangerous people its site points to child molesters, murderers, suspected terrorists and is only meant for use by law enforcement. As the Times reported last week, the companys facial recognition has helped identify child victims in exploitative videos posted to the web. But critics say the technology is way too risky, enabling excessive surveillance and threatening our privacy rights. Another concern is that facial recognition, broadly, has also been shown to be less accurate on people of color, women, and other minority groups.
Faced with these concerns, the worlds biggest tech companies are stepping up, sending cease-and-desist letters to Clearview that order the company to stop scraping their sites for our data. But its not clear how much power those companies have, or how invested they actually are in protecting our personal information. While some lawsuits against Clearview are also popping up, its not yet apparent how Clearview could be stopped. That has privacy advocates pointing to the need for a federal law regulating, or even outright banning, facial recognition in the United States.
</snip>
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Facial-Recognition company Clearview AI's entire client list stolen in data breach (Original Post)
Dennis Donovan
Feb 2020
OP
"Security is Clearview's top priority," means Clearview is a complete failure.
Hermit-The-Prog
Feb 2020
#3
Hey, with smartphones, they have your face, your voice, your fingerprint, and all your contacts.
TheBlackAdder
Feb 2020
#4
defacto7
(13,485 posts)1. The STAZI would have loved this technology.
Just their kind of thing.
Throck
(2,520 posts)2. Between HAL and CYBERDYNE I'm not so warm and fuzzy with computers these days.
You can't hack a TRS-80.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,337 posts)3. "Security is Clearview's top priority," means Clearview is a complete failure.
TheBlackAdder
(28,189 posts)4. Hey, with smartphones, they have your face, your voice, your fingerprint, and all your contacts.
.
Shit, someone could practically build a clone of a person with that data.
.
wiggs
(7,812 posts)5. Reading William Gibson's new book, Agency, which involves lots of AI and futuristic tech stuff
that is incredibly powerful....and a chilling, logical extension of what we are currently doing. I see this and immediately connect to thoughts of how it can be used nefariously.